Together, we can beat the bullies

Together, we can beat the bullies

Summary

, the Prime Minister’s wife, has received a letter from a mother to a teenage girl who explains how her daughter has tried to take her own life due to bullying. This mother has started a support group, called ChildLine, which last year took in 20.000 calls from desperate children who were being bullied. Bullying is for the fifth year running, at the top of the list of problems children call the helpline about. The children don’t talk to their parents either because they are not getting along or they don’t want to worry their parents. Bullying has always existed, according to Booth, but new awareness of the effects of bullying leads to increased initiatives to prevent it. Some schools neglect the problem and try to ignore it, but Booth argues that they also bear part of the responsibility. Booth will, in an attempt to put focus on the problem, chair a conference for ChildLine called: Bullying – Symptoms, Strategies and Solutions. The goal of the conference is to pool together all the expert knowledge on the issue and share ideas and get inspiration for further work to minimize bullying in British schools.

Facts about the text

Type of text: Feature article Brought: 11 May 2002 (still relevant today).

Sender: The broadsheet news paper ‘The Observer’, Prime Minister’s wife . Receiver: Readers of ‘The Observer’ (British upper- and middleclass). Lay out: Two columns, split into sections lead off by bold font.

Message/intention

 The main message/intention of the article is to inform its readers about the rising problem of bullying and the consequences it can have on those being bullied.  The article is trying to create awareness and raise a debate about bullying, and what role the schools have when children are being bullied.

 The article also tries to create awareness about the various organizations that can help children such as ChildLine.

 It also has the intention to get parents to think about whether their own children are bullies or maybe being bullied themselves and act before it is too late.

Key points in the article

STX 3.g  Prime Minister’s wife.

 Usually stays out of the public debate, but has become so angry after having read a mother’s letter that she has written an article that puts focus on the problem of bullying.