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CNN Saturday Morning News
Study Finds Most Students Experience Teasing
Aired June 09, 2001 - 09:41 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It's a fact of life and a tough rite of passage, kids can be cruel. Anyone who has spent time on a playground can attest to that. But bullying, teasing and abuse that was commonly dismissed a generation ago is now the focus of growing concern and attention. Tim McVeigh was bullied as a child and much of the school violence we've seen in recent years begins with a misfit who is picked on.
Quantifying all this is not easy, but one group has tried and this week the American Association of University Women released its comprehensive study on the issue. Jacqueline Woods is the group's executive director. She joins us from Washington to talk about the study. Good morning, Ms. Woods. Good to see you.
JACQUELINE WOODS, AAUW: Good morning, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Let's talk about these numbers right away because they're very striking, and this is the not the first time you've looked at this problem so maybe we can talk about trends, as well. But it says 83 percent of girls and 79 percent of the boys you interviewed, and you did, talked to more than 2,000 public school students eighth through 11th grade, that high percentage report having experienced harassment. Did that number surprise you?
WOODS: Well, not only did that number surprise us, but we found that a third of those students also said that they had experienced sexual harassment often. And we're distinguishing between what's called flirting and teasing with one another. We're talking about unwanted and unwelcome sexual advances and sexual behavior that makes people feel violated. And so that was very surprising.
O'BRIEN: Now, 76 percent of the students have experienced non- physical harassment, 58 percent have experienced physical harassment. Is the non-physical harassment of as much concern to you?
WOODS: Yes. We think that both the non-physical and the physical harassment are things to be concerned about because when we asked the students what kinds of things do you consider the most violating, and they talked about calling you gay or lesbian, spreading sexual rumors about us, as well as pulling down our clothes or asking us to perform sexual acts more than just kissing.
And so we think this is a wakeup call for all of us as adults and for our students to talk about how this affects them both educationally and emotionally. And usually we find those people that are negatively affected, it carries on throughout the rest of their lives unless something is done to help them work through these issues. And we think this is a serious wakeup call for America.
O'BRIEN: Now, the first time you looked at this was about eight years ago. What's the trend look like to you? Is it disquieting?
WOODS: In 1993 when our educational foundation looked at, conducted the first national survey on sexual harassment, we saw that many of the same things that are reported now were occurring. And so the surprise for us is that even though more of the students now are reporting that they are aware that their schools have policies and procedures against this, it has not changed the behavior drastically and that is the thing that's most important and most startling to us.
O'BRIEN: And all of this seems to be happening under parents' and teachers' noses. I suppose there is a certain element here that sort of shrugs this off as something we all go through as we grow up. Should it be shrugged off?
WOODS: Absolutely not, and that's what we, that's part of the wakeup call that we're trying to bring out here, is that too many teachers, adults in the school and the parents think this is just normal behavior and the kids are saying we need you to pay attention to this, we need you to not shrug it off nor do we need you to just issue zero tolerance policies.
We need you to talk to us about this. And so we're saying that we need to have parents and students get together and have a better education process about what's appropriate and inappropriate so that we can kind of, you know, reduce the number of really tragic incidences that we're seeing across this country and really help our children have normal and happy lifestyles so they can educationally and emotionally grow healthy.
O'BRIEN: All right, those are some good words to end it on. Jacqueline Woods is the executive director of the American Association of University Women. That report, by the way, if you'd like to read it in its full entirety, it is 60 pages long, it is troubling, but of interest if you're interested in what's happening with your children or if you're a teacher, can be found at www.aauw.org.
Jacqueline Woods, thanks for being with us on CNN SATURDAY MORNING. We appreciate it.
WOODS: Thank you so very much for having us, Miles.
O'BRIEN: My pleasure.
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