School bullies have no fear of programme
Many of us saw it coming and tried, with little success, to alert our teaching body politic to the danger.
PACh (Positive Action for Children) played a leading role in attempting to raise public awareness, and while all our pleas fell on deaf ears at the time, we take no joy now in saying "we told you so".
Fionnuala Kilfeather of the National Parents Council has called on schools to use the Stay Safe programme to help deal with the bullying upsurge.
But the fact is that many people believe Stay Safe is partly responsible for the new craze.
The programme promotes behaviour based on 'yes' and 'no' feelings something that no right-thinking parent or teacher would stand over. PACh has consistently warned that this flawed ideology would lead to an increase in bullying not the other way around.
The logic is simple: bullies get a great 'yes' feeling from bullying. Stay Safe implies that a 'yes' feeling is good. Six-year-olds want to be good. They haven't yet reached the use of reason, so they just follow their feelings.
Too much damage has already been done to our children by so-called education programmes based on feelings.
I call on schools to bin or shred programmes like Stay Safe.
Mairead Scannell,
Chairperson,
Positive Action for Children,
Dublin Road,
Fermoy,
Co Cork.
