A new study, recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Las Vegas, found that bullying victims ofter suffer academically. The data presented showed that students who had been bullied in the 10th grade had their grade point average lowered by an average of 0.049 points compared to students who were not bullied.
But the results show that the impact of bullying is most severe for high-achieving African-American and Latino students. They study found that black students who had grade point averages of 3.5 or higher in ninth grade and then were bullied in 10th grade saw their GPAs decline by 0.3 points by 12th grade compared to students who were not bullied.
The authors of the study are Lisa M. Williams, a doctoral student at Ohio State University and Anthony A. Peguero, a professor of sociology at Virginia Tech.
For years, I have been reading about academically high-achieving AfricanAmerican students being accused of “acting white” by their AfricanAmerican classmates.
I was born in 1936 in then totally-segregated Baltimore, and went to all-white public schools. Smart white kids were viewed with suspicion at best, and bullied at worst. It is not a racial issue.
When we think about the anti-intellectual forces in play in this nation, since her founding, it follows that intellegence is held in contempt. Why is it held in such contempt? Think about it.