N.K, who is now 24 years old says that during the time she was in primary school and in high school, she felt inferior in the society she was surrounded by.
“As a child I had been a very soft person and very sociable I think, but a lot of time passed until I was able to find real friends. As a child I was overweight but I was never worried about my body until the time when my friends called me inappropriate names and left me out of activities,” she says.
N.K says that she spent a lot of time crying and trying to lose weight, going without eating for long time just to fit in the society. This resulted in her getting lower grades in primary school and in high school as well, since all she wanted was love and to be accepted into society.
“That`s why I best understand children who constantly receive insults by their peers, and I believe that the teachers should interfere and make some changes, since in my case, as a shy child, I have never had the teachers’ support,” N.K says.
Liridona Rrahmani, a young psychologist, says that bullying by society has a negative impact on emotional development and in the intellectual development as well.
“Yes, of course, bullying from the friends has a negative impact on each individual that feels different from the others, since they might be preoccupied thinking about the insults they receive each day from their peers. They might feel depressed and have no time to concentrate on learning, since the depression created by being emotionally put down by the others does not allow them to focus on their learning,” she says.
According to Rrahmani, these children get stuck in emotional and intellectual development since losing their confidence makes them lose many chances in their lives.
Basically, they mostly choose loneliness or withdrawing in order to easier overcome what they’re going through.
On the other hand, Violeta Fejzullahu, a teacher in “Gjergj Fishta” primary school in Prishtina, confirms that there is bullying or disregard among students but she constantly tries to remove this phenomenon from her classes through teaching methodology.
“They feel very bad and it even impacts in their learning process, since they do not show interest even if they are very smart, especially in the subject I teach. When they’re upset, it undoubtedly impacts my mood as well, so I try some teaching methods to avoid such problems doing group work, different games and activities in which everyone is involved with no exceptions,” Fejzullahu said.
B.T who has done volunteer work with children for a long time now, says that he also felt as a victim of bullying in school as a consequence of being too engaged in learning and for not being of the same height with his peers. He denies that this made him reduce his learning, but accepts that there were times he thought of changing the school, but by time he understood this is something that could not be avoided.
“They bullied me mainly because I was shorter than my peers in general, but also because I was a student who always reached the highest results in the classroom, what made me learn even more but I used to work on my own, which might be one of the reasons why I`m not good in group-work,” B.T says.
Qendresa Murati, an educator, considers that bullying among pupils impacts their learning results and some might lose the will to get involved in activities.
“I have encountered cases when a child that is taller than a peer who might be shorter, feels himself more grown up. Then, their words towards the other made that the student feels humiliated. This occurs during school activities as well, when pupils played games and the one who was shorter in height did not participate since he lost the confidence,”she says.
A survey by Kosovo Police on violence and security in schools shows that even though different kinds of bullying and violence in schools are decreasing, there are still such cases. Pupils sometime lose their lives as a consequence of bullying.
Fatbardha Terpeza
