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Book Review- The Complete Guide to Understanding, Controlling, and Stopping Bullies & Bullying, by Margaret R. Kohut |
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| Published by Atlantic Publishing Company (online) | | January 14, 2007 |
| As Margaret R. Kohut, author of The Complete Guide to Understanding, Controlling, and Stopping Bullies & Bullying notes; on April 6, 2007, Twenty-three-year-old Seung-Hui Cho opened fire at Virginia Tech, killing 32 students, wounding 25, and also taking his own life. An investigation of Cho’s personal history revealed that he had suffered bullying in both middle and high school for a speech defect. On October 16, 2006, a 13-year-old Missouri girl named Megan Meier committed suicide after a neighbor—the mother of a schoolmate, who posed online as a boy—harassed and bullied Meier online, after initially gaining her trust. On April 20, 2000, teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold—whom Kohut included in her book’s dedication—entered Columbine High school with assault weapons and homemade bombs. They killed 12 classmates, a teacher, and injured 18 other students before shooting and killing themselves.
Kohut opens her book by profiling two of these cases—the Columbine and Virginia Tech Massacres—as well as one additional case. She seems to suggest, without directly stating as such, that a history of being bullied contributed to the criminal behaviors of Cho, Harris, and Klebold. The suicide of Meier, as well as of Emmet Fralick, a fourteen-year-old who resided in Halifax, Nova Scotia, whom Kohut also mentions in her introduction, reveals other extreme and tragic potential results of bullying.
Kohut’s credentials and professional experiences as a Correction Officer in an Adult and Juvenile Maximum Security Correction Facility, a Courtroom Bailiff, Bounty Hunter, Forensic Counselor, Addiction Therapist, as well as time spent in private practice as a Social Worker, all support the case she makes for bullying as a serious and dangerous cultural problem. Kohut also successfully provides relevant data to support this assertion. In this book, she articulately, systematically, and logically paints a comprehensive picture of bullying. In the first section, she includes clear definitions and types of bullying behavior, “red flags” to look for, as well as the price that everyone involved with bullying pays. Next, she details accessible yet sophisticated forensic profiles of bullies and their victims. She also dispels relevant myths. In Section three, Kohut offers solutions for parents, teachers, victims, and bystanders. Educators and Educational Administrators, as well as parents, will find her chapter on creating zero tolerance for School Bullying extremely useful. Moreover, Kohut also briefly addresses legal aspects of bullying. She concludes with an appendix of tools—including various “pledges” that students, teachers, parents, schools and communities can make—which supply opportunities of applications for adults and children alike.
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