Approximate reading time: 1 minute, 53 seconds
Pía, a young woman who is in eighth grade, uploaded a video on Tik Tok a few days ago in which she says: “they bully me, the truth is I’ve had a very bad time and now I’m very scared because classes are going to start.” With great courage and bravery, she has used social networks to launch an exemplary video regarding the situation that she has experienced and that could be repeated in the new school year.
Pía is not an influencer, it is @piacolegioinglesdetalca’s first video on Tik Tok and in the first five days it had more than a million views, 30 thousand followers, 270 thousand likes and 10 thousand forwards. Without a doubt, his testimony has had an impact, awakening a wave of sympathy and solidarity.
According to her father, in an interview given to LUN and published on Monday, March 4, he noted that “she has suffered from gastritis that, according to the specialists we have consulted, could even cause gastric cancer, and remains in a delicate state of health. . Although after the video she has been happy, she told me that she could not believe that outside the school there were such good people who do not even know her and empathize.
As in most of the cases that we learned about at Fundación Semilla, and this was no exception, educational establishments focus the problem on the victim. They change course without understanding that they must take charge of the aggressors and a culture that normalizes violence in school contexts, leaving the weakest unprotected.
As Pía told her father, she feels the support and empathy. Also expressed in the comments to her video. It is worrying that many of them suggest responding with violence because that is the only way to stop bullying. Unfortunately, when institutions, in this case the college, school or high school, do not provide a timely solution, people seek to protect themselves by taking justice into their own hands.
In situations of violence in school contexts we also find a generational gap, in which elders minimize the problem, often saying that “they are children’s things, I was also a victim of bullying or I was bullied and now as an adult I have no issues”. It is not true that they do not have problems; The truth is that they are not the only ones and their behaviors and mental health status are seen as normal. The scars remain forever if there is no good approach and solution to violence.
@antowita @Pía Colegio Inglés de Talca cheer up prettyaaaa #chile#bullying#storytime#piacolegioinglesdetalca#bullyingawareness
♬ original sound – Anto
The educational system has a great responsibility in stopping the spiral of violence. We all know the diagnosis: violence generates more violence, transmitted from generation to generation. The only way to reduce it is by improving coexistence. We use the phrase “the antonym of violence is coexistence”, and we have leadership programs for NO Violence in more than 600 educational establishments in Maule, Santiago and Antofagasta.
Pía is facing the bullying, first by making a complaint to the directors of her school and, feeling that she has not received a response, she has resorted to exposing it publicly and reporting it to the Superintendence of Education. We congratulate her for the exemplary video that she, with courage and bravery, has not used violence or entered into disqualifications.
Marcelo Trivelli
Seed Foundation