Cause and Effect of Humiliation in the Classroom - Essay Example

and Section # of Cause and Effect of Humiliation in the room Be it any person, in order to succeed in life one needs to feel good about and believe in oneself. The stronger this belief in oneself is, the higher would be the self-confidence and self-esteem and the more one would be convinced that he/she can perform any particular task.However, the attitude of people around a person plays an extremely important role in determining one’s own attitude and behavior. Very small and negligible acts of people around you can have an immense impact on your personality that you may not be even aware of.

There are certain negative acts of people that they do for merely short-lived pleasure or any other reason but can tarnish a person’s personality altogether. Humiliation is one of them.Humiliation is putting someone down and making him/her seem bad in front of people. The person being humiliated feels embarrassed and ashamed in front of everyone and feels uncomfortable facing people in front of whom he has been humiliated.Humiliation in the classroom or school environment is a story of every other educational institution.

The causes of this kind of a behavior are diverse.The Psychological reason is the insecurities that one might have about oneself. Such people derive their self-esteem from crushing others’ self-esteem by humiliating them in front of everyone. It fits most of the habitual bullies, who humiliate anyone and everyone they can find anything bad about. The victims are usually the people who are weak or cannot fight back.Another distinct cause is rivalry among students. Students find revenge in humiliating their rivals in front of everyone taking advantage of practically anything that they could find against the opponent.

A superiority complex in a student’s personality can also cause one to feel superior enough to say or do anything to anyone no matter how humiliating it is to the recipient of the comment.Another psychological cause may be that many people derive satisfaction from making others feel bad.Also, students may humiliate other students just for fun and to have a good time.Humiliation can impact a victim’s personality and life very negatively. Some of the major effects of humiliation in a classroom environment are listed below.

The first and the foremost effect of humiliation is absenteeism. When the victim cannot find a way to avoid humiliation at school, he/she tends to stay at home and not go to school altogether. If this practice extends far too much, the student may drop out of school altogether.Decreased self-confidence and tarnished self-esteem is another consequence of humiliation. The target of this vicious act starts losing friends and feels alone in a cruel world where everyone seems to be against him. His self esteem goes down the drain and he finds it very difficult to believe in himself and stand up for himself in face of problems that might arise in life.

He feels like a loser and his whole life gets affected as he cannot take decisions properly and thinks his life is ruined.Emotionally, the person is torn inside and out. He feels everyone is against him and everyone hates him. He stops trusting people and feels encaged in a trap. He feels frustrated annoyed and mentally disturbed all the time, which might lead to depression.The stress and depression caused by the humiliation may drive a student to get so fed up of his life that he ends up taking his own life.

There have been various cases of students committing suicides in which the reason was constant humiliation at school. One such case happened in January of 2010, when a girl name Phoebe Prince was bullied to death. (Kennedy, 2010). Apparently, school officials and teachers knew about the harassment but didn’t do enough effectively to stop it. The students obviously did harmful things to her, but didn’t literally kill her with their bare hands. Eventually she was so taken aback that she committed suicide.

When such social derision becomes pervasive, it can become so painful that some students seriously contemplate and act on taking their own lives. Another consequence may be that the target of humiliation becomes angry enough to lash out at their fellow students almost randomly, as has been the case in some of the most tragic episodes of violence, like the Virginia Tech catastrophe. (Hornig, Mascolo, 2007).Works CitedWeb PagesHornig, F.; Mascolo, G. “Bloodbath Leaves 33 Dead at US University - Horror, Sorrow and Angry Questions”.

(2007, April 17). Spiegel Online International. Accessed May 25, 2010.http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,477647,00.htmlKennedy, H. “Phoebe Prince, South Hadley High Schools new girl, driven to suicide by teenage cyber bullies”. (2010, March 29). NY Daily News. Accessed May 25, 2010.http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/03/29/2010-03-29_phoebe_prince_south_hadley_high_schools_new_girl_driven_to_suicide_by_teenage_cy.html