Violence In Schools
General Information
A school is a place where children gain knowledge, get life experience and go through the process of socialization. The most important thing schools are supposed to ensure is safety. However, recently attending schools have become dangerous for children because of juvenile violence, which is widely spread all over the USA. According to W.M. Keck,
Every year, 3 million young people in the United States fall victim to crimes at school. Almost 2 million of these incidents involve violence. Although most school violence takes the form of minor assaults, some episodes are far more serious. Some end in tragedy. For example, in two recent academic years, a total of 85 young people died violently in U.S. schools. Seventy-five percent of these incidents involved firearms.
This problem also exists in the European countries. For example, bringing mobile phones to schools in Italy is restricted for children, because they record violence on their smartphones.
According to experts, 60 % children at the age of 8 to 17 gladly agree to participate in scenes of violence. And 6% of boys admit the possibility of killing a person, if it will be richly rewarded.
As a result, experts make sure that a new generation is growing for whom violence is not a big deal. Imitation of what they see on the screen is the main feature of the teenage psyche.
There are also cases of "unprovoked aggression" when teens being under emotional stress after undergoing psychological trauma attack other students and teachers, sometimes using guns. Cases of sudden aggressiveness of students, resulting in deaths are regularly reported in the USA as well as in other countries all over the world. Opportunity to purchase weapons, including gas ones, recently has become really enough for the population, which dramatically increases the risk and the scale of the consequences in such situations.
Violence among adolescents has another side - the children are often suffering from the teacher, which shows the importance of professional psychological selection and periodic inspections of the psychological state teachers who come to work to schools and those who already work there. Another problem is the cases of sexual aggression of teachers, found in boarding schools and other educational institutions.
School violence is subdivided into emotional and physical. Emotional violence causes emotional stress in victims, humiliating them and lowering their self-identity. Physical violence implies the use of physical force against students, which often results in the physical injury.
Factors that Contribute to School Violence
Anonymity of big schools, the lack of diversity of choice in educational institutions, overloaded curriculum, and noisy atmosphere may adversely affect emotionally labile and hyperactive children with unstable nervous system, and start to excite them. In a large school community violence is well hidden, that is less likely to be investigated or limited due to the fact that it is very difficult for teachers to "get" each to enter the world of their problems.
Violent behavior of teachers is caused by the same factors as in children. The teachers' collectives with authoritarian style of leadership are based on the same relationship as between students and teachers: "The strongest is the one who is on the top." Irritated and frustrated teachers direct all their aggression towards children. If the teacher allows external factors take him/her under control (troubles at home, conflicts with the administration, etc.), his/her professionalism is doubtful.
Indifference and indifferent attitude is one of the most important factors developing violence in school. Overworked teachers often do not interfere with children's problems saying the following nonsense to complaining parents: "Let the children understand." or “Let the children get out of the conflict on their own”. They make sure this will help children grow self-dependent.
Who Becomes a Victim of School Violence Often?
Any child can become a victim, but this is usually referred to someone who is weaker or somehow different from others. The most common victims of school violence are children who have:
· physical disabilities. Children with disabilities - wearing glasses, with hearing impairment or movement disorders (for example, cerebral palsy) , in other words, those who cannot provide themselves with adequate resistance and protect themselves – are hurt more often;
· unnatural behaviors . Withdrawn children often become a target for ridicule and aggression (introverts and phlegmatic) or children with impulsive behavior (with MMD ). To some extent, hyperactive children are too intrusive and more naive than their peers. They are too deeply nestled in a private space of other children and adults (break into other people's conversations, games, impose their opinion, impatiently wait for their turn in the game, etc.). For these reasons, they often cause irritation and receive "retaliation”. Hyperactive children can be victims, as well as perpetrators, sometimes even both at the same time ;
· unusual appearance. All that distinguishes child in appearance from the general mass, may become a reason for aggressive attitude: red hair, freckles, protruding crooked legs, a special form of a head, body weight (overweight or thinness), etc. ;
· poor social skills. There are children who have not developed a psychological defense against verbal and physical abuse because of their lack of experience of communication and expression. Compared with children who have social skills developed in accordance with their age, children with underdeveloped social skills are easier to accept the role of victim. Those who get adapted to the role of a victim react to the situation as inevitably, often justifying their enemies: " ... well, then, I deserved it."
· fear of attending school. It occurs more often in those who go to school with negative social expectations of it. Sometimes this fear is induced by parents who had problems at school age. The trigger of fear can become just a story about evil and bad teacher evaluations. Child showing uncertainty and fear of school become an easier target for mockery classmates;
· lack of team experience (home children). Children not attending kindergartens before school may not have the necessary skills to cope with problems in communication. At the same time they can often exceed erudition and skills of children who are more confident in communication;
· disease. There are lots of disorders that cause ridicules: epilepsy, stuttering, enuresis (incontinence), encopresis (fecal incontinence), speech disorders, dysgraphia, dyslexia, etc.;
· low intelligence and learning difficulties. Poor grades create low self-identity: "I cannot handle. I'm worse than others, etc.” Low self-identity in one case can help to foster the role of victim, and in another one - violent behavior as a payment option. Thus, a child with low intelligence and learning difficulties can be both a victim of school violence and an abuser.
Who Becomes a Violator in School?
Doctors state that children raised in conditions of maternal deprivation (do not get enough love, care, children with immature attachment to parents), later tend to be more violent than children growing up in normal families.
Let us take a look at the interfamilial factors causing the formation of a child's violent personality traits. It is obvious that a greater risk of violence is found in children who come from these families:
1. one-parent families. The child brought up in a single parent family is more inclined to use emotional violence towards other children. And the girl from such family is significantly more likely to emotional abuse other children than boys.
2. families in which the mother has a negative attitude towards life. Mothers who do not trust and negatively dispose of their child's school are usually not willing to cooperate with the school. In such cases, the mothers tend to justify violence as a natural reaction to communication with the "enemy."
3. authoritarian family. Growing up in conditions of dominant hyper-protection is characterized by submission to the will of the parents, so the children in such families are often crushed, and the school is the place where they splash out internally suppressed anger and fear.
4. families with different conflicts in relationships. In families where adults often quarrel and swear in the state of aggression, the child goes through so-called "learning model". Children learn and further use it in everyday life as a way to cope. Thus, one behavior can be transmitted from generation to generation as a family curse. If it is a frustrating and disturbing family, the atmosphere makes the child behave aggressively. In such families, there is practically no mutual support and close relationship. Children from families, who practice violence, assess violent situations differently than other children. For example, a child who got used to violent communication - barks and increasing tone, evaluates it as normal.
5 . families with a genetic predisposition to violence. Children often have a different genetic basis of tolerance to stress. Children with low tolerance to stress reveal more predisposition to violence. Furthermore, underachievement is a risk factor for violence. Studies have shown that good grades in school are directly connected to self-esteem. For boys school performance is not so significant and almost does not affect the self-esteem. More important to them is to be successful in sports, extracurricular activities, hikes, and other activities.
Results of School Violence
School violence has a direct and indirect effect on children. According to Patrick Burton and Lezanne Leoschut,
Both direct and indirect violence associated with school often results in truancy from school as learners become too scared to attend or try to avoid the school environment in an attempt to avoid the attendant violence. This is particularly important in an environment where the completion rate for learners from reception year through to Grade 12 is less than 50%. Related to this – and often precipitating school drop-out – is that school violence often results in a decrease in educational performance as victims battle to focus on content and on their school work in general
First, long-term ridicules in school negatively affect the self-identity of the child. It constantly decreases until the child becomes desperate. Such children usually try to avoid relationships with other people in future, and vice versa - the other kids avoid friendship with victims of violence because they are worried about the fact that they become victims, following the old teacher's logic: "...Tell me who is your friend and I tell who you are." As a result, the formation of friendship can be a problem for the victim, and rejection at school is often extrapolated to other areas of social relations. Such a child can continue to live the "loser way."
Second, getting into the role of the victim is a result of the low status in the group, problems with studying and behavior. These children are at high risk of neuropsychiatric and behavioral disorders. Victims of school violence are often diagnosed with neurotic disorders, depression, sleep disorders and bad appetite, post-traumatic stress disorder (in the worst case).
Third, prolonged stress creates a sense of hopelessness and despair, which, in turn, is a fertile ground for the emergence of suicidal thoughts.
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