A Small Step Toward Reducing School Violence
KEEP SCHOOLS SAFE
April 28, 2009
A STEP TOWARD REDUCING SCHOOL VIOLENCE
Fact. Eighty-six (plus) % of all workplace violence, including school violence, could be prevented (OSHA, 2007) if warning signs of same would have been reported and/or acted upon. This includes bullying, about which I recently posted, violence against teachers, suicides, and even some instances involving outside – seemingly unconnected violence spilling over into the school place.
Bullying,, to me, ranks as a national disgrace. Studies show that over 65% of children have been relentlessly and systematically bullied. Physical and psychological violence. It’s your guess which is worse. To me, it’s both. Think of this: A child is triple victimized when he or she is bullied.
- The child is victimized by the bullies (more often than not, the bully is joined by at least one other friend, plus one or two others cheering from the sidelines and coercing others to do likewise.
- The child is victimized by his or her friends or fellow students who stand by and do nothing.
- The child is victimized by the school system who through our educational history have either been incapable of stopping bullying within the school system, or. worse, have been unwilling to develop an effective system of reporting these ugly incidents (of bullying), investigating reports, and taking appropriate action in concert with parents.
- There is a fourth dimension of betrayal. This from parents who do not ask their child the right questions; who do not observe subtle and dynamic behavioral and emotional changes indicative of depression, hopelessness, anxiety, etc. Parents, however, are not the issue in this particular post.
Why is this an issue today? Two adolescents, victims of steady, unrelenting and cruel physical and emotional bullying, could only find the answer to their torture and inexorable anguish at the end of a rope, joining hundreds of other children who have taken similar routes in the past few years.
So, what can the schools do? Your guess is probably as good as mine, but maybe here’s a start:
- Design, develop and engineer a reporting system that encourages and rewards students to report acts of bullying, or, for that matter, any other type of behavior that threatens the safety of students, teachers, etc.
- Honestly look into each reported incident without prejudice, presumptions and/or hidden agenda,
- Work in concert with all parents. Make it easy and painless (anonymity?) to report problems with their children, to inquire about what their child is doing.
- Encourage counselors and teachers to contact parents regarding problematic behavior.
- Security Staff and teachers must be alert for any type of behavioral signs that violence, mischief, bullying, suicidal ideation is active.
- Schools need to develop and enforce a Counter-Bullying Protocol.
Next Post: Bully-Be-Gone. Realistic and doable steps that can stop the bully in his or her tracks!
Until Then. Stay Safe.
Hammer.
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Posted on April 28th, 2009 by Harry A Widger
Filed under: Administrators, Bullying, High School, K-6, Parents, People Involved, School Grade Level, School Safety Issues, Students, Violence
Thanks for this post, Harry. I agree 100% that bullying is a national disgrace. The even sadder part is that these kids are learning this behavior from someone. Our “might-makes-right” dominance culture sends the message at an early age that it’s OK to get what you want through the use of force and violence. Fortunately, there are proven programs out there that can help break this cycle of violence.
One such program in Challenge Day, which has been featured on Oprah (http://www.challengeday.org). The CD program helps break down the artificial barriers that separate kids from each other and helps create an environment where every child is loved and appreciated.
The problem with these kinds of programs is that the schools that need them most rarely have the funcing necessary to pay for them. There is legislation in the House - H.R. 808 - to create a U.S. Department of Peace that would help fund these programs and create a partnership culture of peace. Check out http://www.thepeacealliance.org to learn more about the national campaign.
Research has determined that from the Moment of Commitment (the point when a student pulls their weapon) to the Moment of Completion (when the last round is fired) is only 5 seconds. If it is the intent of a school district to react to this violence, they will do so over the wounded and/or slain bodies of students, teachers and administrators.
Educational institutions clearly want safe and secure schools. Administrators are perennially queried by parents about the safety of their schools. The commonplace answers, intended to reassure anxious parents, focus on the school resource officers and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing school violence, nor do they make a school safe and secure.
Traditionally school districts have relied upon the mental health community or local police to keep schools safe, yet one of the key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves teachers, administrators, parents and students in the identification and communication process. Recently, colleges, universities and community colleges are forming Behavioral Intervention Teams with representatives from all these constituencies. Higher Education has changed their safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems, yet K-12 have yet to incorporate Behavioral Intervention Teams. K-12 schools continue spending excessive amounts of money to put in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, they are reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot, which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors. Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.
Some law enforcement agencies use profiling as a means to identify an aggressor. According to the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education’s report on Targeted Violence in Schools, there is a significant difference between “profiling” and identifying and measuring emerging aggression; “The use of profiles is not effective either for identifying students who may pose a risk for targeted violence at school or – once a student has been identified – for assessing the risk that a particular student may pose for school-based targeted violence.” It continues; “An inquiry should focus instead on a student’s behaviors and communications to determine if the student appears to be planning or preparing for an attack.” We can and must assess objective, culturally neutral, identifiable criteria of emerging aggression.
For a comprehensive look at the problem and its solution, http://www.aggressionmanagement.com/White_Paper_K-12/
Continue the dialogue: http://aggressionmanagement.blogspot.com/