Violent Acts In School And Efforts To Stop Them

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract

School violence is considered as a youth violence that occurs within the school, on the way to or from school or school-sponsored events, or during a school sponsored event. A young person can be a victim, a perpetrator, or a witness of school violence. Youth violence includes various kinds of behavior. Some violent acts—such as bullying, slapping, or hitting—can cause much emotional harm than any of the physical harm. Other forms of violence, such as gang violence and assault (with or without weapons), can lead to fatal injury or even death in some of the cases. This papers aims to list out the different violent acts performed, reaction of parents towards such acts and the efforts that can be taken to reduce or stop such activities.

Introduction

The World Health Organization (WHO 2002) defines violence, as the deliberate use of physical force or power, threatened or concrete, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community that either fallout in or has a high likelihood resulting in death, psychological harm, injury, mal-development or deprivation. Violence is even there within our schools. Every school handbook has a specific reference to fighting and bringing weapons in the school. When the first children went to school in red little buildings, since then there have been a several cases of violence that has occurred in schools in school. Parents, Administrators, and students alike are all familiar to the bullying in schools that occurs commonly.

Children may not feel able to report acts of violence for the fear of further subjection to punishment by the abuser. Most times both child and abuser may see nothing unusual or wrong in the child being subjected to violence. They may not consider an act of violence actually to be violence at all, perhaps viewing it as justifiable and necessary punishment. The child victim may feel ashamed or guilty, believing that the violence was deserved. This often leads the child to be unwilling to speak about it. This lack of documentation and increasing violence rates against children were part of the reasons for the global in-depth study of violence against children by the UN Secretary General as directed by the General Assembly Resolution 57/90 of 2002 to provide a global picture. The report provided information that various types of violence exist against children within the family, detention facilities, alternative care, institutions, schools, places where children work and communities.

Studies reveal that violence exists in every country of the world and it cuts across culture, class, education, income and ethnic origin (Felitti, Anda, Nordenberg, Williamson, Spitz, Edwards, Koss, Marks 1998; Krug,Dahlberg, Mercy, Zwi and Lozano 2002; Reza, Mercy and Krug 2002;Curie, Molcho, Boyce, Holstein, Torsheim and Richter 2004; WHO 2006). As documented by Unicef 2007, reporting violence, among learners is generally low, ranging from 4% for sexual violence to 40% in the case of physical violence. Most learners will report cases of physical violence to school teachers (45.1%) and also the head teacher (34.5%). Some of the major reasons why learners will not report cases of violence especially for physical and gender based violence were because they felt nothing will be done. Civilizing the quality of education is intricate without also addressing school violence, since regardless of how good the teachers or curriculum are, it is hard for the students due to violence. The victims of the school crime (children) often experience decreased self esteem or respect, absence, sadness, post-traumatic stress disorder or chaos and in extreme cases, suicide and violent retribution.

Acts of Violence:

Bullying

Bullying In Teaching

Child net

Cyber Bullying

Gun Violence

School Shooting

How School Violence Affects Health

Deaths resulting from school violence are only part of the problem. Many young people experience nonfatal injuries. Some of these injuries are relatively minor and include cuts, bruises, and broken bones. Other injuries, like gunshot wounds and head trauma, are more serious and can lead to permanent disability Not all injuries are visible. Exposure to youth violence and school violence can lead to a wide array of negative health behaviors and outcomes, including alcohol and drug use and suicide. Depression, anxiety, and many other psychological problems, including fear, can result from school violence.

What leads to Violent Acts?

A lot of factors can add to the risk of a youth engaging in aggressiveness or violence at school level. However, the existence of these factors within a child does not always mean that a he or she will become an offender.

Risk factors for youth and school violence includes:

• History of violence

• Alcohol, tobacco or drug use.

• Association with delinquent peers

• Poor family functioning

• Poor scores in school

• Poverty within the community

Data analyzed revealed that many things do cause violent behavior in children among which are poor supervision by school authorities (82%), peer influence (82.8%), exposure to violent films(85.2%) and emotional instability (79.8%) just to mention a few.

It is not necessary that school violence must start in school. Most behaviors that are responses learned to situations and circumstances that are exhibited in our daily life. All children are influenced by home life conditions. A child developing in a home where his parents are abused physically or verbally makes the child familiar to the situation and effects his mental situation too. Study shows that a child who lives in an abusive house eventually becomes an abuser. Children who see violence think it off as a solution to the problem. They consider the stronger or better of the two people as the winner of the situation and thus develop him with the behavior.

The extended family of the forties (40s) and fifties (50s) are no longer existential in our society today. To satisfy the needs of the nuclear group, generally both the parents work out of the necessity to meet their costs. The consequence of this act results in the negligence of supervision of their children. The parent child relationship is hampered and there is a breakdown in the governance which allows children to make their own decision without the discretion of their parents. The child becomes the dominating factor. Also, sibling violence would later set the path to later violence in school environment. It starts with bullying the siblings and eventually ends at bullying their peers at school.

Children at very early age learn violence from television by watching cartoons. These humorous undamaging half-hour scenes, that make us laugh or enjoy, are the first presentation of violence that our children see. These shows tell our children that violence is not a problem. It makes them frozen to the horror of the real violence experiencing around them. Through statistical studies, 86% of the violent acts don’t have any unconstructive repercussions, no signs of death, no one goes to jail, 47% of the violent acts on television do not hurt the sufferer, and no one’s life is bankrupt. While 73% of all the time the "bad guy" or the criminal goes without punishment. Media glamorizes violence, thus teaching our children that being violent is not a problem to the society.

Some facts about child abuse:

Approx. Five children die daily because of child abuse and violence. 


1 /5 boys and 1 / 3 girls is sexually violated before they reach age 18.
 

90% of child sexual abuse or violence, victims knows the perpetrator in some way. 
 

Most of the children happen to be victims of child abuse.

In 2010, 1,537 children died of violence or overlook.

• 79.4 % were under the age of 4.

• 47.7 % were under the age of 1.

Boys (48.5 %) and girls (51.2 %) become sufferers at nearly the same rate.
 

3.6 million Cases of child violence are reported every year in the U.S and the number of children involved in these reports is 6 million.

About 80 % of 21-yr-olds who were violated as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder.

Sexually violated children are less likely to practice safe sex, putting them at greater risk for Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs). They’re also 25 % more likely to experience teen pregnancy.

Risk Factors

1. The individual child externalizing and internalizing behaviors

Between the externalizing behavior and internalizing behavior, a proper distinction is made. The kinds of internalizing behavior are anxiety, inhibition, withdrawal or depression. In youth violence, this kind of internalizing behavior is found but in youth substance or drug abuse causes depression. Students with these internalizing problems rarely express their feeling and thus are often neglected or overlooked by school personals. While externalizing behavior is considered to be people who bully or harass others, and enjoy doing so. These people pose as risk to such violence that occurs in school level.

2. Other individual factors

A lot of individuals are also related with aggressiveness or violence of higher levels. Children whose antisocial behavior or actions begins late, early starts have even worse effect than these children. Even people with lower intelligence are considered to have higher level of aggressiveness. Other facts indicate that boy's early attention difficulties, reading problems and motor skills predict that it persists to antisocial conduct.

3. Home environment

The home environment is also considered to add to the school violence. According to the Constitutional Rights Foundation, long-term exposure to domestic violence, physical abuse, parental alcoholism, gun violence, ragging, bullying of the child, and child sexual abuse teaches children that criminal and violent activities are acceptable. Harsh parental discipline is linked with higher levels of ferociousness in youth. There are some evidences signifying that exposure to television violence and, to a lesser extent, violent video games is related to amplified fierceness in children, which, in turn, might carry over into school.

4. Other Reasons

Other reasons range from rampage-style shootings and other acts of violence where mental illness contributes. In some instances, a drug deal gone badly, an issue between a girlfriend and boyfriend, a disagreement among friends or a gang-related argument may also lead to violence in schools.

Efforts to stop violent acts committed in school

(1) When parents and teachers are more involved in student's life, then it might result to less school violence in his life. Teachers can see problems before they occur and they are in the best position to see the problems occurring and help students when they are in potentially volatile situations. So teachers can take steps to prevent these violent acts of these potentially volatile aggressors. Parents are close to their children and so they are more capable of providing a moral structure and also help to solve the problem when their children face more challenging or difficult situations. Both teachers and parents could work as a team to prevent such kind of violent acts that occur in schools.

Drawback: But the drawback that occurs in normal life situation is that teachers and parents don't have enough time to manage or monitor their children as needed to stop this violence. Due to urbanization parents tend to move away from their children and with high rate of divorce and schools being overcrowded, it is a real tough job to manage each and every children's life discreetly. The television acts as the babysitter for the children which in this case with latchkey children. Parents, who work hard, bring their work with them to their homes while they are trying to cook or clean or in any household activities so that they can keep their job as well as monitor their children closely.

(2) Another kind of solution that would prevent this kind of violence would be to educate their children about the effect of being bullied and harassed and how it affects their physiological behavior. We all know that these bullies or harassed students who feel that they have no other recourse results to gun violence. If we educate these bullies about the effect of harassment on physiological level, then they might stop bullying smaller children and thus reduce such violence. Majority of public school principals (about 78%) have reported that they have conducted a formal school violence reduction and (School Violence) prevention programs. With this bully prevention and reduction program, the violence against these children could reduce a lot though much difference in results has not been seen, but violence has been drastically reduced.

Drawback: But this solution might not be achievable if children enjoy bullying or harassing others. If they enjoy what they are doing then education or reduction program will have no effect on these children. It might be possible that their parent have suffered though bullies and harassment and possibly transferring their legacy to their children themselves and feeling that they have no other outlet. With education and reduction program, there is very less chance of change in their act of violence and so the solution would be to treat them properly by psychiatrists who are trained to solve such physiological behaviors thus reducing violence to a certain level. Even with these sensitive classes, it won’t affect the minds of potential aggressors to stop bullying.

(3) And so the best of all solution to prevent school violence is considered to be having more and more adults involving the child's life. This would also include in promotion of child's pride and also having more involvement in life of teachers and parents. There should also be more school programs to prevent such activities of violence and also a peer group therapy would effect in serious reduction of such activities. Schools like Stephens consider bullying to be serious offence and takes serious steps to prevent such acts. This kind of programs and rules would considerably reduce school violence significantly.