School Violence

Studies in Alienation, Revenge and Redemption

Ingrid Rose

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781855756137
• eBook ISBN: 9780429918742
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Experiences of violence in schools are encountered much more frequently than they used to be. The shocking repercussions of these acts are felt nation-wide and particularly impact school populations, families and communities. This book undertakes to illuminate factors pertaining to the phenomenon of school violence. It is intended for professionals such as school principals, teachers, social workers, psychologists, school administrators, school counselors and all who work directly with youth in various contexts. It is also intended for parents, family and community members, youth advisors and mentors, youth group leaders, religious advisors, counsellors, and others interested in the wellbeing of children and adolescents.

Chapter One
Setting the stage

Incidence of violence in schools

During 1996–97 approximately 4,000 incidents of rape or other types of sexual battery were reported in United States public schools. Weapons were used in about 11,000 incidents of physical attacks or fights and 7,000 robberies occurred in schools that year. Approximately 190,000 fights or physical attacks not involving weapons also occurred at schools in 1996–97, along with about 115,000 thefts and 98,000 incidents of vandalism (National Center for Education Statistics, 1997). In a survey conducted by the National Council for Education Statistics (NCES) in 2000 the following information was noted (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000). According to school principals, 71% of public elementary and secondary schools experienced at least one violent incident during the 1999–2000 school year (including rape, sexual battery other than rape, physical attacks or fights with and without a weapon, threats of physical attack with and without a weapon, and robbery with and without a weapon). In all, approximately 1,466,000 such incidents were reported in public schools in 1999–2000. One or more serious violent incidents (including rape, sexual battery other than rape, physical attacks or fights with a weapon, threats of physical attack with a weapon, and robbery with and without a weapon) occurred in 20 percent of public schools.

Controlling for all other factors, five school characteristics were related to the likelihood that a school would experience at least one serious violent incident: enrolment size, urbanicity, percentage of males, number of serious discipline problems, and number of school-wide disruptions. In the 1999–2000 school year, 20% of North American public schools experienced at least one serious violent incident. In those schools, about 61,700 serious violent incidents occurred. The most commonly occurring serious violent crime was the threat of attack with a weapon, with 11 percent of schools experiencing at least one such offence during that school year (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000).

School shootings

In 2001, the United States Congress requested that the National Research Council study the phenomenon of school violence that had been occurring in increasing frequency between the years of 1992 and 2001 (Moore, Petrie, Braga & McLaughlin, 2003). This report focused on specific incidents that included school shootings in which one or more students or teachers had been wounded or killed. Detailed case studies were developed on the perpetrator, the school situation, the community in which the violence took place, and the circumstances leading to the expression of violence. The committee failed to reach firm scientific conclusions about the causes of the shootings or suggest effective means of preventing or controlling them. However, the information gathered provides interesting insights into the psychological, emotional, and social dynamics present in the lives of both the shooters and the communities in which they lived. The data highlight areas such as experiences of alienation, teasing/bullying in schools, relationships within the school system between teachers and students and among students, shooter traits, and other factors.

In all cases studied it was found that youth perpetrators experienced alienation from adults in their communities and that parents had little information about what their children were really experiencing (Moore et al. 2003). A disconnection was detected between how adults and parents experienced the adolescent and the actual internal experiences of the adolescent. In addition, the evidence showed a separation between teachers and students relationally including little personal knowledge of students on the part of teachers. Parents and most teachers evidenced poor understanding of the children’s exposure to changing community conditions, their experiences in social situations, and their interpretations of those experiences.

Most of the adolescent shooters had not been considered at high risk for violent behaviour. Although some of the student perpetrators were perceived as having a place in one or more groups within the school social scene, they were generally viewed as being on the margins of these groups. They saw themselves as being either “loners” or not quite belonging or fitting in anywhere within the social fabric. Shooters showed an intense concern about their social standing in their school and among their peers. Most had experienced recent changes in peer relations with attempts to affiliate with other “loners,” kids with behaviour problems or fringe identities. In many cases, increased social withdrawal was noticed, with fearful, angry, or depressed mood becoming more evident. There was a common factor among the shooters of school grades falling in months prior to the attack and a resultant change in school status. In nearly all of the cases studied, the shooters had been victims of bullying by others. Another common element found was the presence of exclusivity in either mainstream or marginal student groups or cliques.

Adolescent mass murderers and school avengers were found to have the following characteristics. All were male, 80% were white, 70% were described as loners, 43% had been bullied by others, 37% came from divorced or separated families, 44% were described as “fantasizers”, 42% had a history of violence of some sort, 46% had an arrest history, 62% had a substance abuse history, 48% were preoccupied with war or weapons, and 23% had a documented psychiatric history (Meloy, Hempel, Mohandie, Shiva & Gray 2001, p. 723). Classroom avengers were often found to be the victims of bullying and to be preoccupied with fantasies of murder. Classroom avengers were described as being likely to think about mass murder and to come up with a conscious plan. Studies also showed that school shootings are calculating and premeditated, motivated by vengeance (McGee & DeBernardo, 1999). Twelve shooting incidents in North American middle and high schools were examined between 1993 and 1998. The shooters were described as fantasizing about revenge and triumph over their adversaries, with vivid mental rehearsals of their chosen methods of violence. Guns, violent media, and bomb making had become special fascinations for them. The characteristics of these school avengers suggested a clinical diagnosis of atypical depression and mixed personality disorder with paranoid, antisocial, and narcissistic features. The typical profile of the school avenger based on the study of these 12 shooting incidents is described as follows:

“A white male from a working or middle-class background living in a rural area or small city. Dysfunctional family background and relationships are likely. Parental discipline is often harsh or inconsistent. Problems with bonding and social attachments are common. Most likely depression manifests through sullen, angry, and irritable moods or actions. Blame for personal failure is easily projected on others. There is low tolerance for adversity with unstable self-esteem ranging from self-reproach to grandiosity” (McGee and DeBernardo 1999, p. 17).

Shooters often had a desperate need to let others know what they were planning and expressed it in journal entries, letters to others, threats, or boasts to peers.

Bullying

It was not until fairly recently (early 1970s) that bully/victim problems began to be studied systematically, initially in Scandinavia. Attempts to understand this phenomenon have been made in other countries since the late eighties, including the United States, Australia, and The Netherlands. Bullying or victimization is described as a student being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other students (Olweus 1993, p. 9).

Males tend to bully and be bullied more frequently than females. For males, physical and verbal bullying is most common; for females, verbal bullying (both taunting and insults of a sexual nature), and spreading rumours are more common. Bullying generally begins in the elementary grades, peaks in the sixth through the eighth grades and persists into high school. Bullying among primary age children has become recognized as an antecedent to more violent behaviour in later years. In addition, a negative school climate where negative behaviour gets most of the attention encourages the formation of cliques and bullying (Garrett 2003, p. 11). One of four children who bully will have a criminal record by the age of thirty. Factors considered as contributing to bullying and aggression are individual characteristics of the child, family atmosphere, peer influences, and school climate.

Through the use of extensive interviews with high school students and school personnel to highlight the degree to which bullying, harassment, stalking, intimidation, humiliation, and fear contribute to toxicity in the school environment, the following comes to light (Garbarino & deLara, 2002). Students’ reports indicate the high numbers of youth who are traumatized on a daily basis in a variety of ways in classrooms, bathrooms, locker rooms, corridors, playgrounds, and buses, in situations that constellate intense fears of being unsafe for those students being preyed upon, as well as for those observing these acts of emotional violence. The effects of this kind of emotional violence are found to be just as traumatic as physical and sexual violence. The emotional wellbeing of these children suffers, often resulting in intense shame, depression, hopelessness, anger with a sense of helplessness, and sometimes the perpetration of bullying in return. In the worst cases, ‘suicidality’ or thoughts of attempting to harm or kill others emerge. The perpetrators of the Columbine High School shooting, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were known to have been harassed, bullied, and put down on a daily basis for years (Garrett, 2003).

Another interesting fact evidenced in the interviews is how little trust these adolescents have in the ability or willingness of adults to do anything about the bullying situations. Teachers generally want to stay aloof from behaviours of this kind, believing it is not their domain to have to deal with student conflicts. Roughly 40% of bullied students in the primary grades and almost 60% in secondary/junior high reported that teachers try to put a stop to it only once in a while or almost never (Olweus, 1993). Only limited contact is made by teachers with the students involved in order to talk about the problems, particularly in junior high school. Sufficient adult involvement is shown to reduce the amount of bullying incidents. However, parents of bullied students, and of those who bully, are often unaware of the problem or the extent of the problem. There is therefore little awareness of the necessity of talking with their children about difficulties. Parents who do have some knowledge of the bullying situation generally feel unable to intercede on behalf of students with the school authorities, or on the other hand, are either not interested in their children’s problems, or suggest that their kids in turn beat up those inflicting the teasing or bullying. Those parents who do in fact take steps to address the difficulties are far in the minority. Some adolescents are afraid that if their parents do address this with school personnel, identifying the culprits, with no steps then being taken to rectify the situation, the ensuing consequences would be far worse for them.

Although many adults working in schools consider bullying to be a normal part of growing up, a rite of passage or part of a developmental stage, more and more states in the U.S. are beginning to require schools to adopt anti-bullying policies although, to date, not much has been done in terms of prevention (Limber & Small, 2003). Although many of the policies suggest complete weapon control, metal detectors, zero tolerance for bullying with severe consequences (Columbine High School, for instance, now has a zero tolerance for violence policy), (Columbine High School Massacre, 2006), school systems still do not provide a means for addressing the underlying problems of the individual and of the school culture. In the many interventions that are suggested for addressing bullying, little focus has been placed on how to address the actual bully or instigator. Mostly instigators are approached in a punitive, marginalizing, and shaming way, thus perpetuating and exacerbating the problem.

Education and the school system

Since the 1950s, American education in high schools has been dramatically influenced by the vision of educational administrator James Conant (Conant, 1959). In accord with Conant’s attempts to universalize the high school system as an American institution, providing a milieu in which youth from a diverse range of social classes and groups could be brought together to receive a comprehensive education, by the 1960s high school had become more popular, reaching a wider range of North American youth. One of the effects of this was that adolescents became segregated from the rest of society for a significant amount of time each week, contributing to the development of a strong youth culture (Rury, 2005). As youth began to feel more identified with each other as a separate cultural component, the distance between other segments of the population increased. Youth culture has not only divorced youth from the larger community and acted as a point of departure from shared values, it has resulted in a set of youth subcultures, each a peer-based school society with its own distinct culture, set of values, and style. This dynamic has been described as a “peculiar contest of competing or co-existing groups, each pursuing its own goals” (p. 57), often with boundaries relatively closed to members of others groups who are often derogatized, stereotyped, or scapegoated. It is these dynamics that often contribute to experiences of bullying, teasing, and marginalization experienced by individual students seen as “loners” or on the fringes of cliques or culturally distinct subcultures. As the growth in size of schools increased dramatically, a greater number of students were found to be excluded from school activities, contributing to more widespread alienation from the institution. It appears that greater school size also inhibited student learning due to greater difficulty in meaningful communication and making personal contact (Haller, 1992). The increased size of schools made it difficult for students to identify with school as a community-oriented institution with a resultant level of disengagement and resistance. Schools had become referenced with negative points of view and oppositional attitudes (Eckert, 1989). Currently, this situation has become even more exacerbated as funding for education is cut and smaller schools are being closed down. The remaining schools are increasing in student population on a daily basis.

How are children viewed?

Not only do negative attitudes exist on the part of students towards the school system and its internal structures, but the reverse is also true. The question of how adults, teachers, parents, principals, and the society and culture as a whole view “kids” is also of concern. Lloyd deMause documents how the hatred of children was endemic in many early societies in which children were “killed, abandoned, battered, terrorized, sexually abused, and used for the emotional needs of adults” (p. 240). The child has been hated in a variety of ways. For example, the hatred of parents toward the individuating child when they become envious of the child flourishing while they feel unhappy, or when they view their children as burdens and impediments to freedom.

Even though current child-rearing practices reflect a vast improvement on those of previous centuries in nearly all cultures of the world, we still have a long way to go, as the hatred of children is still very evident in many of society’s institutions as well as in our relationships with children. A reflection of this is found also on a global level. Children are often seen as burdensome nuisances, consciously malicious and difficult, or rebellious and destructive. The attitudes in schools reflect these beliefs too. Rules and regulations are structured to keep youth in check, reflecting the belief that if given more freedom their “evil” natures and inherent destructiveness would create havoc. In the drive to increasingly contain youth, the pressure upon them to be appropriate and conform also increases, contributing toward more aggressive behaviours in their reaction to adult’s expectations. As deMause explains:

“children throughout history have arguably been more vital, more gentle, more joyous, more curious, more courageous and more innovative than adults. Yet adults throughout history have routinely called children beasts, sinful, greedy, arrogant, lumps of flesh, vile, polluted, enemies, and fiends” (p. 242).

The vestiges of this kind of thinking are evident today in the mistrustful ways in which youth and their behaviours are often approached. It would seem that these kinds of attitudes permeate the world of children and adolescents, contributing to experiences of low selfesteem, depression, hatred, rebellion, retaliation, and violence.

The lack of interest in children in our society has led to their knowing that they are not honoured. As society continues to locate its disorders in the child, children begin to feel like rats in a maze. As they are taught coping behaviours or are medicated, they are forced to adjust to the madness of the maze, thus destroying the things that call to them and give them wings. Their fantasies become trapped in society’s expectations of them and in society’s emphasis on material possessions as they strive for achievement and perfection. As long as society continues to ignore the things that inspire children, the more it extinguishes their light. With the amount of violence in the world why then is it a surprise that schools reflect that violence, too? (James Hillman, personal communication, March 2005).

Attitudes and goals of education

In the modern school situation, the aim of education has become the development of rational mind, namely the acquisition of scientific knowledge and objective reasoning. Through education students are expected to gain a wide range of theoretical knowledge, highly developed powers of reasoning, and the qualities of objectivity and emotional distance (Martin 2005, p. 198). This split between reason and emotion epitomizes the separation of mind from body, head from hand, thought from action, and self from other that psychologist and educational reformer John Dewey (Dewey, 1916) spent many years trying to draw attention to in his attempt to unify education. Not only have these dichotomies emerged as the educational system has advanced, but, according to Michael Lerner (Lerner, 2000) contemporary schooling teaches students that their own success depends on their ability to do better than others, thus further eliminating a sense of connection to others and exacerbating the alienation already experienced in other ways. One of these other ways most decried by Lerner is the use of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), which negates the ability of the individual to be creative, caring, and connected to deep truths in literature, art, and philosophy. Instead the SAT measures the capacity to think in a mechanistic way under highly competitive circumstances, divorced from human understanding and meaningful thought. This serves as a blueprint for the strong emphasis on academic skills and achievements in education today. In the late 1990s, President Clinton endorsed public school choice and chartering as long as every school could be measured by one high standard, namely whether children learn what they need to know to compete and win in the global economy (Purpel 2000, p. 183).

As a connection continues to be made between academic achievement and economic success, school curricula increase in size and requirements for graduation rise, further alienating students from developing a true love of learning and inquiry. Instead, the joy in learning is substituted with pressure to reach higher and higher standards in order to be recognized. Schools are now generally judged on the basis of the students’ academic achievement largely determined by standardized scores. Parent training and community support are virtually absent in schools, which are themselves struggling to cope with the pressures of the education and economic systems, and can barely educate their own teachers on what students need for support. This hardly provides an atmosphere conducive to the cultivation of community spirit or inclusiveness. In fact, students intervie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PREFACE
• ABSTRACT School violence
• CHAPTER ONE Setting the stage
• CHAPTER TWO Depth psychology and school violence
• CHAPTER THREE New ideas on school alienation and violence
• CHAPTER FOUR Interventive methods
• CHAPTER FIVE Preventive measures
• CHAPTER SIX Group dialogue and the quantum field
• CHAPTER SEVEN Conclusion and final reflections
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX