Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
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Title School Violence
Article text Introduction If schooling is benign as a force in the social and emotional lives of young people and adults then why does it so often involve violence? This question is examined to see if it is a valid one. Some infamous incidents of homicide in schools are considered to aim to understand what kind of violence they represent. Also discussed are what could perhaps be called ‘softer’ violences such as bullying, repression of voice and self-expression and authoritarianism. School features of architecture and facilities such as metal detectors at school entrances, atriums facilitating constant all-round viewing for behavioural compliance and use of police patrols in schools
Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
are mentioned with a view to understanding how settings ostensibly just for education can involve and promote elements of environments otherwise linked to control of violence. A perspective on education in schools as involving violence in myriad ways is analysed.
Homicide in schools Homicide in schools is usually understood as a deliberate act of mass shootings by a disgruntled student or teacher perpetrated against fellow pupils of school age and teachers. Most killers are male. By choosing a given day, they bring into the school weapons, entering for the sole purpose of shooting. Some higher education institution mass shootings have also occurred such as the Virginia Tech shooting of 2007 where 32 people were killed and many injured[1]. School killings can be perpetrated by present or past students and teachers. They can also involve a non-associated local community member entering school premises with an agenda to maim. Usually the victims are mostly children and teachers with sometimes security guards or others caught in crossfire. Occasionally students plan specific attacks with weaponry like knives against targeted teachers during a lesson. In plain sight of fellow pupils who remain unharmed, an attacker suddenly gets out of their seat to carry out the attack, ending in a shock homicide[2]. It is not the case that the perpetrators of the crime are likely to be judged mentally ill, with many standing trial as of sane mind. In conflict affected areas such as Gaza or Israel, children can be killed by armed forces or weaponry in schools but this is often understood as a tragic aspect of conflict rather than school based or schooling linked homicides. Schools in conflict areas can be seen as safe havens during active conflict thus resulting in large numbers of dead sheltering children should rocket or other fire fail to avoid such premises[3]. Infamous American incidents of school homicide include Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 with 28 deaths and two injured[4], and the Columbine High School mass shootings in 1999, where 15 people died and 21 were injured[5]. This latter shooting by two male students said to have been bullied geeks, yet who were in fact callous people haters with an agenda to kill not just a few
Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
students by gun fire but the whole school of 2,000 individuals using also bombs[6], was depicted in the 2002 Oscar winning film ‘Bowling for Columbine’, directed by Michael Moore. The film criticised US gun culture and the ease in the US of obtaining firearms, suggesting a change in the law might enable a lessening in such violence. Another large scale school based incident involving deaths by shooting is the Dunblane school mass shootings in Scotland, UK, in 1996 when 17 people died, including 16 children most under the age of six[7]. In Germany the Erfurt mass shootings of 2002 involved an expelled student killing 17 people, with 7 injured[8]. In the US, where many school homicide incidents have occurred a steady year on year tally of deaths can be seen, although not a year on year increase. China in particular of late has also been subject to multiple incidents across the country involving death and significant injury by school outsiders entering premises. These incidents are largely from knife attacks rather than guns, likely due to the difficulty in China of obtaining firearms. These attacks are said to a result of national policies of oppression and frustrated individuals choosing the vulnerable to communicate a sense of political despair[9].
Discussion School based homicides must be, we generally assume, linked to perpetrators suffering with forms of severe mental illness. Suicide on the school grounds after maiming and killing is a common response of the killer. The killing of others and self would suggest a significant problem of the individual or individuals responsible. Yet this cursory diagnosis is not the whole or necessary explanation. Anger over interpersonal incidents, intractable grievances about school procedures, mood changes due to physical conditions, unsolved frustrations both personal and/or social, and substantial cause-unknown ‘hating’ seem at the heart of much of the focus in the expression of these murderous acts. Reports by the killers of their plans and the reasons for their acts do not present a clear pattern as such, other than that those responsible had a grudge against others. These others may not be those in the targeted school itself. It could be feasibly suggested that children as a vulnerable population against attacks are
Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
seen as easy and high impact targets for those wishing to publically communicate grievances of a deep and even existential kind. Despite the continuing social prevalence of occasional disgruntled individuals taking up arms in public settings to air imperturbable upset, nevertheless to target schools and school children cannot be said to be a common or increasing trend linked to rises in crime or otherwise an increasing phenomenon disproportionate to rates of similar crimes on other types of premises. The reason we cannot assess this is due to the complexity of social criminality of actors of any age leading to a lack of meaningful data for such claims to be robust as well as an inability to understand sufficiently well for such assertions what was in the minds of the perpetrators of school violence at the time of the act. Did they target the school because it was a school or because they knew it well to physically navigate it or because they happened to be attached to it by familiarity or because schools have a collection of defenceless targets and poor security systems? All we can say securely is that school based homicides happen and are shocking enough to be high in our national and international conscience especially because they involve cold blooded public killing of children. Such incidents are thankfully relatively rare, albeit seemingly inevitable in their occurrence from time to time. They could be also called freak, given their incubations, delivery and outcomes as subject to multiple diverse factors and influences coming together. Serious homicide incidents in schools are decreasing now in recent times[10]. Part of this is perhaps due to a sense of need for improved security measures such as locked school doors needing pass cards or codes; doors accessible only to those visibly sanctioned by the school to legitimately enter such as students, teachers and parents. Despite measures in place for a lessening of violence and incidents decreasing in relative terms, the issue of school violence flourishes with new research coming out with regularity. The reasons for this is not more homicide but the wide ranging nature of school based violence[11]. Even now in the last ten years dedicated academic journals discussing the issues such as the Journal of School Violence or the International Journal of Violence and Schools, part of the International Observatory of Violence in Schools.
Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
School Violences Less tragic perhaps, but none the less disturbing and difficult to experience as well as manage are violences executed in schooling, not connected to deaths or perhaps even any bodily harm. These forms of violence, manifesting as low-level disruption, largely verbal rather than overtly physical aggressions, sexual aggression and cyber-bullying are not abating or over reported[11]. They are in fact on the increase and likely to be more extensive than reporting thereof would lead us to believe[12]. They touch all kinds of children, not just those from commonly marginalised or minority communities oft subject to attacks and prejudice such as the poor, indigenous, non-domiciled, homosexuals, black and ethnic groups, the disabled and so on. Bullying – here understood according to a definition by Olweus, a leading scholar in the field as: “a student is 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” [13] – is widespread in schools[12]. Forms of bullying vary. A common misperception is bullies and the bullied are a problem concerning individuals, but not the settings within which bullying occurs[14, 15]. Bullying flourishes through the development of asymmetric power relations[13] and create gaps where mutual concern for the other disappears in the face of multiple contributing factors involving psychological and physical dominance or passivity and weakness. Some commentators suggest the setting of the school allows bullying to occur due to a range of possible contributing factors: educational managerial incompetence to ensure safety at school, turning a blind eye, or an inability to foster and develop practiced alternative ideas about relations, for instance towards democratic forms of interactions [16, 17]. Walton highlights the idea of not just episodes of bullying as experience but also micro moments, where a look or a quick snide remark wound[18]. Various scholars have considered developmental perspectives on school based bullying, looking into factors to do with age and gender [18]. Consensus on what causes, perpetuates and feeds bullying as a form of school violence is lacking. This is mainly due to a lack of agreement on best educational environments and practices. In the face of multiple
Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
theories and possibilities for pedagogy as well as social educational organisation, the issue of bullying remains unsolved due to the complexity of surrounding features resulting in a constant ‘reinventing of the wheel’ and continuing violence. Thus, although bullying has been long recognised as a school problem it continues to grow and even morph as an issue – for instance in line with technological advances new forms of violence such as cyber bullying emerge. Our collective ability to ameliorate the problem is weak. We do not know what to do in the mainstream of educational provision. Some scholars have suggested a caring ethos to counteract school violence[19]. Certain conditions in schools such as the use of silence based meditative and mindfulness practices
[20]
or a deliberative
rights respecting ethos[21] show promising potential to eradicate child on child or child on teacher aggressions. Schools using democratic methods and pedagogical autonomy as in Sudbury Valley School, Massachusetts, report bullying as not being an active issue [22]. In other words, where authoritarian manners are avoided and democratically inspired interactions and forms of equality within school communities are promoted, school violence abates. Ease of manner allowed in these settings between children, based on freedoms of self and expression, are powerful contributors to a more relaxed and less violent atmosphere[23]. Unfortunately educational principles involving such practices and atmospheres are rare projects of, usually, the privately funded schooling sector. Either this or they involve a removal from school systems altogether. Reports from home educated children suggest being out of schooling is an effective way to avoid school violence and to flourish unimpeded by fear of violent incidents[24,
25, 26 ]
. This raises important and uncomfortable questions about the
political and social dynamic of state educational provision and the citizenry it is intended to serve, which link to what it means to live in a democracy and contrite thereto via educational pathways [27, 28]. A recent study suggested violence against self from bullying can have long term effects into adulthood, causing continued ill health and anxiety, affecting life chances[29]. Although less impressively terrible than homicides, bullying is a significant and long lasting violence against children unlucky enough to attend a school where this does and can occur. In some countries stories
Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
of bullies versus bullied can raise hairs at the vicious nature of certain incidents [30]. Japanese violence of this kind seems especially cruel in the telling[31] but it is by no means an outlier example of what occurs which presents as a truly international issue[30]. Softer, but nevertheless pernicious, forms of violence occur in schools when the self expression and voice of the student is curtailed due to cultures of student teacher interaction disallowing a free exchange of views on terms of equality[32]. When asked, students report exclusions from active decision making about their experiences as unpleasant in the same kind of way that having one’s purse stolen might be felt: uncomfortable, disheartening, a violence instead of care[33].
Drop Out As a result often of school violences of the ‘softer’ kind various forms of drop out from school attendance occur. Students can hope to escape by psychologically retreating through school refusal[34, 35]
or they can leave schooling for home education if parents support this and national laws allow [36].
In dropping out of the school system new forms of social symbolic violence emerge via prejudices against a non educational choice or alternative educational routes: the violence of school follows those who escape for less violent options[27].
Discussion To conceive of school violence as only criminal acts of homicide, bodily harms, theft and abuse is to misunderstand the impacts, experiences and sadnesses of those attending school premises who expected and trusted in the delivery of education rather than any violence, be it criminal or ‘soft’. Much discussion occurs in educational research around the need for safety, peace, interpersonal care and collaboration[37, 38]. Actual homicide and maiming have, relative to the size of the school based population, very little statistical significance when it comes to violence in schools. It thus behoves social policy around school attendance to pay attention to the kinds of environments they send children into when the ideal of school attendance is being resoundingly promoted. A default should be
Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
that schools would, as with medical practice, do no harm. The current scenario is far from such an aim or claim. However establishing a locus for blame is impossible due to the location of education in schools in relation to society as intangibly identified[39, 40].
School Features and Violence It has been suggested that school architecture features – for instance, open spaces[41] - and facilities e.g., a peace garden[20] – can contribute to disarming or resolving school violence issues. Likewise architecture and facilities can exacerbate violence. Having police on site, metal detectors to scan for weaponry, isolation rooms and other prison-like elements are contested solutions[42, 43].
Conclusion School violence is often not solely considered a crime against the victims but indeed the perpetrators themselves can be seen as needing help. A holistic perspective on violence reduction, involving all individuals concerned but also school environments, is advocated by diverse public voices, from pop stars[44] to politicians[45] to a wide variety of academic work[46,
47, 48]
. Research into this issue
proliferates due to the scale of diverse forms of school violence at macro and micro levels. Policy also is seen as an urgent agenda[11]. It may be that dealing with internally created school violence systematically can only come from strategies involving open and encouraged student voice, not negative silences or ignoring the matter. Teachers and the heavy burden they bear in terms of their role as ‘watcher’ for signs of trouble as well as often informal policing of dangers such as responding to rumours of student held weaponry must be considered. More broadly, the potential victimhood of teachers on the basis of their position or duty to protect the innocents in their care in a public setting is also for notice, especially if the school as object becomes, through wide media attention on isolated violent incidents, a new fashion for getting noticed if a violent actor wants profile. The question of an emerging vulnerability on the part of teachers to possible reprisals for unfavourable assessment in an increasingly high stakes
Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
educational environment with long term life effects from educational judgements is an area for research. Attention to the place and part of students and teachers in schooling as public and private experience would mean a reconfiguration of our thinking about school structures and organisation. We would need to rethink present systems from a current hegemonic vision of schooling as legitimately authoritarian and hierarchical, to one where equality between all and democratic forums proliferate. In schools where such environments are facilitated, school violence is usually entirely absent even if healthy dissent is common. Instead, people talk and discuss[49,50]. These examples of pedagogy of the democratic at the level of theory and practice have much to teach us about school violence and what its opposite profile looks like. They are a vision and reality of education in schools we are yet to fully notice.
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[email protected]
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Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
[email protected]
2015
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Author: Dr Helen E. Lees - School of Education, Newman University, Birmingham, U.K.
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2015
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