School Violence - Painful Lessons

It might seem that I have a negative attitude about schools and schooling. I can understand how it might seem that way since much of what I write about seems to lean in a specific direction. I'd like to offer another perspective or another possible way of seeing the things I write about.

In much of what I write about I am advocating for examining our thinking about why schools exist and trying to understand a little more about what we do in schools and schooling. I am not doing this from an academic perspective. I am a concerned citizen that would like the best for each and every young person in the world - no matter what their background, nationality, religious upbringing, or socio-economic status.

I am inspired by the fact that schools and schooling touch each and every young person at some point in their lives. As such schools and schooling would seem to have a huge potential for making positive changes in the world.

That said, the art an article a colleague of mine sent me earlier today reminded me that there are many places throughout this country where young people are not getting anything close to what could be an amazingly wonderful opportunity to learn and grow and be successful in their lives.

This article reminded me of often heard rhetoric about zero tolerance for violence and gang related activities in schools. This rhetoric often results in perpetuating and increasing violence - it doesn't reduce violence. Our actions - the actions and behaviors demonstrated by adults - in school settings (which include policies and practices) betray our real underlying philosophies. The results speak for themselves.

Personally I have zero tolerance for anything that is harmful, disrespectful, or violence perpetrated on or at young people.

For several years now I have been scanning the school oriented press and have found several subjects continually discussed which I feel deserve further exploration and/or understanding. I am often surprised by what passes as news or passes as thoughtful considerations about what to do to improve the schooling process. The amount of violence that young people are exposed to and subjected to does not decrease. Bullying is rampant - both in face to face situations and in online communities.

Most of the strategies being employed to address bullying and violence focus on reducing freedoms, reducing choices, limiting options, and controlling behavior. These strategies are not productive and actually harm young people.

The article referred to above has some pretty strong language in it about this situation. Here's a quote from the article:

Students being miseducated, mistreated, criminalized and arrested through a form of penal pedagogy in locked down schools that resemble prisons is a vicious and incredibly visible index of the degree to which mainstream politicians and the American public have turned their backs on young people in general and poor minority youth in particular. As schools are reconfigured to resemble prisons, crime becomes the central metaphor used to define the school environment while criminalizing the behavior of young people becomes the most valued strategy in mediating the relationship between educators and students. The consequences of these policies for young people suggest not only an egregious abdication of responsibility - as well as reason, judgment and restraint - on the part of administrators, teachers and parents, but also a new role for schools as they become more prison-like and more segregated as a consequence, eagerly adapting to their role as an adjunct of the punishing state. One wonders how many more kids have to be brutalized in their schools and killed outside of schools before the American public wakes up and takes seriously not only their responsibility to young people, but also their commitment to a mode of politics and a future that is on the side of young people rather than a vision shaped largely by the values of the corporate state and the disciplinary apparatuses of the punishing criminal justice system.

Here's the link to the whole article.

I know this isn't the experience at every school - but if it's happening at one school that is one school too many.