Some types of violence are: Verbal insults, threats, pushing, shoving, grabbing, slapping, kicking, biting, hitting with a fist, and theft.
School violence, bullying, whose problem is this?
The answer is all of ours. All the community, administrators, teachers, parents, and students must come together and make schools safe. Otherwise, prevention and punishment will not be effective. This should matter to all students because it can affect them, as well as our future children.
I'As of the few last years, violence has become a serious phenomenon that spread in all the parts of our society, especially in schools. Students, even kids have been violent. Some students have tried to hurt their mates, friends and teachers succeeding in this task, others just start a fight with their classmates.
Let’s take our school for example, there’s almost an act of violence that takes place in our courtyard every single week. And that’s really shocking, to see that type of actions in such place. As I witnessed several times, a huge number of our classmates get in fights for the simplest reasons, and either it turns out as an exchange of some hurtful words or in some sever brawls. A lot of young people nowadays behave violently, ready to have conflicts with other people, so they call them names, yell at them, hit and hurt them and even threaten them in some cases It’s scary to admit that school violence exists and it’s not new , several fellow students that I talked to told me that it’s frightening to come to school some days as they’ll get some type of assault that affects them either emotionally or physically . Even the school staff can get affected by this problem as we’re all aware of the incidents that happened this year in our school But the question that pops to mind is: why do they behave like this?
“The mind is a powerful weapon, if someone does something bad, someone else is going to follow that action” said psychologist Rolando Desa. Violent things, like a student hurting a mate or a teacher, give another student the idea to do something like that too.
Reasons to be violent
What can be the reasons for the kids and teenagers to become violent?
Some researchers of the University of Maryland said that some of these reasons could be: the way parents raise the kid, television, music, video games, school discipline, school security and lack of parent’s interest toward the child.
Here are some other causes of violence,
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House environment, as some teenagers resort to violence because they feel angry with their authoritarian parents or because of their family problems such as divorce, a missing parent... It’s their way of expressing themselves and their feelings.
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Poverty, which brings anger and discontent.
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The breakdown of families, which lead children to seek the stability and caring environments of gangs
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Domestic violence and child abuse, which brings behavior problem, and frustration.
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Society-wide violence rates and juvenile violence rates, which spill over into the school.
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The drug culture and its violent distribution network, which encourage students to arm themselves.
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Population mobility, which creates an atmosphere of anonymity.
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Discrimination, which exacerbates the frustration and anger of minority students.
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Violent cultural imagery, from TV shows to sympathetic news coverage of militaristic foreign policy, which numbs children to the effects of violence
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Materialism and advertising, which creates a culture where children are manipulated and feel exploited.
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Competitiveness and high parent expectations, which make children, lose the identity and uniqueness of childhood before their time.
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But the idea is to prevent school violence, and to deal with the violence that has been done. But what can be done? To combat violence it should start with the parents. The way a parent raise a child is essential for the child’s behavior and personality. Also, if the parents show a lack of attention or doesn’t show the sufficient interest in the kid’s life, then the child is going to grow as an angry teenager with low self esteem.
According to a research conducted by Melissa Kelly, parents and teachers should be concerned and intervene if kids show these signs:
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Sudden lack of interest in the things they like.
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Obsession to violent games.
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Depression and Moody swings.
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Writing that shows anger, isolation or rage toward someone.
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Anger toward people.
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Talking about death or bringing weapons to school.
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Violence towards animals.
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Other risk factors for youth violence are a history of aggressive behavior, a history of mental illness, substance use, a history of childhood abuse and bullying.
Teachers can prevent violence this way:
- If a kid is bullied talk to their parents so the situation doesn’t happen again
- The teacher should talk to the parents if he/she sees a bad behavior in the child
- Parents and teachers should educate students about the effect of violence
- Suspending kids that are violent and expulsing them from the school
- Bring support groups to the school.
Most of our schools don’t have the necessary security.
We needs to do something to stop school violence. Here are two different types of preventative programs, which can be applied in our schools:
- We must focus on alternative schooling and integrating law enforcement with education.
-We must change the course curriculum by adding in violence awareness education and life skills.
Anti-Violence Pact
“End the Silence, stop the violence”
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Violence can effect on our school negatively, so some actions and solutions need to be created to help stop this issue from spreading, teachers cannot prevent violence in schools alone. The entire school community must come together to agree on a strong and clear message that violence, bullying and intolerance are unacceptable in the school environment. We can even make students teachers’ partners in preventing violence and become an active and effective force to stop bullying.
Because of the belief that prevention through awareness is more effective and interesting, Perform English Club organized an anti-violence manifestation ‘End the Silence, stop the violence’ from January 12th to 16th, 2015. A rich program was followed and attended by students, teachers, administrators and parents.
It was just a mere idea of the Club’s members, which turned, later into a process of achievement and admiration.
10 Ambassadors and ambassadress of the Club were sent to 10 prep and secondary schools in Bizerte, holding a message that ‘violence is no good’ and a positive change must be done to replace that evil into values of tolerance and peace.
Their job was to ask students to sign an anti-violence pact, through which they would show their denial to all types of violence and announce their moral obligation to avoid any form of bullying during the current school year. Besides, they would be determined to urge their friends to behave with tolerance and civility.
It was clear that students didn’t like to sign an official document and were not ready to be engaged in a legislative action, but when our representatives explained the noble reasons of their mission and made it sure that their commitment would be moral rather than lawful, they turned eagerly to sign the pact. With a lot of enthusiasm some teachers, also insisted on participating in this campaign and signed the pact, too.
Thursday 15th, January 2015
Friday 16th, January 2015
Besides the Anti-Violence Pact campaign, which was still going on in our school, an amazing ceremony started at ten O’clock in the courtyard. A 10 meters strip of black cloth was extended on the ground ready to be covered with white paintings. The message was to embody the positive change that had to be accomplished through spreading joy, friendship and tolerance instead of hostility and violence. It was an opportunity for students, teachers and all the school staff to spend happy moments together.
On this occasion, a show hosted by the club took place at Habib Thameur School of Bizerte, on Friday 16th, 2015 in partnership with Tunisian Association of Educators, Bizerte الجمعية التونسية للمربين - بنزرت , Youth and Skills Association, Bizerte جمعية شباب و مهارات فرع بنزرت and Nadia Bahri’s School Drawing Club.
The meeting was opened with welcoming speeches given by Teacher and Founder of Perform English Club Imed Bahri and Headmaster Iadh Toulgui.
“Violence Is No Good” was the title of an amazing play performed by the brilliant actors of the club. It was about aspects and causes of violence. Then, Teacher, psychologist and Human Rights Activist Mourad Hajji gave a valuable lecture, in which he dealt with Violence Sociology.
Just after a first song “TheyDon’t Care about Us” presented by the smart Choir of the club the present parents, students and teachers entered into an open discussion about the possible suggested remedies to reduce the aspects of violence. Later, a second song “Imagine” was performed, followed by reciting the Club’s Pledge:
Marlyn Hacheni and Hajer Najlaoui
