Programs to Treat and Prevent School Violence

1. PROGRAMS TO TREAT AND
PREVENT SCHOOL VIOLENCE
By
Dr. Paul A. Rodríguez

2. School-Based Violence Programs
Four ways to decrease school violence from an institutional point of view:
1. Parent and community involvement
2. Character education
3. Violence prevention and conflict resolution curricula
4. Bullying prevention
Parent and Community Involvement
 Parent involvement encourages a more constructive learning environment by creating
goals for parents in the home and teachers in the school that work to enhance both
environments and are consistent in their objectives.
 Increased involvement by parents has been shown to provide better teacher
satisfaction, improved parent understanding of school policies, better parent-child
communication, and more successful and effective school programs.
Character Education
 Character education is the notion that schools have to take a direct role in teaching
values to children.
In elementary school, character education should achieve three objectives:
1. Promote development away from egocentrism and excessive individualism and
toward cooperative relationships and mutual respect.
2. Foster the growth of moral agency—the capacity to think, feel and act morally.
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3. 3. Develop in the classroom and in the school a moral community based on fairness, caring
and participation—such a community being a moral end in itself as well as a support
system for the character development of each individual student.
There are four processes in the classroom to achieve these goals:
1. Building self-esteem and a sense of community
2. Learning to work together and to help others
3. Thinking about the outcomes of one’s behavior and it s impact on others
4. Learning to make decisions that reflect group input and are participatory
Violence Prevention and Conflict Resolution Curricula
These approaches teach children to use alternatives to violence when resolving
interpersonal conflicts.
1. Programs that teach children conflict resolution strategies
2. Actual conflict resolution teams headed up by students who patrol the school grounds
and can provide conflict resolution as a way of reducing tension before the conflict is
reported to the school authorities.
3. Films, role-plays and simulations may be used.
4. Parents might also become involved and conflict resolution might be extended to
problems in the home.
5. Topics may include, anger management, learning to identify and express feelings
about others, discussing issues related to racial, ethnic and gender differences and
learning to cope with stress. 3

4. Bullying Prevention Programs
 Bullying prevention programs are schoolwide zero-tolerance policies.
 The programs include improved adult supervision
 Classroom rules against bullying
 Positive and negative consequences for following and violating rules, respectively,
interventions with the bullies and the victims
 Meetings with parents of bullies and victims
 Regular classroom meetings to discuss ways of dealing with bullying
 Effective programs have significantly reduced the rate of bullying and have led to much
better school climates
Additional Approaches to Decreasing School Violence
 A no-tolerance policy for any sort of a dangerous weapon
 Frequent searches for weapons in lockers and weapons detection at the school
entryway
 Suitable activities after school
 Programs to give children and adolescents an opportunity to stay after school under
supervision to improve their scholastic performance
 Work in the community through help from the school
 Antigang programs and to maintain dress codes that forbid the use of gang
paraphernalia.
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5.  Self-esteem programs for children who suffer from low self-esteem
 Initiate programs to provide services to children from violent homes and their families
Assertiveness training for children
 Aggression is an action that enhances the aggressor while it minimizes and violated the
rights of others
 Intent of aggressive behavior is to humiliate and dominate
 Passive behaviors are self-denying and inhibiting, as a person’s own rights are
disregarded and he or she gives in to demands of others
 Assertiveness is a “win-win” behavior in which an individual can stand up for their own
rights in such a way that the rights of others are not disregarded
The Relationship between Family Deterioration and School Violence
 17% of all homicides in the U. S. occur within a family situation
 When parents use harsh physical means to discipline their children, children learn that
battering and physical aggression are normal ways of expressing frustration and
resolving problems
 Children who demonstrate physically aggressive and antisocial behaviors and have
developmental and academic problems before age 9 display more aggressive
tendencies as adults than do individuals who do not demonstrate early behavioral and
educational problems
 It is believed that abuse and neglect by parents model the way a child is likely to
interact with others 5

6.  Schools are one of the earliest social situations in which children may feel vulnerable,
inadequate, angry, less intelligent, ignored and a host of other emotions that may
result in early aggression
 Educators must be proactive and demand that some of the funds spent on school
safety efforts be allocated to support educators’ time to reflect on the emotional
wellbeing of each student
 Too often, children who begin to act out in the classroom are placed in special
education classes and are classified as “Severely Emotionally Disturbed, following a
serious offense, as the path of least resistance.”
 Children who act out do not fare well in special education classes and can disrupt a
truly disabled population of students
 Education must also include the emotional attributes of moral maturity, such as
conscience, self-respect, empathy and self-control.
School Violence in Rural Communities
 It is often thought that rural means nonviolent and that violence only takes place in the
urban schools and communities with large inner cities, but the reality is that many
school killings have taken place in small, reasonably affluent communities with well-regarded
schools
 It is often thought that poverty is an urban plight, but rural schools often suffer from
extreme underfunding by poor rural counties that hope to provide more but lack the
tax base to do so
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7. In rural communities, people often know one another over a lifetime
 Rural communities have problems with school violence and often have a more difficult
time dealing with those problems than do urban schools
 Rural communities are often ill equipped for the people who have different cultures,
religious beliefs, languages and strong ideas about the seriousness and importance of
education
 Many of the same programs suggested for other schools must be implemented
 New ways of funding schools must be devised so that rural schools are not resource-poor
schools
Reflections
1. What are your thoughts on giving added responsibilities to schools to socialize
children whose families cannot do it?
2. What are your thoughts that school must be obligated to report violence in all of its
manifestations if our violence problem is to be resolved?
3. Where should children who act out be placed in schools?
4. Do you think that the nature of American families are deteriorating? Why? What can
be done?
5. What are your thoughts on self-esteem programs and their effectiveness in reducing
aggression in schools?
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