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The school shootings of the last several months have put tragic human faces on the fact that killings by teenagers in the United States have more than doubled since the mid-1980's. School officials and politicians have called for more suspensions and expulsions from schools, increased use of metal detectors, lowering the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults, and even for teachers to carry guns themselves.
All of these remedies are variations on the same theme; they look to solve this social crisis by "cracking down" on children. Underneath this theme is an assumption that schools can be made safe if we tighten security and punish children with harsher and harsher measures. But what deeper causes lie at the root of these tragedies and how can we best respond to them?
The children who drew guns on their classmates this school year are growing up in a culture of violence that affects every child in the country. Violence enters their lives in different ways - family abuse, violence in the community, violence in the news.
Entertainment violence teaches children a lot about the world. It tells them that it's fun to hurt others, even exciting. It shows them how people treat each other and how violence is used to resolve conflict. This lays the groundwork for desensitization to violence and establishes an appetite for more.
Teachers and researchers have been warning for more than a decade that the violent culture marketed to children has harmful effects, both in the present and for the long term. For many young children, who on average watch four to six hours of television a day, these messages are a significant part of the total picture of the social world they see. Children use this information as they build social knowledge. They incorporate what they've seen into their behavior and play, trying it out with each other.
Through a slow, hand-over-hand developmental process, these anti-social ideas and actions become building blocks in children's social development. Is it really a suprise then, that under stress or in a state of anger - especially in a society where children have such easy access to guns and may have experienced violence directly in their own lives - children would mimic these same approaches, approaches that have become part of their own social repertoire? Where were they supposed to learn the alternatives to violence?- - -
Every 10 seconds a child in this country is abused or neglected. Every two hours a child is killed by a firearm. On TV, children see 32 acts of violence every hour. Where are they supposed to learn the alternatives to violence?
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What if the children who pulled the triggers on their classmates had learned alternative ways to manage anger? What if, from a young age, they had developed the knowledge that working things out was possible?
Many forms of violence afflicting children's lives are ingrained in the fabric of our society and are very difficult to change. But conflict resolution and mediation training, while it cannot fully solve youth violence, does offer one positive antidote. When done well, these programs teach children a whole range of skills to use in dealing with conflicts; they help children learn to respect differences and offer experiences to engage them in group decision-making. Children learn specific strategies for what to say and do when conflicts arise and practice their skills in a host of meaningful classroom activities throughout the school day. Over time, children begin to develop a sense of themselves as skilled problem-solvers empowered with the ability to transform conflicts into peaceful outcomes.
The Peaceable Schools program offers an important alternative to the mainstream response to violence among our nation's youth. It stands in stark contrast to the programs such as the one in Indianapolis where even first-graders are scanned with metal detectors in search of weapons.
Instead of policing children, conflict resolution programs actively teach alternatives to violence - skills and concepts children can use in school, at home, on the bus, in the park, all of their lives. Instead of making children feel powerless in the face of hardening discipline, it makes more sense to empower them with the tools to change situations for the better and with the confidence that comes with that.School of Education Professor Nancy Carlsson-Paige and coauthor Diane Levin have written several books on the effects of violence in the media on children and their development.
Illustration by Jen Indreland
