A Compulsion to Repeat Failure

Humanist, Sept, 2001 by Shane Shackford

In response to the general media's lurid depiction of recent school shootings, the public has come to perceive school violence as endemic. The implication that school violence has increased significantly is conspicuously similar to the 1980s movement that declared a war on drugs. Perhaps this incessant quest for drama and pathology is a natural consequence of human behavior. Regardless, the search for answers according to simplistic, cause-and-effect, linear relationships is likely to fail.

Historically, the need to assign culpability to atypicality has been the accepted standard of practice, particularly within the public school system. Individuals who choose not to conform to the nebulous "social norm" are routinely compared to an arbitrary linear model of normality (for example, A causes B). Simplistic cause-and-effect thinking, or dichotomous thinking, has traditionally been implicated in various forms of psychopathology, such as depression. Such linear thinking appears to be the likely result of reductionism.

For example, the 1980s were consumed with the war-on-drugs movement, which promulgated the perception that illicit drug use had reached epidemic proportions. Despite inherent reporting and data collection inaccuracies, those responsible for the anti-drug movement carelessly chose the path of least resistance. That is, they relied on reductionistic techniques like punishment as a result of simplistic application.

Similarly, special interest groups along with the media have today successfully promulgated the perception that schools are milieus to be feared. Whereas schools were once seen as institutions engendering intellectual and emotional growth, today these pedagogical institutions are often portrayed as killing fields. As Jose Ortega y Gasset has expressed, "Today violence is the rhetoric of the period."

While the empirical data has failed to corroborate the supposition that schools are dangerous, boards of education with the financial assistance of special interest groups have injudiciously endorsed tertiary, reactionary, punitive, consensus, and ideologically based interventions. The most recent social control policy promulgated by the House of Representatives and adopted by local school boards is Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). By authorizing programs like COPS, school boards have, perhaps unconsciously, increased the probability for school violence.

Empirically sound paradigm shifts among bureaucracies are rare. Yet, policy shifts predicated on anecdotal reports and consensus-based data have received widespread acceptance. Dare to remember DARE, the extolled Drug Abuse Resistance Education program instituted by the Los Angles Police Department in 19837 Despite the clever slogan of "Just Say No," this $226 billion endeavor to prevent kids from using drugs failed miserably. In fact, according to Dean R. Gerstein and Lawrence W. Green in their 1993 book Preventing Drug Abuse: What Do We Know? DARE's contribution was unmistakably "ineffective." Even so, schools today continue to promote a modified version of DARE.

Despite convincing empirical data disproving the effectiveness of social control models, the zeitgeist continues to promote deterministic programs and responses. Illogical thinking, coupled with a $420 million grant has compelled many school districts to espouse the essential principles of COPS. Injudicious policy shifts aren't exclusive to urban areas. In fact, not far from Princeton University lies an affluent school district that has effortlessly endorsed COPS. According to the May 11, 2001, Princeton Packet, a local newspaper:

   The West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional Board of Education and Plainsboro
   Township Committee this week approved a federal grant application to fund
   police officers in district high schools and middle schools for three
   years.

In addition to providing social control and law and order, the police will also provide counseling services through COPS. As the Princeton Packet notes:

   The community resource officer would conduct full-time patrols of hallways
   and grounds along with community outreach and youth counseling similar to
   the DARE program.

Surely parents and students would want to know the formal mental health training these police officers have received?

The irrational need to repeat a behavior notwithstanding, its consequence (repetition compulsion) seems to illustrate the method in which school districts attempt to elicit change. One doesn't have to be a social scientist to identify a pattern destined to fail. Congruent with the research highlighting the paradoxical effects of DARE, Matthew J. Mayer and Peter E. Leone have found that programs attempting to deter violence in schools through containment, control, and punishment run the risk of potentiating violence (Education and Treatment 22:3). Unfortunately, the senseless departure of boards of education from harm reduction to harm induction will likely result in destructive and ineffective policy.