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Uniting adolescent support systems for safe learning environments
Educational Forum, The, Winter 2003 by Strom, Paris S, Strom, Robert D
Transforming schools into safe havens is a national aspiration. The Safe Schools Act (1993) has served as a basis for supporting police presence on campuses, metal detectors to discover weapons, peer mediation of student disputes, and violence-- prevention programs. These initiatives have helped to increase order in classrooms, hallways, restrooms, cafeterias, and school parking lots (Howard, Flora, and Griffin 1999; Hyman and Snook 2000). A different approach is to unite adolescent support systems: faculty members, parents, and students. Schools can decrease peer abuse and increase civil behavior by harnessing the powerful influence that schools and families can have on creating a safe learning environment.
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PREVALENCE AND EFFECTS OF PEER ABUSE
Schools are supposed to offer students the support they need to advance their emotional, social, and mental growth. Without this support, many students are forced to learn about survival. Nansel, Overpeck, Pilla, Ruan, Simons-Morton, and Scheidt (2001) surveyed 16,000 students from grades 6 to 10 at public and private schools to assess the scope of bullying behavior. The researchers determined that 30 percent of respondents had moderate or frequent experience with peer abuse. A projection of these figures indicates that as many as 18 million students in the United States may be involved with bullying. About 60 percent of cases referred to assistant principals in high schools relate to the mistreatment of classmates (National Center for Education Statistics 2001).
Physical and psychological bullying can involve punching, threats, namecalling, spreading rumors, extortion, theft, sexual harassment, and spiteful teasing (Bosworth, Espelage, and Simon 1999). Students who suffer such mistreatment have described feelings of fear, humiliation, hopelessness, depression, pain, inability to concentrate on studies, and reluctance to come to school. In rare cases, adolescent victims carry out violent revenge against the tormentors or faculty members whom they believe failed to help them when needed (Vossekuil, Reddy, Fein, Borum, and Modzeleski 2000).
Even students who avoid being targeted by bullies can be harmed by the social lessons learned from them. Bullies who do not get negative feedback regarding their misconduct provide a dysfunctional model suggesting there are no consequences for acts of aggression. Evidence about the effects of peer modeling comes from studies in which classmates were present during 80 percent of the bullying episodes at school (Craig and Pepler 1997). In most instances, readiness to act as spectators who acquiesce to abuse seemed to reinforce patterns of intimidation. Student unwillingness to report peer abuse is a perilous norm. Following incidents of violence, it has often been discovered that certain students had prior awareness regarding threats but did not take them seriously or decided not to tell faculty members (Fishbaugh, Schroth, and Berkeley 2002).
From an early age, children are discouraged by their parents and surrogates from "tattling" about everyday indignities suffered at the hands of hair-pulling siblings or playmates who tease them or take their possessions. Often, they are urged to be strong and resolve these disputes themselves without inviting adults to intervene. When they start school, however, students must learn the distinction between tattling and telling. The purpose of tattling is to get someone in trouble, while "telling on someone" is a way to get the help that person needs.
PARENTAL PARTICIPATION IN DISCIPLINE
When teachers identify the changes they believe are needed to ensure more appropriate behavior in class, the factor they mention most frequently is parental involvement. Teachers maintain that only parents possess the authority to fulfill their unique role in helping shape the social and emotional development of children (Langdon and Vesper 2000). Accordingly, faculties continually attempt to motivate parents to remain engaged in educating daughters and sons. The success of students depends on both teachers and parents making a distinctive and vital contribution. When students struggle with academic subjects such as mathematics or biology, parents may not have the necessary knowledge to offer tutoring. Therefore, schools must assume this responsibility. However, when student deficiency relates to social misconduct, parental guidance is essential. Parents are responsible for teaching the basic lessons that students need to adopt civil behavior and a healthy work ethic. More parents must recognize that, despite their busy schedules, they must guide their children and cannot transfer that obligation to surrogates at school (Wolfe 2001).
The disengagement of parents is also worrisome to policy makers who believe that, until more families enforce rules of good behavior at home, reforms initiated at school cannot fully succeed (Thorkildsen and Stein 1999). In a survey of 1,600 parents of school-age children, Farkas, Johnson, and Duffett (2002) asked parents to rate the relative importance of teaching 11 separate character traits and values to their child. The values ranking highest, as "absolutely essential" to teach, included being honest and truthful (91 percent), being courteous and polite (84 percent), having self-control and self-discipline (83 percent), and always doing their best at school (82 percent). One way to evaluate parent success, in their own estimate, is to compare the percentage who identify a lesson as being absolutely essential and subtract it from the percentage who report they have succeeded in teaching this attribute to their child. This type of analysis found that, even in the realms of performance parents consider vital, significant gaps exist between their intentions and what they have been able to accomplish. The most common problem for parents seems to be teaching self-control and self-discipline to their children. Of 11 traits, this one presented the largest gap; 83 percent of parents maintained it was an essential lesson, but only 34 percent noted that they had succeeded in impressing this trait on their children.
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