Listen First: How Student Perspectives on Violence Can Be Used to Create Safer Schools by Pedro A. Noguera / In Motion Magazine


		Pedro Noguera.

Pedro A. Noguera, Ph.D. is a professor in the Steinhardt School's Department of Teaching and Learning at New York University. Click here to open a second browser window to view references cited.

Introduction
Contextual reality of Violence
Understanding Student Perspectives on Violence
School A - description / School B - description
Learning from Students' Experiences with and Perceptions of School Violence
Responding to the Threat of School Violence
References

Introduction

The public reaction to the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado tell us a great deal about attitudes and perceptions toward violence in American society. First, there was the intense media coverage during and immediately after the incident. In vivid detail, the public was provided around the clock coverage which included live footage from the school, on the scene interviews with students and police officers, and multiple reports on every possible aspect of the violent rampage. For a public seeking to understand what had happened, such coverage was at first illuminating, but as the days wore on, the reporting gradually changed from news to a perverse kind of entertainment. Within a relatively short period of time, the tragedy at Columbine High School became yet another hyped up media spectacle, which like so many other recent national media events, at times seemed as cheesy and exploitive of the victims.

A similar transformation occurred in the statements made by politicians who quickly stepped forward to comment on the incident. At first their words seemed genuinly empathetic toward the victims and their families. However, as time passed their comments became more ideological, calculating and partisan. With the increased attention given to the issues related to the incident: regulation of firearms, school safety, youth culture, etc., politicians began to stake out strategic positions ever mindful of how their public stances would be interpreted by key constituents and financial contributors. At every public event - press conferences, funerals and memorial services, the occasion came to as an opportunity for politicans position themselves in ways they hoped would maximize their political advantages and minimize their losses.

Secondly, the incident occured while the nation was engaged in an undeclared war against Yugoslavia; a war in which casualties inflicted upon civilians were rationalized as "collateral" damage incurred during what is proclaimed to be a "humanitarian" military mission. Interestingly, none of the media commentators ever explored whether there might be a connection between State sponsored violence which was officially condoned and even applauded, and the actions of these troubled teenagers. While many commentators were quick to suggest a possible link between the tragedy at Columbine and the pervasive violence present in the media, on the internet, and in popular music, few drew any connection at all to the government's use of violence in a foreign land. The unstated message was that State sanctioned violence was "good" violence, and therefore would not be questioned.

Finally, the shootings at Columbine High School produced a rash of copy cat incidents at schools across the country, with numerous school districts reporting bomb threats and students appearing in trench coats at their schools. Such incidents may be the most telling response of all. Coming on the heels of shootings in Oregon, Mississippi, and Arkansas, this incident made it unmistakably clear that violence among young people and at schools is no longer a problem associated exclusively with the innercity. The outbreak of threats, real and imagined, at schools across the country in the days that followed, reinforced the fear that what happened in Littleton could happen anywhere. It also added to an even deeper concern and recognition: that something is profoundly wrong with American culture if our schools and our youth are indeed this vulnerable to violence.

When considered in combination and in relation to one another, these responses tell us several contradictory things about our society's attitudes and perceptions toward violence and towards children generally. First, they tell us that while violence of this kind may be repulsive and frightening it is also on another level intriguing, and perhaps even in some morbid sense, entertaining. The media consistently defends its sensationalized coverage of such events by arguing that they merely provide what the public wants, and the public's appetite for graphic depictions of violence is at times insatiable. Secondly, it suggests that though violence is prohibited in school, it's use in other contexts can be rationalized as legitimate if the perpetrator is the State. Even if the targets of violence are alleged to be mentally impaired (i.e. the recent execution of Duane Babbit in California and the pending execution of Larry Keith Robinson in Texas) or non-combatant civilians in places such Iraq, Serbia, or the Sudan, State sponsored violence in defense of what are construed as national interests, is permissible. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is the failure throughout much of American society to recognize the connection between the deplorable social conditions under which large numbers of children live and the increased likelihood that these same children will become victims or perpetrators of violence.

Violence is an integral part of American history and culture, and though there is a deeply felt fear of violence in many communities across the country, it is apparently not sufficient to lead a decisive break from our societal obsession. We fear violence but Americans own more firearms than any other people on the face of the earth. Politicians criticize filmmakers who produce films with gratuitous depictions of violence, yet such films tend to be tremendously successful at the box office. We deplore violence on the streets, but we applaud it on the playing fields. The search for strategies to reduce the threat of violence continues despite these contradictions. It may well be the case that without a complete purging of our societal fixation with violence, a more pervasive feeling of safety and social peace will remain out of reach. In the mean time, the search continues.

In our nation's schools, the search safety has now reached the point of desperation. Although the available data and evidence suggests that the incidence of violence in schools is not rising and that violent acts are not becoming more prevalent, among the general public there is a growing perception that schools are more violent and dangerous than ever before. In polls and surveys, students, teachers and parents all report a greater degree of fear of violent assault at school, and greater concern about safety and student discipline generally.

In response to these concerns, several states and school districts have undertaken a variety of highly visible measures intended to provide some reassurance to the public that schools can be made safe. This has included the adoption of security measures such as metal detectors and high tech surveillance cameras, as well as an increasing reliance on armed security guards and police officers to address the security needs of school sites. At many innercity schools, such measures are not new. Concerns about safety and discipline at schools in impoverished urban areas have been common for many years. However, the recent wave of shootings at predominantly white, middle class suburban schools in Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oregon, Colorado, and most recently Georgia, have shown quite clearly that violence is no longer limited to innercity schools. Though there is no clear pattern linking the more recent violent incidents, in the national media these incidents have been portrayed as part of a dangerous national trend afflicting the nation’s schools.

Given the strong reaction that an issue like school violence evokes, it is not surprising that even if statistical evidence on the incidence of violence in schools suggest that no significant increase has occurred, policy on this issue at federal, state and local levels, will more likely to be driven by public fears than data. On such volatile and emotional issues, the facts don't speak for themselves. Even without clear and convincing documentation on the extent of the problem, policy makers and school officials feel compelled to take action. They feel compelled to adopt a variety of measures, some of which are quite costly, so that they at least appear to be doing “something” to assure a frightened public that order in schools can be maintained. Charged with the responsibility of managing our nation’s schools, educational leaders, and increasingly politicians, feel compelled to take tough action, lest they be accused of being unresponsive to the public’s concerns.

However, in the rush to act, policies are adopted and actions are taken, too often without the benefit of careful dispassionate analysis. As a consequence, much of what is done may not only fail in reducing the likelihood of violence, but may even inadvertently contribute to its occurrence. For example, shortly after the Richmond public schools installed metal detectors at all of the high schools in the District, two students were shot at one of the schools by an individual who found a way to avoid the newly installed security system. It may well be the case that the metal detector created an illusion of security that led to a slackening of other forms of security (e.g. adult supervision in hallways) at the school.

Many of the "get tough" measures are premised on the notion that violence in school can be reduced and controlled by identifying, apprehending and excluding violent or potentially violent individuals (Toby, 1994; Coleman, 1992). Such an approach generally treats violence as a form of individual deviance that can be rooted out through punitive and exclusionary measures. However, left unconsidered, and therefore unaddressed, are the social and environmental factors which a significant body of public health research on violence cites as being central to the underlying causes of youth violence.

It is even more problematic that research on youth attitudes and perceptions toward violence has had very little influence on the policies and measures that have been enacted to promote safety. In this chapter I will present an analysis of how a variety of social factors, specifically: race, class and neighborhood context, influence student perceptions toward violence in school, and attitudes toward violent behavior. Based on an analysis of interviews carried out at two middle schools in northern California, I will demonstrate the importance of incorporating student perspectives and concerns into the effort to curtail violence in school. I will argue that as the primary victims and perpetrators of violence in school, the perceptions, attitudes, and fears of students must be analyzed and taken into account if the strategies utilized to prevent violence are to succeed at making schools safe. My goal is to show how an understanding of student perspectives on violence can be incorporated into school violence prevention efforts and thereby increase the likelihood that schools will become safer places for children and the adults who work in them.

The Contextual Reality of Violence

In many school districts, the pressure to create schools that are perceived as safe, often becomes reduced to a numbers game. To reassure the public that actions are being taken to increase security, school officials point to statistics related to the number of weapons confiscated, the number of students suspended, expelled or arrested, as evidence that something is being done about the problem. Such reporting can be especially important when those responsible for security are competing for scarce resources. In order to secure funding for security, reports on the incidence of violence can be used to demonstrate that while valiant efforts are being made to reduce violence, the problem persists, and therefore the fight and the funding must continue. Statistics on violence prevention are also instrumental in framing public discourse about violence; even without making teachers and students feel safer, administrators can claim to be doing something by pointing to quantifiable data which shows that results are being obtained.

Yet, for parents, teachers and students who live with the reality of violence and who must contend with the threat of physical harm on a daily basis, reports on the number of weapons confiscated or the number of students who have been expelled are unlikely to allay their fears. When engaging in ordinary activities such as walking to school or playing at the park generates so much fear and anxiety that many kids feel unable to participate in them, news that arrests or suspensions have increased is unlikely to provide the assurance of safety that many desperately seek.

Still, within the context of the fight against violence, symbolic actions take on great significance, even though they may have little bearing upon the actual occurrence of violence or its perception. Metal detectors, barbed wire fences, armed guards and policemen, and principals wielding baseball bats as they patrol the halls, are all symbols of tough action. Even if most students realize that it is possible to bring a weapon into a school building without being discovered by a metal detector, and that it is highly unlikely that a principal will actually hit a student with a baseball bat, the symbols persist. They persist because without them the unstated truth would be known: those responsible for preventing violence really don't have a clue about what to do to make schools safer places.

Part of the failure of traditional approaches is rooted in their inability to address the contextual factors which influence the incidence of violence and reactions to it. Expressions of violence are certainly not limited to schools, so it may be unrealistic to fashion remedies that respond to the issue without consideration of neighborhood and other contextual factors. For example, in developing a response to the threat of violence it may be important to understand the circumstances under which violence as a learned form of social behavior may be construed as legitimate or even appropriate by young people. Similarly, we might also consider what role portrayals of violence in the media, sports and officially sanctioned forms of State sponsored violence (i.e. war or police actions) play in shaping attitudes toward violence.

Finally, given the persistence of certain characteristics and patterns with respect to the perpetrators and victims of violence, namely the disproportionate number of African American and Latino males found in both categories , it may be important to consider how the racalization of violence has shaped popular attitudes toward the issue. Orlando Patterson, a sociologist at Harvard University, recently asked the question in a New York Times editorial: "What if the killers at Columbine High School had been Black?"(6/2/99 New York Times) This is not merely a rhetorical question, for prior to the recent wave of shootings at suburban schools, the media's portrayal of youth violence has been linked almost exclusively to Black and Latino youth. To the extent that violence is now widely recognized as more than just a minority issue, there may be greater willingness to explore the underlying social and cultural factors which contribute to its expression.

Additionally, as the shootings at Columbine High School have shown, it is important that we consider how peer groups and the social climate of a school may influence attitudes toward violence. Recent incidents suggest that kids who have been socially ostracized, bullied, teased or mistreated, by school officials or other students, may be at greater risk of engaging in violent behavior. An unwillingness to confront the implications of the connections between violence and social status may prevent us from seeing how expressions of violence may be linked to broader patterns of success and failure at school. It is significant that those most likely to receive punishment for disciplinary infractions in school also tend to be more likely to have been placed in special education or remedial classes (Meier and Stewart 1989)

In schools where teachers are afraid of students, where Black and Latino students are criminalized and uniformly treated as potentially violent gang members, and where responsibility for managing school safety has been relegated to poorly paid security guards, the potential for violence is great. Instead of providing a safe venue for teaching and learning, such schools come to reflect the violence present within the surrounding community. Within such a context, understanding the perceptions of those most at risk of violence becomes even more important for finding ways to reduce its occurrence.

Understanding Student Perceptions of School Violence

To begin to understand how students perceived the threat of violence within the context of their everyday experiences at school, I undertook a study of student attitudes utilizing the grounded theory approach developed by Glazer and Strauss.(1977) As is typical for most inquiries that are premised on grounded theory, I had a great deal of prior knowledge about the subject matter, having worked and engaged in research with schools for many years. However, despite my familiarity with the subject I had no compelling hypothesis or causal explanation for the questions that motivated the inquiry.

I wanted to understand how students perceived the threat of violence in their environment and how this perception might influence their attitudes toward violent behavior. I was also interested in understanding the ethical judgements they made regarding particular manifestations of violence that they observed and/or experienced within their daily routines. Specifically, I wanted to know if there were circumstances in which students might regard violent behavior as legitimate or appropriate, and if so, what connection if any this had to their personal stance toward violence.

To find answers to these questions I surveyed and conducted interviews with forty-eight students at two middle schools in northern California. I chose the two schools because they provided a striking contrast along the diminesions of race, class and enviornmental context. I surmised that such a contrast would illuminate the ways in which social context - the community, neighborhood economy, physical environment, etc - influenced the atttitudes and perceptions of young people toward violence. Additionally, I suspected that while students at the two schools seem to exist in completely separate worlds, a closer examination might reveal other ways in which the students are similar to each other as a result of their exposure to television and other media, and the more diffuse influences of popular youth culture. Understanding how these factors - the cultural and the environmental - influenced the attitudes and perceptions of students toward violence was a primary goal of this inquiry.

In order to protect the identities of those associated with the two schools, I shall refer to them in this paper as School A and B. School A is a relatively small middle school - 347 students, 18 teachers, a principal, an assistant principal and two guidance counselors. It is located an an industrial area in an economically depressed and socially isolated community; a neighborhood with a reputation for its dangerous streets, dense housing projects, and illegal dumping that occurs on its streets. The school, like the community, has a diverse non-white student population, made up predominantly of African Americans, but with significant numbers of students who are recent immigrants from Mexico, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

School B is a medium size middle school - 812 students, 36 teachers, a principal, 2 assistant principals, and 3 counselors. It is located in a park-like setting on twelve acres of land, with large athletic fields, a swimming pool and tennis courts. It is surrounded by the homes of middle class families, the average value of which exceeds $300,000, in a predominantly white, middle class, suburban community. The community is made up largely of college educated professionals, though there is a working class side of town where most non-white families live.

Even though the actual distance between the two schools is less than ten miles, in existential terms the schools feel as though they were thousands of miles apart. The contrast is most readily apparent in the physical aspects of the two schools. The hall ways in school A are dark, and the play areas are covered with asphault. The hall ways in school B are bright with natural illumination from skylights in the ceilings, and grass and trees cover the campus.

Similarly, the way these schools relate to the surrounding community is also telling feature of comparison. While school A is surrounded by a fence approximately 15 feet in height which borders the perimeter of the campus, school B and its facilities - pool, playing fields, tennis and basketball courts, - are easily accessible to its neighbors and the general public. The design of the two schools suggest that whereas school A regards its community with suspicion and fear, school B perceives the community as an ally and its facilities are regarded by residents as a public resource and asset.

My access to both schools was made possible by prior relationships with the faculty and administration. In years past I had been involved in professional development workshops for teachers, and spoken to groups of parents and students at both schools. To obtain their participation in this study I approached each principal with an offer to assist them in devising a violence prevention strategy for their schools that would be informed by concrete knowledge about the views and perceptions of students. Like many schools, both were faced with growing concern from parents and teachers related to the threat of violence. Though neither school had experienced any major incidents of violence in the last few years, heightened awareness about violence at other schools throughout the country prompted both principals to readily agree to participate in the study and welcome my offer of assistance.

The design called for surveys and interviews with students to be conducted in 8th grade social studies classes with the support and cooperation of the classroom teachers. Twenty-two students were surveyed and interviewed at school A, and twenty eight students were surveyed and interviewed at school B. In both classes the study was introduced as part of a unit on violence prevention which I taught as a guest teacher over a two week period. The unit began with a lecture/presentation on the forms of violence in American society - violent crime, interpersonal and domestic violence, police and military violence, and violent acts carried out by hate and terror groups. This was followed by a discussion of how these forms of violence are represented in the media. Following a brief interactive discussion to clarify the focus of the study and definition of terms, a survey was administered which consisted of ten true/false and six oepn-ended questions(see Chart #2). Once the surveys were completed and collected, a discussion of the responses was facilitated with the whole group in an effort to understand why individuals responded as they did to the questions. This enabled me to get a better understanding of the logic behind the responses, and also provided an opportunity for an open discussion of related issues.

Following completion of the survey I conducted individual interviews with the students over the course of the week, using the six open-ended questions from the survey as the basis for our conversation. Each interview lasted approximately twenty five minutes. All of the questions were designed to solicit the student's views and perceptions of violence and to ascertain the extent to which they perceived a threat of violence within the school environment. The following week I presented a unit on violence in the media for the purpose of investigating how students interpreted and responded to violent images in film. The results of that portion of the study will not be reported here, though its findings have indirect relevance to the issue of violence in schools.