Tamara Lukšić Orlandić
Do you know that it is mandatory for every school to have the Violence Prevention Team?
Media frequently report on the various incidents of violence – peer violence, violence by teachers, and sometimes also on that which occurs when parents take the freedom to beat a peer friend of their child and in order to protect their child, all that in the middle of the schoolyard which is the property of the school. But the question that everyone who is dealing with this issue is asking is whether more frequent publication of such news proves that we are more and more violent, or that we are willing to confront the violence.
It is easy to agree that the worst is when the violence is silent, when we ignore or minimize its occurrence.
And the violence has different forms, including school. From physical violence, which is easy to recognize, through the violence which is harder to recognize - psychological (emotional) and social, well-hidden sexual, or the latest, the one that comes through electronic media.
What is harder for a child to bear and what wounds heal faster than – being belittled by peers, gossiped, excluded from the group because of a personal characteristic or bruises received in a fight? The brutality and consequences of each of these forms, can be testified with authenticity only by its victims
Dozens of programmes that have been accredited by the Institute for the Advancement of Education and are aimed at developing non-violent communication, diversity and tolerance on child abuse and neglect have been carried out at schools in Serbia since 2000. The greatest attention was dedicated to the "School without Violence" programme implemented by UNICEF in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Science, in which 165 primary and secondary schools are included, which represents about 8% of schools in Serbia. Simultaneously the Government have worked on establishing legal framework to protect children from violence in all communities, so they adopted general and sectoral protocols for protecting children from violence, which served as directions and instructions to schools, centers for social work, health care institutions showing them the necessity that they cooperate. The protocols were obviously not sufficiently binding, and the Ministry of Education passed on the Book of Rules on the Protocole for treatment at the institution (education) in response to violence, abuse and neglect, in 2010.
Thus, all schools received a notification on the obligation to form Violence Prevention Teams(abuse and neglect) and to inform the pupils about that. The primary obligation for schools was to provide for the opportunities that pupils, parents and staff jointly plan, devise and implement prevention activities, to foster an atmosphere of cooperation and tolerance, mutual respect and constructive communication which does not tolerate violence, abuse and neglect.
And when the violence occurs, The Book of Rules has very detailed treatment set up - intervention in response to violence, to stop it, ensure the safety of the participants (those who suffer, or are witnesses), and reduce the risk of recurrence. Additionally The Book of Rules describes three possible levels of violence in details and with high precision, as well as the forms of violence at each level, and measures and activities which should be applied in each case.
The feedback information as to how to implement this Book of Rules, whether the school has the Team, whether the children know that it exists, who it consists of, how they can ask for its intervention, we did not know until the Ombudsman has conducted a research in 72 primary and secondary schools in Serbia, including 1257 students. The research is specific in that it was conducted by students aged 13 to 17 years, 30 of them, who make the panel of young advisers of the Ombudsman. It was the first time that a state agency actually implemented the initiative that children participate in their work, believing that the answers to be obtained would be authentic in high percentage, because the children asked their peers and there was no risk of getting the desirable response. And that is exactly the reason why the results of this research are worrying. Because 88% of schoolchildren reported that they had direct or indirect experience with peer violence, and that was what 60% of high school pupils said.
It is not pleasant to know that every fourth high school student (26%), and every fifth primary school pupil (20%) had witnessed some form of violence by teachers against students. Only 35% of high school students and 29% of primary school pupils were aware of the existence of a Violence Prevention Team. But only 2% of the students knew who makes the team, and to whom they could turn and ask for help! And, we know that what is at the beginning of each solution is information. Interviewers and Panel members will have a lot of work obviously, at least in their schools, in helping to eliminate mistrust and change rather pessimistic view of the students regarding the possibility of some change for the better at schools they attend.
Can our schools, despite these grim figures, reach "zero tolerance" for violence? Is it impossible?
Fortunately there are schools that can boast with that. I recently heard of such PS "George Natošević" from Novi Sad. Director, why not say the name, Nedeljko Đorđić, speaking at a conference on the topic of violence-free schools, pointed to the hard times that employees, parents and children went through together. The school is located in the urban part of town, surrounded by cafes, shops, betting shops, play houses ....The school yard until recently was the meeting place of the "bad guys", the students showed a tendency to violent forms of behavior, there were hardly any extra-curricular activities at school, and the cooperation with parents was poor.
The staff concluded that it was important that each student find extracurricular activity for him/her. At school, in cooperation with clubs, they opened free sports’ school, organized tournaments, cheering on the stands, the event "The School for Real Students" (education on proper posture of the spine) .... They intensified extra-curriculum activities in almost all subjects, formed a choir, orchestra, school of comics ..... They organized lectures on health, education, cyber violence ... Efforts to implement these activities connected the students, parents and teachers, all of which affected the results of the school, created a better climate for learning and development. Thus, this is prevention, which the schools are obliged to deal with every day.
In order to make results desirable, it is necessary that all parts of the system are responsible for performing their roles. Also, families should in turn contribute to the development of independence and self-esteem of the child. The inter-connected system is the necessary precondition for the success of eliminating violence because violence is overflowing from family to school, from school to the streets, stadiums, although the motion path of violence is often intertwined, and not unambiguous. Violence in one sphere makes harder to resist violence in other spheres. It is not amiss to recall the still high level of use of mental and physical punishment in the upbringing of children in Serbia. The survey by UNICEF in Serbia shows that 67% of children suffer some form of violent discipline by their parents. Although only 7.2% of parents expressly stated that physical punishment was necessary in the upbringing of children, more than one third of parents practice it. Some of those who publicly advocate the need for survival of disciplining children by parents with the use of physical punishment as the means of education and the need that power of parents over children be demonstrated, claim that it does not necessarily lead to reproduction of violence at school play and that abused children are not by definition those who "fight for justice " in the schoolyard. Until it is scientifically proven and illustrated by figures, I will believe my eyes and the awareness of numerous cases that arrogant, authoritarian parent, bully, develops the same instincts in their child, a caring parent who is sensitive to the child and its development phase, promotes the same behavior in his child and the same attitude towards his environment.
Therefore, I will always react to the corny phrase of "the stick that came from heaven," by quoting the one about "nice words can open the iron door" in response. Some later modernized it and translated as "it is not hard to be nice." Discipline which is for some still the ABC of upbringing children, stops current behavior, but its effect is short-term. Modern society, and the society with the warrior tradition, such as ours, should banish physical punishment of children for the purpose of education and to define positive parenting by the law, and thus help the school as an institution that has long ago prohibited this form of punishment by law, but unfortunately, is not always successful in preventing it in their classrooms, especially in the corridors and courtyards, because school is a suitable place for violence owing to the multitude of interactions, pressures, competition, stress, and then the lack of will, motivation, and the ‘’line of least resistance’ on the side of the school responsible persons.
The solution is to speak in schools about non-violence. The school should support, not punish. It should include, not exclude, and it is somehow often what is applied when a problem occurs. The magic word is "expell" from the school /child who has a problem/, which is manifested in increased aggression, disruption of discipline, causing conflicts with peers. In this practice the Ombudsman is often encountered during its supervisory visits to schools by pointing to the authorities to go harder and winding road and offer support to such a child. Amendments to the Law on Primary Education will make this practice used less often because the transfer of one child to another school now needs the approval of the school to which the child is about to be transferred.
What children at risk especially need is the support of teachers, classes, peers and peer team, high confidence and patience, but also greater participation of children at risk in school and extracurricular activities.
Then, as necessary, the cooperation of the education system with other systems, social welfare and health care is imposed on us. The result of such cooperation should be a support plan specific for the specific child. We must lose not one child.
Tamara Lukšić Orlandić
Deputy Ombudsman
blog comments powered by Disqus