I read with interest Gary W. Kenny’s article about violence and bullying in our high schools (‘Whole new level of school bully culture’: November 16, 2019). Mr. Kerry’s experiences mirrored many of my own from a similar era. It’s a sad fact that, while I’m not sure violence in schools today is any worse than it was in ‘the good old days’, it does not seem to any be better. All generations owe future ones a pledge to do all we can to improve the way things are — it appears we’ve been negligent.

Behaviours and attitudes are learned early and re-enforced often. By the time problems get to high school, the horse is out of the barn and into the next field. This culture of violence in our schools starts early: in kindergarten. It’s our failures to deal effectively with it in its infancy that is the sad truth about the reality many young people are facing today in high school; it’s a realty they’ve known long before arriving there.

Many children come to school with challenges; some these take the form of violent and disruptive behaviours. Disruptions in classrooms take many forms, but they all lead to the same thing: they impact negatively the learning of everyone in the classroom. And these impacts add up. They build a culture within the class, the school, and into the whole education system. By high school, they begin to take on more of an adult look. That’s when society starts to notice.

Educators (Teachers, Educational Assistants, Principals and Vice Principals) all want to create as calm and productive learning environment as they possibly can, if for no other reason than it makes their job easier and more enjoyable. Their dedication to this should not be in dispute. But classrooms are a reflection of the society that feeds them. And in today’s society, it’s all about individual rights, individual needs; it’s not about the rights and needs of others. We talk a lot in our society of our own rights, but we don’t like to talk about others’ rights. Currently, parents’ right to demand placement of their child in a regular classroom (regardless of the child’s ability to conform to those classroom norms designed to facilitate the learning of all) is paramount. If one child’s right to disrupt supersedes the rights of the others to a safe and nurturing environment, then it becomes a simple question of fairness. All rights have limits. As the old saying goes: ‘My right to swing my arms ends at the tip of your nose.’ Unfortunately, in many classrooms, this has been perverted to: ‘I’m allowed to swing my arms — you need to get out of my way!’

Lessons are being learned in these classrooms; lessons we may not be intending. For the disruptive child, the lesson is: ‘I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to do it. If I want something, I take it. If I’m mad, I hit. If , I don’t want to listen and learn with the others, I yell and run and scream. I should get what I want, when I want.’ For the others, their lesson is: ‘I need to tolerate this. I need to suck it up, because it’s obvious my needs just aren’t as important. I also need to be vigilant (to the point of perpetual fear) because I never know when that certain someone is going to explode … and you do not want to be in their way when that happens!’ The real tragedy is that there is also always a small group of children who could go either way. When they see calm learning environment dominated by a caring adult, they buy into it: they become good classroom citizens and scholars. When they see an environment where a disruptive child dominates, they buy into that: they also act out. They do this because they accept the premiss that this is how things work at school. And, unfortunately, they’re not wrong.

We’re not doing anyone any favours. Here is a message for those parents of disruptive children: ‘The world is not just here for your child and their immediate wants and desires. And when they grow to adulthood, it will not sit by and let them violently assault people.’ It’s a lesson that the rest of us (hopefully) learned long before we got to adulthood, because there are very real consequences for failing to follow it. For the remaining majority: It is an established fact that, if we are in fear and uncertainty, we cannot learn; we cannot do the all important ‘higher level thinking’; we are anxious; we are less productive; we are less creative. It is also a fact that there are definite ‘windows of opportunity’ in any child’s development: times when learning new skills and concepts are easier than they will be later. Educators are there to take advantage of these opportunities and help maximize a child’s potential, but they are greatly impeded in doing this when it’s an environment dominated by violent and disruptive behaviours.

So I am glad that we are having this discussion about high school and the need to address these behaviours that are causing problems with our youth. But … you wouldn’t try to understand a tree’s growth and development by only looking at the branches; you need to look at its roots. After all, that’s the part that grows first, and the success (or failure) of growing roots affects the tree’s development for the rest of its life. Violence is violence, and its impact is long-reaching. The lessons that violence is okay, that it must be tolerated, that it is a perfectly normal way to behave at school, these are learned — and learned early. If we want to solve this problem, let’s solve it at the root.

Jake Bates,
Owen Sound, Ontario