COLLEGE STATION - Littleton, Atlanta, Conyers, Jonesboro, Pearl and West Paducah - all sites of recent school violence.
Jane Conoley, dean of education at Texas A&M University, says the solutions to school violence lie not within legislative standards, but rather community standards.
"The violence is a reflection of where we as a society have put our values," she says. "When society is more violent, schools are more violent."
Conoley, a school psychologist, believes communities must set the standards as to what is or is not considered acceptable behavior. Individuals must step back and look at the whole societal context that has been developing and see what hard decisions should be made to potentially decrease the violence, she adds.
"There is no short cut to a solution of how to avoid violence; however, it is not the job of the government, advertising or media industries. It's all of our jobs," she says.
Community standards reflect what individuals of each community consider relevant to their families' healthy living, she says. These decisions may include spending less time watching TV and more time interacting with children; spending more money on schools than on personal items like a new big screen TV; or refusing to attend movies that violate one's sense of decency.
"Right now the market controls the consumer; however, if the consumer is strong, the overall market will follow the consumer," she explains. "The advertising business or media is not evil, they're just reflecting on society."
Conoley adds that society today is more apt to put emphasis on such things as aggression and hurting others to get what they want and that is reflected in the schools.
"People often see schools as building blocks and they are, but more appropriately they are mirrors of society because the people in the schools (teachers,
students, parents) come from society and are not perfect."
But Conoley says making choices for a better society is challenging because
people may need to change what they watch, listen to or say and change is hard.
"The hardest thing to do is change ourselves because as we have seen in the case of school violence it's easier to point a finger of blame at someone else rather than change," she comments.
For example, she says that blaming one facet of society, such as the computer game industry for producing violent games, does not aid in the solution process because it's done in isolation.
"You can take away the violent computer games, but it doesn't help when you're still paying to see violent movies," she explains. "We have a constitutional right to do certain things, but having the right is different than if we should do it. We need self-control, not censorship."
The paradox, though, is that despite the fact that schools have had high-profile cases of violence, kids are much safer at schools than they may be in their homes or neighborhoods, Conoley states. Of the 2,300 homicides in the United States, she adds, 10 percent were among youths and most occurred in low socio-economic neighborhoods, not at schools.
"The attitudes of where crimes take place are signs of unconscious societal racism," Conoley points out. "We know the crimes are happening somewhere else other than our neighborhoods, but it takes a Littleton, Colo., incident to get our attention that not all is well with our society regardless of where we live."
Above all, Conoley is adamant that the support for public education not only continue, but increase.
"The public school system is the strongest glue that holds our pluralistic society together," she states. "It's not perfect because we're not perfect, but it's unique because its premise is universal access of a good education, which gives our citizens a great advantage in contrast to the social caste systems of other countries."
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Contact: Charla Jones at (409) 845-4680.
07/07/99
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