Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 28, 1995 TAG: 9502280065
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER WALTER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The incident that gave rise to this statement involved two children who disagreed during a recess game. One threw a kickball into the face of the other, who attempted, unsuccessfully, to retaliate. Both children lost recess privileges for a month.
After this conversation with one of the parents, I thought about how we adults resolve conflict. Our efforts, as parents, to resolve conflict bear directly and powerfully upon children's attempts to resolve their own problems peaceably. In this situation, the power of parental modeling was clearly apparent in the child's refusal to follow all the school training, rules and modeling in favor of her mother's mandate to "hit back."
In my school, the rules clearly prohibit fighting and physical contact of a coercive nature. In my classroom, the students developed and voted upon a rule that requires them to "keep their hands, feet and objects to themselves." The school has displays to encourage and recognize good behavior; in one, students who exhibit responsible behavior have their name added to a responsibility chain. The principal emphasizes one behavior each month to the entire student body and faculty for schoolwide focus. Rewards are given for individual and classwide good behavior.
Students who create severe problems, before referral to the principal, are required to write about what they did and to develop a written plan to do better in the future. The school's guidance counselor conducts frequent anger groups and groups on interpersonal relations for students who do not have the skills to cope appropriately with others.
Despite those efforts, this child and many others choose to assault classmates when they do not get their way, or when they fail in their initial, tentative efforts to get along with another student.
It would be one thing if the child came to school with no coping skills. It is another issue altogether when the parents train their children in just one coping "skill" - to hit their classmates. Coping skills can be taught, especially if the parents are enlightened enough to accept help and learn to teach the skills at home, too. Unfortunately, many of the students who have been told to "hit back" come from middle-class homes in which the parents are already well-educated and capable of teaching more effective interpersonal skills. You would think that they'd know better.
Human beings have a long history of trying to get along with each other, and this history should be instructive. From ancient times to the present, secular and religious leaders as well as scholars and philosophers have struggled with ways to mediate conflicts between people. Individual resolution of disputes works quite well, they have found, when the two sides are willing to communicate and compromise. We use a word to describe this communication and compromise process that results in the best possible situation for all parties: cooperation.
There will be times when two persons, two companies or two nations will not be able to cooperate.Then there is a temptation by both sides to resort to coercion and even naked force to achieve their ends.
The desired ends also become a focus so intense that any means to reach those ends becomes acceptable to people who ordinarily would not hurt anything or anyone.
In the above example of the parent and child, the desire to not be bothered by others was so intense that every way of dealing with conflict was disregarded in favor of parent-sanctioned violence. What could parent-sanctioned violence, as a first strategy for solving conflict, lead to?
"He wouldn't leave me alone so I screamed at him."
"He wouldn't leave me alone so I pushed him."
"He wouldn't leave me alone so I punched him."
"He wouldn't leave me alone so I shot him."
When people or nations war, people are hurt and killed. We lose sight of the misery when we win relatively bloodless victory (considering only U.S. losses) over a fourth-rate nation such as Iraq. Somehow we believe we are immune to the risks and consequences of violent action. Nations with this attitude are grossly stupid.
So are individuals who adopt the same attitude. In real life, we all hurt and bleed. And when someone is dying or broken or even just bruised up a little, the reason for the conflict somehow doesn't seem all that important.
The leaders, scholars and philosophers through recorded time sought to find a solution to our tendency to solve difficult conflicts by violent means. They found something that works: the rule of law.
In the rule of the jungle, an individual takes the responsibility of being judge, jury and executioner in a case in which he or she has been harmed. The rule of the jungle is revenge, vigilantism and a thin disguise for doing what a person wanted to do all along.
In a rule of law, society - be it the school, the community, the state or the nation - establishes certain levels of conduct, and provides rewards and punishments for meeting or failing to meet them. One might be a prohibition against running in the hallway at school, so children do not crash into each other and get hurt. Or it might be a speed limit on the highway, so adults do not crash into each other and get hurt.
Societal punishment of unacceptable behavior, rather than victim-imposed punishment, is very important to the orderly conduct of society and the safety of the victim, too. Under the rule of law, the me-against-you syndrome is eliminated, and so are escalations of violence like this:
"He bothered me so I screamed at him."
"He disrespected me by screaming at me so I hit him."
"He disrespected me by hitting me ...."
Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam.
The step from hitting back on the playground to murdering in the street is a short one. It only requires a little more aging (not maturity), a little bigger slight to avenge and a more effective weapon. In terms of emotion and poor upbringing, there is no difference.
Rules and standards and laws are established to take our emotions out of the equation. They are established to keep conflicts from jumping straight into a me-against-you situation. They are established to remove revenge by having the rule of law, and not the rule of the jungle, punish the wrongdoer.
Rules and standards and laws break the cycle of a son killing another family's son who then kills the first son and so on, until the last one left alive can hollowly proclaim, "See? We were right."
If you want to see the solution to - and, if the shoe fits, the problem with - violent children, look into the mirror. If your child's coping skills are limited to screaming and hitting and perhaps, though I dearly hope not, killing, and you want to discover the reason for this violent behavior, look into the mirror.
If you do not like what you see, change it. If you do not know how to change it, ask. If you won't break the cycle of violence for your own sake, then do it for the sake of the children.
Christopher Walter, a retired U.S. Coast Guard officer, teaches elementary school in Montgomery County.
by CNB