Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 20, 1995                   TAG: 9511210004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EDUCATION

Everyone doubtless would agree that 1 and 2 are true. Increasingly, people would say 3 is true as well. Because, thankfully, bullets aren't flying around schools in our region's communities, 4 is harder to grasp.

What does violence have to do with all the American children failing in school, getting scant benefit from the expensive educational system provided by taxpayers, and falling behind their counterparts in other nations in academic achievement? Other culprits, such as pointy-headed bureaucrats who think up woozy educational policies, come more quickly to most people's minds.

But a new study, ``Hidden Casualties: The Relationship Between Violence and Learning,'' makes the link. The culture of violence in which children are being raised is adversely affecting schools' ability to do their jobs. And the solution is not so simple as installing metal detectors or patrolling guards to keep guns, knives and drugs off school property. The violence still comes in - carried in kids' heads.

The study, by a pair of authors at Harvard University and sponsored by the National Health & Education Consortium, focuses primarily on children who live in homes or neighborhoods where violence is an everyday reality. There's little comfort in it, though, for parents who don't abuse each other or their children, and who don't live in neighborhoods where gunplay is more common on the streets than kickball. Their children's minds, too, may be filled with images of violence from television and movies and videogames.

As a result, the study suggests, the development of cognitive ability, language and analytical skills is affected, and can even be thwarted. Children may be shortchanged on early-learning experiences involving their trust in themselves and others, retarding their readiness for school. They may develop defenses against fears that interfere with learning ability, or spend so much energy on defense mechanisms that they're too emotionally exhausted to learn. Anxiety may render them unable to concentrate, or cause headaches, stomach aches and asthma attacks that hamper learning. Most devastating of all, regular exposure to violence may convince children they have no future - so what's the use of learning?

Psychobabble? Call it that, if you will, but the study should remind us that the victims of violence are not just those who are physically wounded. It's a reminder, too, that schools have a larger stake in violence-prevention than simply breaking up fist fights.

It is not woozy thinking to teach children skills, including conflict resolution, that can help them find nonviolent solutions to problems, help them reason their way through their fears, and through stressful and even dangerous situations.