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Schools claim they have a zero tolerance for aggressive behavior of any kind, but the reality is a lot of shoving and pushing goes on during the ordinary movement of students throughout the school day. I have nephews and nieces, victims of generational poverty, who were recently suspended from the schools for fighting. When I asked them why they fought, they replied, "We're not going to allow people to push us around."
Within the meaning of their response lies the root of the problems of violence in schools.
Like my nieces and nephews, I was once suspending for fighting in school and that was over forty years ago.
I wasn't a bully back then-I hated fighting with a passion. Like my nieces and nephews, however, I fought because I felt like I had to maintain some semblance of dignity. When you live at the bottom of society, where the soft bigotry of low expectations constantly puts you down, and you are embarrassed about the clothes you wear, and your self-esteem is hammered hard by the behavior of your more privileged classmates, then it doesn't take much shoving and pushing to start a fight.
To stop bullies, our schools have to start by recognizing that zero-tolerance toward fighting, in terms of policy, is a failure in its current form.
My nephew called zero-tolerance an oxymoron.
Schools have to do more than punish those who engage in fighting--they have to offer therapy to treat the source of the behavior.
Schools have to actively seek out the bullies. It's not hard to find them. Just ask the students-they'll tell you.
Once identified, then begin counseling bullies early on--teach them the devastating affects their actions have upon the victims, and share the abundance of statistics that show the negative consequences that their behavior will have upon their future. Assign role models to work with the bullies and help them become role models for other students.
Further, schools have to make a special effort to protect the underclass, because they are the most vulnerable- they are the ones most likely to fight back and the ones who can least afford suspension. Often the underclass student will drop out after a suspension, which is what happened to my niece. In a bizarre sort of way, she was holding on to her dignity.
Unless you're a member of the poverty class, you couldn't understand why someone would drop out of school over a suspension-how they could give up like that. But schools can save these children through counseling programs that help build the self-image of the child.
They can use role models to teach the child the hidden rules of middle class society-to help them understand that their behavior is part of a larger culture of poverty that is actually holding them back.
Money won't solve the problems of children in poverty. And, our school policies are unwittingly facilitating the bad choices made by children in poverty, such as dropping out of high school, by failing to adopt a policy of dealing with bullies in a way that protects the underclass.
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