III. Causes of Youth Violence

Introduction

School violence finds its roots in the complex and related problems of an individual child, a family, a community, a school, and a national culture. Understanding the potential effect of the various factors demystifies the causes of youth violence and makes it a more manageable problem. Communities that understand the causes of youth violence will be better equipped to develop local solutions to it.

This section reviews the following factors:

• Characteristics of the Individual Child

• Characteristics of the Family

• Characteristics of the Community

• Effect of School Responses to Violence

• American Culture and Policies The more factors a community’s plan encompasses, the greater the likelihood of reducing the potential for school violence.

Characteristics of the Individual Child

Child abuse and neglect can cause long lasting damage which schools and communities will have to confront. For purposes of this document, neglect encompasses a broad range of omissions. It ranges from the traditional vision of neglect that would shock each of us, to less obvious forms. It may be failing to protect a child from an abusive family member; it may be allowing a child to witness violence against another family member; it may be a lack of nurturing; or it may be concessions made so that a child spends hours in front of the television. Neglect varies in degree, and it can affect some children more profoundly than others.

Child development research provides a foundation for understanding youth violence. Not all children who are subjected to a troubled home life, an inadequate community, and/or media violence resort to violence. But some children do.

Abuse and neglect can actually affect brain development, which may affect an individual’s propensity for violent behavior. Brain development research offers some answers to why some children turn to violence and others do not. The contemporary view is that both nature and nurture are constantly at play in determining how a child develops. Bad experiences during a child’s development can actually alter brain chemistry. The impact of altered brain chemistry may be reflected in an episode of violent behavior. (See Appendix B)

A background of abuse and neglect can also exacerbate the challenges of adolescent behavior. Adolescence is an unsettling period for all children. It is not always surprising when some children become troublesome and defiant during adolescence. “The insecurity adolescents feel – their need to take risks; their abundant energy; their sense of invincibility – propel them toward behavior adults might label foolhardy.”29 A more hostile and defiant adolescent may turn to alcohol and/or drugs. Alcohol has long been known to provoke aggression and violence in some people.30 Adolescent substance abuse compounds otherwise normal aggressiveness and may isolate a child even more.

A background of abuse and neglect, the struggles of adolescence, and substance abuse are all factors that a child may bring to school. Our schools are faced daily with some children who bring one or all of these problems from home.

Characteristics of the Family

Our culture historically expected the family to deal with virtually all familial problems within the walls of its home. Contemporary stresses make it very difficult for parents to be able to attend to all the needs of their children all of the time. Factors that contribute to this problem include the economic necessity for both parents to work, the increase in number of single-parent households, or the increase in teenage mothers, whose command of the demands of parenting is almost always inadequate. Added to this mix are some parents who subject their children to neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, substance abuse, and weapons.

School violence cannot be successfully addressed without examining the home environment. The family plays an obvious role in a child’s development and resiliency to violent behavior. (For purposes of this document, “resiliency to violent behavior” refers to a child’s ability to control his or her reaction to behaviors that will result in aggression and/or victimization. This approach acknowledges both the objective of reducing the incidence of violence in our society and the likelihood that even our best efforts will not completely eliminate it.) Parents nurture, discipline, and reinforce good behavior. They are also their children’s first and most important role models. When these essentials to healthy development are provided in the home,31 a child has a stronger defense against violence. If parents do not meet these needs, such other resources as extended family, day care, or school may do so. If no one addresses them, however, potentially negative influences such as television and some peers may adversely affect a child’s development. (See Appendix C)

If a child’s needs are not met, he or she may not be developing good communication and interpersonal skills, self-esteem can be permanently hurt, and exposure to positive behavior models may be nonexistent. Without opportunities to develop those skills and traits, options for dealing with conflict, disappointment, or frustration may be quite limited.32 It is in such an environment that exposure, through popular culture, to violence and other poor behavior may have a more profound impact.33

Sometimes it is not just what’s lacking in the home, but the presence of other factors at home that may exacerbate the problem. Unhealthy behavior by parents can have a detrimental effect on their child’s ability to cope with aggression. Alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and/or a parent’s attitude toward violence may reduce a child’s resiliency toward violence. (See Appendix D)

The presence of guns in the home, in combination with any of these other characteristics, can make an impulsive or depressed child a danger to himself and to others. “We already know that having guns in our homes dramatically increases the risk of homicide and suicide for the members of our families, while there is little if any chance that they will ever be used to protect our homes from outside invasion.”34 While the overall percentage of homes with firearms has declined slightly since the 1970’s, about 35 percent of America’s homes are equipped with guns.35

Characteristics of the Community

The perception of the community as an extension of the family has significantly declined. Most communities are not very cohesive. Communities as well as families can neglect children.

Some communities have strong networks that provide support for parents, role models for children, and a variety of youth activities while others do not. In communities characterized by parents changing jobs relatively frequently, families relocating, and children moving from school district to school district, support networks may be weaker. While those families with relatives nearby may obtain their help with child rearing, families that have relocated generally will not have that resource. People may not even know their neighbors or their neighbors’ children.

In this context, community organizations, such as churches and synagogues, which can be community centers, can play an important role in protecting a child. A retrospective study of aggression in schoolchildren by Leonard D. Eron, found a correlation between attending religious services and resistance to violence in children. “Church-going turned out to be a significant factor. Aggressive 8-year-olds who were taken to church were less likely to grow up to have trouble with the law than those who did not go.”36 Whether it is through religious or secular programs, opportunities for developing community values and solidarity are very important in helping children avoid violence.

If our communities are not responsive to the needs of families, there can be repercussions for school violence. Even though most children are raised by two parents who work or by a single parent, adequate day care, after-school programs, and summer programs are not always available.

A child who starts acting violently will often do so during periods of unstructured and unsupervised time. It should not be surprising that, in the absence of adequate after-school activities, violent crime by young people peaks between 3 and 7 p.m.37 According to a recent survey by PRIDE, a nonprofit drug prevention program, students who did not carry guns to school were 53% more likely to be involved in community-based after-school programs and 34% more likely to be involved in school activities like band and sports teams.38

Community openness to diversity and differences also relates to school violence. Prejudices born in the home may be reinforced by a community attitude hostile toward people with differences based on race, religion, ethnicity,39 gender, sexual orientation, and/or disability. Both latent and open hostility toward people based on such differences too often find expression in the words and actions of schoolchildren. Discrimination and harassment also too often escalate to violence by children against children.

Vermont is becoming increasingly diverse. Recent testimony at hearings of the Vermont Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights depicted racial prejudice as one undercurrent of school violence. Accounts of repeated harassment and aggressive behavior by white students toward students of color were described.

Homophobia has a significant effect on the safety of gay and lesbian teens. In one national study, 80% of homosexual teens reported verbal insults, 44% were threatened with violence, 31% were chased or followed, and 17% said they were physically assaulted.40

Widespread community prejudices based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and/or disability make our schools less safe and have a detrimental effect on the learning environment.

Before school violence can be addressed effectively, we need to understand what is, and what is not, being provided to children by the community. Lack of cohesiveness, lack of services for children and families, and a hostile environment toward minorities are all problems that can reduce a child’s resiliency to violence.

Effect of School Responses to Violence

Families and communities have turned increasingly to our schools to deal with youth violence. Our schools, however, simply have inadequate resources to deal with the magnitude of the problem. And in some instances, well-intended disciplinary efforts at school may actually exacerbate the problem for individual children.

Schools have a responsibility to maintain safety for their students and employees, a responsibility extending to appropriate and effective disciplinary action. Disciplinary policies reflect a weighing of rights – the rights of a student who engages in violence and the rights of students and staff victimized by it. A disciplinary approach that further alienates a violent or disruptive student from the school, however, may lead to further violence and, at the same time, deprive the student of both educational and other needed services. In the end, everyone may suffer.41

Schools must do what they can to keep their campuses safe: “When the state’s interest in the education of its young people is strong enough to require mandatory school attendance, pursuant to compulsory education laws, it naturally follows that the state, when acting on behalf of the interests of the child, has ‘a moral duty to maintain student discipline [in the classroom] and to protect children from violence that occurs while they are attending the very schools to which the state has bound them to attend.’”42

Disciplinary steps, such as school suspension and expulsion, may be imposed without violating the disciplined student’s rights. “A student’s right to an education may be constitutionally denied when outweighed by the school’s interest in protecting other students, teachers, and school property, and in preventing the disruption of the education system. Reasonable regulations punishable by suspension do not deny the right to an education but rather deny the right to engage in prohibited behavior.”43

According to the Children’s Defense Fund, 13,076 public school students are suspended each school day.44 Whether suspension is an effective deterrent is questionable; whether it helps to change violent behavior is doubtful. Nonetheless, school suspension is the cornerstone of “zero tolerance” laws and policies that respond to students bringing weapons to school. Zero tolerance policies of schools or districts mandate predetermined consequences for various student offenses.45 The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 requires school districts that receive federal funds to adopt a gun-free school policy and to expel for one year students who carry a gun to school.46 As of 1996-1997, 94% of all public schools had zero tolerance policies for firearms, and 91% for all other weapons.47

Perhaps the most extreme state legislation to supplement The Gun-Free Schools Act is Michigan’s zero tolerance law. Passed in 1994, it mandates that any student found with a weapon on school grounds or found guilty of arson or rape be permanently expelled from all public school districts in the state.48 The implication is that gun-toting students are released on communities throughout Michigan with no prospects for an education or timely rehabilitation.

In sum, school discipline that merely isolates at-risk students and reduces opportunities for an education can exacerbate youth violence.

American Culture and Policies

Our culture and policies in this arena too often can appear simultaneously to devalue children and promote violence. “We have perhaps the most violent TV anywhere in the world. TV becomes the baby-sitter and the conflict-resolution patterns seen by the kids are blowing away the other guy. Then we provide the easiest availability of handguns, even automatic guns, in the world.”49

National culture and policies may reinforce the use of violence by children. After looking at the characteristics of individual children, families, local communities, and school discipline, an examination of our national culture and policies is in order. This section examines how America values its children, what we use to amuse our children, how we portray our children, and how we can protect our children from guns.

Vermont may lag behind many unfortunate national trends, but it is not immune to them. Television has become the great equalizer when it comes to youth violence. (See Appendix E) Hours of exposure to television violence can be desensitizing, increase aggression, heighten fear, and reduce sympathy for others’ pain and suffering. Children who spend most of their time watching television have decreased opportunities to develop a variety of social skills, including how to engage in proper social behavior.

Unchecked exposure to video and virtual reality games, the internet, and movies can reinforce the culture of violence which has reached so many children through television.

And it is not just the violence viewed by children that is problematic – it is the way our culture associates children with violence. “Our culture demonizes young people. We use negative, scary images of youth to sell movies, newspapers, television shows, and magazines. We look at youth as if they are responsible for all our ills.”50

Violence sells. Violence sells to children; associating children with violence sells to both adults and children. Our national cultural romance with violence may extend to schoolyards and classrooms. Understanding the impact of television and other media depicting that aspect of our culture can help us develop useful approaches for schools.

While our popular culture in many ways glorifies violence, our social policies have moved toward harsher penalties for youthful offenders rather than prevention of youth violence. At the same time, other social policies have become less and less supportive of families and children. We are quick to blame youth violence on the family, but we are disinclined to support families. According to developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, “We have earned the dubious distinction of doing less for our families and children than any other industrialized nation.”51

The changes in families, communities, and popular culture result in less adult supervision and increased exposure to violence by our children. Under such circumstances, the availability of guns is, at best, problematic. While the availability of guns alone may not increase violence, in combination with the factors discussed above, the presence of weapons obviously increases the risk of violence and serious bodily harm or death. (See Appendix F)