Overcoming violence Conference

Organised by the Moray House School of Education and Edinburgh Peace and Justice Education Centre. Held on Thursday 12th February 2004
Report by Susan McColl.

Organised by the Moray House School of Education and Edinburgh Peace and Justice Education Centre. Held on Thursday 12th February 2004
Report by Susan McColl.
Organised by the Moray House School of Education and Edinburgh Peace and Justice Education Centre.
Held on Thursday 12th February 2004

Pamela Munn gave her usual friendly keynote address and as she often does, gave us some succinct quotes made by past generations about the worrying state of violence in our schools and society - this is no new problem.

She went on to expose the three roots from which violence emerges. One of the causes can be medical: hyperactivity, schizophrenia, bi-polar/clinical depression, etc and the cure for these illnesses is medication, with or without counselling. It can also be psychological damage that causes violence in children, involving the child’s or families life experience and the cure in these cases is individual intervention and family therapy. This can help the child to make sense of the past, allowing him/her to experience less frustration and therefore less anger.

The third cause for violence can centre on the social situation in which we find ourselves: the political situation, repression, crowd control, discipline guidelines in school – fairness.
Professor Munn was keen to stress that she wasn’t blaming schools, but she did think schools could do things to influence our attitudes towards violence through such things as praise, discussion and resolution education and to therefore lead the way to deal with conflict in non-violent ways.




I went to two workshops. The first was presented by a sixth former and a modern studies teacher from Alva Academy and was based on an established link with two schools in the Northern Cape, South Africa. A comparative study in the form of interviews on video takes a look at the gang/tribal culture in their communities, exploring solutions and causes.



The girl from S6 presenting the workshop had herself been involved in the endemic rivalry in her environment. She explained how the study along with her visit to the communities in South Africa changed her perspective and broadened her horizons. She intends to go to university now. The study involved all groups from S2 – S6.

Having nothing to do fuels the need for young children to take risks – being part of a gang involves risk taking and a sense of belonging. It is brave to break away. Girls do not have the same commitment to gangs as boys.

The video is still being edited but there are plans to promote it as an educational tool in the future.

The schools in South Africa have had problems with their IT provision, but hope to start their video soon – the comparison will make a large contribution to our understanding of endemic violence between communities.
 

Peaceful Schools Project.

This famous project is based in Greenock and Port Glasgow and was presented by two pupils one in sixth year and one in fifth year. Their pride in the project and confident presentation was impressive. The school had funding and an ‘expert’ was employed part time to ‘bed in’ the project and train the pupils. Conferences were organised to spread the word. Training in mediation began in S5 and this had proved to be very popular. Pupils in S6 passed on their knowledge to P6s in the schools’ associated primaries.

As part of this project, secondary school pupils could seek out the sixth formers for a variety of problems they might be having with their peers – most of these were dealt with through mediation with the S6 pupils. There is frequent discussion with guidance teachers, who make sure the process is running effectively and who offer help with more serious problems.

A HT at the workshop was concerned about ‘sneaking’: a crime punished by ‘murda’ in his school! Both girls answered confidently that although ‘sneaking’ used to be a big issue in the school there was no longer anything cool about bullying – nobody had the least qualm about reporting incidents. ‘Sneaking’ was simply no longer a word used in the school.

This was a massive change in ethos over a short period in time. One of the presenters was very open about her own aggressive tendencies in the lower school and her commitment to the scheme now. It was evident that you can turn around entrenched behavioural patterns through this project.