Cultural Violence In The Classroom

In identity-based conflicts, what a person learns can become whom a person learns to hate. This book explores the unique position occupied by educators during protracted ethnic conflict. As transmitters of social authority, educators occupy a position in society capable of supporting repressive constructs or challenging social inequalities. Educators who are seen to legitimize the social order may be seen as symbolic markers of the dominant group, while educators who challenge the social order can be perceived as upstarts or threats that seek to subvert social authority. By surveying the perceptions, perspectives, experiences and opinions of Israeli tertiary teachers, this book explores the positionality of educators as agents who wield “both an instrument for oppression and a tool for liberation” (Alzaroo and Hunt 2003, 165). Peace education is a platform to achieve a global culture of peace by recognizing and delegitimizing violence. Using future visioning, this book considers that a primary obstruction to achieving peace is the ability to conceive of peace and asks three questions: do university educators challenge conflict narratives in the classroom? What obstacles exist to prevent educating for peace in Israel? How do educators imagine the future?

Drawing on one of the most comprehensive and representative studies of school violence ever conducted, Benbenishty and Astor explore and differentiate the many manifestations of victimization in schools, providing a new model for understanding school violence in context. The authors make striking use of the geopolitical climate of the Middle East to model school violence in terms of its context within as well as outside of the school site. This pioneering new work is unique in that it uses empirical data to show which variables and factors are similar across different cultures and which variables appear unique to different cultures. This empirical contrast of universal with culturally specific patterns is sorely needed in the school violence literature. The authors' innovative research maps the contours of verbal, social, physical, and sexual victimization and weapons possession, as well as staff-initiated violence against students, presenting some startling findings along the way. When comparing schools in Israel with schools in California, the authors demonstrate for the first time that for most violent events the patterns of violent behaviors have the same relationship for different age groups, genders, and nations. Conversely, they highlight specific kinds of violence that are strongly influenced by culture. They reveal, for example, how Arab boys encounter much more boy-to-boy sexual harassment than their Jewish peers, and that teacher-initiated victimization of students constitutes a significant and often overlooked type of school violence, especially among certain cultural groups. Crucially, the authors expand the paradigm of understanding school violence to encompass the intersection of cultural, ethnic, neighborhood, and family characteristics with intra-school factors such as teacher-student dynamics, anti-violence policies, student participation, grade level, and religious and gender divisions. It is only by understanding the multiple contexts of school violence, they argue, that truly effective prevention programs, interventions, research agendas, and policies can be implemented. In an age of heightened concern over school security, this study has enormous implications for school violence theory, research, and policy throughout the world. The patterns that emerge from the authors' analysis form a blueprint for the research agenda needed to address new and exciting theoretical and practical questions regarding the intersections of context and school victimization. The unique perspective on school violence will undoubtedly strike a chord with all readers, informing scholars and students across the fields of social work, psychology, education, sociology, public health, and peace/conflict studies. Its clearly written and accessible style will appeal to teachers, principals, policy makers and parents interested in the authors' practical discussion of policy and intervention implications, making this an invaluable tool for understanding, preventing, and handling violence in schools throughout the world.

- Provide up-to-date knowledge about the nature of school violence, its etiology, epidemiology, and impact - Analyzes school violence through a multicultural and international perspective - The lead editor, Florence Denmark, is an internationally-recognized scholar and former APA president and a recipient of the 2004 Gold Medal Awards for Life Achievement from the American Psychological Foundation (APF)

Escalations in student violence continue throughout the nation, but inner-city schools are the hardest hit, with classrooms and corridors infected by the anger, aggression, and criminality endemic to street life. Technological surveillance, security personnel, and paramilitary control tactics to maintain order and safety are the common administrative response. Essential educational programs are routinely slashed from school budgets, even as the number of guards, cameras, and metal detectors continues to multiply. Based on years of frontline experience in New York's inner-city schools, Maximum Security demonstrates that such policing strategies are not only ineffectual, they divorce students and teachers from their ethical and behavioral responsibilities. Exploring the culture of violence from within, John Devine argues that the security system, with its uniformed officers and invasive high-tech surveillance, has assumed presumptive authority over students' bodies and behavior, negating the traditional roles of teachers as guardians and agents of moral instruction. The teacher is reduced to an information bureaucrat, a purveyor of technical knowledge, while the student's physical well-being and ethical actions are left to the suspect scrutiny of electronic devices and security specialists with no pedagogical mission, training, or interest. The result is not a security system at all, but an insidious institutional disengagement from the caring supervision of the student body. With uncompromising honesty, Devine provides a powerful portrayal of an educational system in crisis and bold new insight into the malignant culture of school violence.

Introduction -- Note -- Chapter 9: Considering research -- Introduction -- Engaging with research -- Engaging in research -- Suggested methods -- Evaluation -- Conclusion -- Note -- References -- Chapter 10: Case studies -- Introduction -- Holte Secondary School, Birmingham -- Kings Norton Primary School, Birmingham -- Queensbridge Primary School, Hackney, London -- Raddlebarn Primary School, Birmingham -- Hackney Community College, London -- Conclusion -- Chapter 11: Curricular activities -- Introduction -- Inclusion -- Citizenship -- Wellbeing -- Conclusion -- References -- Concluding comments -- Reference -- Index

"This book outlines a novel unifying model that brings together these previously distinct literatures. We present an ecological model of school violence, bullying and safety in evolving contexts, to integrate all we have learned in the last decade, and suggest ways to move forward"--

This book examines the historical context of African Americans' educational experiences, and it provides information that helps to assess the dominant discourse on education, which emphasises White middle-class cultural values and standardisation of students' outcomes. Curriculum violence is defined as the deliberate manipulation of academic programming in a manner that ignores or compromises the intellectual and psychological well being of learners. Related to this are the issues of assessment and the current focus on high-stakes standardised testing in schools, where most teachers are forced to teach for the test.