School violence
At the beginning – there’s one important question - what the school violence is? “School violence” it sounds strange. School is the place where young people gather knowledge; meet friends so at the first glance there is no place for violence. Usually we did’t associate that place with some kind of violence but nowadays very often we can read about many incidents at schools. For some reasons we can observe violence at many polish schools?
There are many forms of violence at schools (physical, psychological as intimidating or wheedle money). In my opinion we can observe violence at schools at few levels. First – between pupils, second in the both way between pupils and teachers, and theoretically some kind of violence between teachers – but I haven’t heard about such.
Let me say few sentences about each kind of school violence. So first, violence between students. It is very common and it’s not so weird and surprising as e.g. violence between student and teacher. The level of violence depends on type of school and what follows students which learn at that school. Fortunately at schools like IV we can’t observe pure forms of violence and aggression. I’ve said “pure”, because the are many definitions of violence and someone can say that e.g. forcing students from Ist classes to go on the “otrzęsiny” and do there many weird things (eating delicious things …) is also is some kind of violence. But in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s tradition so if the “wave” last one day and everyone have gut fun it’ ok.
In my opinion specific form of aggression is smoking at the school grounds, especially in the bathrooms (because innocent students have no choice and they have to breathe with polluted air).
But that was examples of not serious violence. In many schools the situation is worse. There are gangs which try to terrorize the school society. Why they do that. The first and the most important reason is that they need money for …alcohol, drugs, … Some young people think that violence encourages others to respect them.
The cases of beating and wheedling money are very common. It’s difficult to cope with this problem because terrorized students don’t tell anybody about that (they are intimidated). So what we can do? or what school directors can do to make this place more safety.
One way is to install cameras at schools. It’s common in USA and in western Europe. But in Poland would be very difficult to make such system because it cost a lot of money, and as we know polish education has no money for essential items so we can’t dram about cameras. But to tell the truth I wouldn’t like to learn at school fool of cameras.
The second very important thing connected with school violence is law. Government should think about changing law which concern young people under 17. Members of school gangs are young and they can’t go to the prison. They are not afraid of punishment –and it should be changed.
Oh, and I’ve almost forgotten. It’s connected with our school too. About three or four months ago someone has broke something in bathroom. I don’t know exactly what happened. But it’s not important. After that incident each student of our school had to pay about 2 ZŁ. I think that it wasn’t the best idea. It would be better to find guilty person and punish him (next time he would take into account that he can be punished).
But cameras and better law won’t solve the problem of violene. The problem of violence starts at homes. Parents have to sacrifice more time to children and try to bring them up for good persons. In the most cases members of gangs come from poor or broken families. Parents have to set a good example to their children. And that can change situation.
But I’ve almost forgotten to say about violence between students and teachers. It’s not so common, but we could read about few incidents connected with it. 19th June 2002, on Gdańk Polytechnic, a student tried to kill his examiner with axe. (Examiner suspected that he was cribbing on the exam – and that was probably the reason of crime). The are more such examples, in Germany on Matura Exam, student shoot some teachers, in the USA about 2 years ago someone killed also some teachers
Helaa