Introduction

Most Americans would agree that public schools should provide a safe environment for their students, faculty and staff. However, with the history of violence in American public schools and the recent phenomena of school shootings this ideal is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve. The National Crime Victimization Survey data show that an estimated 2.7 million violent crimes take place annually either at schools or near schools. In addition to this, about one in four public school teachers rated physical conflicts among students as being a serious or moderately serious problem (Nolin & Davies, 1995). Unfortunately, the statistics above are only a few of the many that identify this problem and the fact that the possibility of student victimization is rising with alarming frequency.

Because school violence is now an issue of national concern, many measures have been taken to preclude violent incidences. Zero Tolerance policies, requiring students to wear uniforms, the presence of police and other law enforcement representatives, and violence prevention and reduction programs are some examples of the proposed policies and programs designed to prevent school violence. However, most of these reactionary policies and programs miss the mark when it comes to their intended goal of preventing violence. In fact, many of the policies, especially the Zero Tolerance policies, are largely ineffective. While, it is definitely in the interests of school administrators to ensure that schools are as safe as possible, they must be careful not to do this by forfeiting a productive relationship between student and administration.

Also, inasmuch as public schools are institutions that are supposed to practice democracy so as to prepare students for participation in a democratic society, the current policies that endorse punishment as a means for preventing school violence counteract purported democratic sentiment. This is to say that the problem of violence in schools has to be met with constructive use of democratic problem solving rather than merely disseminating punishment without critical review. Trust is fundamental to democracy. Theoretically, in a democracy the people trust that the governing body is going to act in their best interest, and that the governing body will protect their individual rights as citizens and current or future participants in one or many civic dialogues. However, in our current system of violence prevention the student body is disarmed and wields no power to effect change; seemingly, they are at the will of administrative discretion or lack thereof. Coupling this fact with the idea that current punishments are often seen as too harsh and arbitrary, students feel betrayed. Trust has been severed because the governing body is no longer acting in the best interests of the students but rather they are acting hastily and irrationally to provide a quick fix for a growing problem. At this point, the perpetuation of school violence not only becomes a show of what is going on in the larger society but it also becomes a show of nihilism. So what is the answer? How do we reconcile the need for safety measures and the need to employ more democratic and constructive ways of solving problems?

Conflict resolution is an alternative method that encourages students to critically think through ways to solve conflicts nonviolently. Conflict resolution is democratic in the way of giving some of the power back to the “people” or students and it helps to restore the trust that is essential to a productive and non-combative relationship between students and administration. Conflict resolution resists teacher- and administration-made edicts and instead allows students to take an active role in deciding outcomes. Conflict resolution encourages deliberation, a concept that essential to representative democracy. More importantly, conflict resolution is a proactive project rather than a reactive one. When conflict resolution is taught it will provide another vantage point for teachers and students alike to view disputes and issues of violence in a new, more critical light. One teacher notes, “Teachers, especially in the inner-city schools, can use counseling techniques such as peer mediation, conflict resolution and cooperative learning in the classroom. This promotes trust between students and teachers and gives teachers a means to preempt violent situations (Adler, 1993).”

In order to prevent school violence, public school systems must invest in a curriculum that supports teaching conflict resolution. School systems must realize that conflict resolution, when taught as an invaluable life skill, is a viable tool for reforming hostile/violent school environments. In this essay, I hope to show the importance of teaching/utilizing conflict resolution to prevent school violence. I will begin by laying out current security measures and examine their effectiveness. Using the current situation as a backdrop, I will then discuss programs for teaching conflict resolution that disable the punitive atmosphere of many public schools and enable trust to be restored and schools to become better vehicles for democracy.

Zero Tolerance

As I stated above, American public schools have adopted a number of reactionary policies that propose to prevent school violence. Zero Tolerance policies have been adopted by most school systems since the early 1990s. The primary intent of zero tolerance policies is to deter students from engaging in any behavior that may threaten injury, inflict harm, or otherwise disrupt the ‘educational mission’ of the school (www.kic.org). According to the National Center for Education Statistics:

- “At least 9 out of 10 schools reported zero tolerance policies for firearms (94 percent) and weapons other than firearms (91 percent). Eighty – seven percent of schools had policies of zero tolerance for alcohol and 88 percent had zero tolerance policies for drugs. Most schools also had zero tolerance policies for violence and tobacco (79 percent each) (NCES).

The past ten years has seen a dramatic increase in the adoption of zero tolerance policies. Relying heavily upon school exclusion (suspension and expulsion) and school security measures (i.e. video surveillance, metal detectors, locker searches) zero tolerance works by punishing all incidents of violence, major and minor, severely in order to ‘send a message’ that any degree of violence will not be tolerated (Skiba &Peterson, 2000). Since the passage of the Gun Free Schools Act in 1994, federal policy takes a zero tolerance approach to possession of a firearm, which mandates a 1-year expulsion (Skiba &Peterson, 2000).

- In the 1996-97 school year, there were over 5,000 student expulsions for possession or use of a firearm. An additional 3,300 students were transferred to alternative schools. About 5 percent of all public schools (or 4,170) took one or more of these actions (NCES).

Some schools have even gone so far as to punish physical fights using zero tolerance. Judging from the rapid spread of zero tolerance, it has been argued that “stringent disciplinary policies” are not adopted because they are particularly effective rather they are adopted for their symbolic value, attempting to reassure parents, teachers and the administration that action is being taken to keep schools in order (Skiba &Peterson, 2000).

The latter statement holds a lot of weight in light of the fact that zero tolerance policies are wildly unsuccessful in preventing school violence. As of yet, there is not a wealth of statistical information measuring the efficiency of zero tolerance. However, the efficacy of zero tolerance policies can be judged as inefficient on the basis that school violence still persists. School violence has tapered off a bit, but the numbers concerning expulsion and suspension for certain acts are not dramatically decreasing. Also there is evidence that school exclusion augments dropout rates. So here we have a policy that does nothing to correct its intended problem and exacerbates another big problem.

The issue of fair and consistent punishment is another point of contention when it comes to effectiveness. Research suggests that the application of school discipline is often unfair and inconsistent. In an ethnographic study done by Brantlinger (1991), it was reported that both high- and low-income students perceived that disciplinary measures were unfairly targeted to low-income students (Skiba &Peterson, 2000).

Could these zero tolerance policies and the subsequent form of our public schools be any less democratic? Here we have a system wherein prevention is synonymous with school exclusion. Furthermore, this system prides itself with using school exclusion to weed-out the “troublemakers” or simply those who are largely perceived as “bad” students in exchange for maintaining order.

Seemingly, the focus of public schools has changed in that school administrations have become increasingly concerned with maintaining a good relationship with the established education hierarchy, be it at the state and/or federal level, and appearing to external parties to have the situation of school violence under control. Meanwhile, less focus is given to producing critical thinkers and acting as a democratic institution. While, the compulsion to prevent school violence is well understood, and the fact that zero tolerance policies behold flexibility is noted (Gagliardi, 2001), these facts do not dismiss the importance of maintaining a positive, trusting relationship between student and school. Because this relationship is being jeopardized in large part by harsh, arbitrary and unfair disciplinary policies something needs to change. A new approach to violence prevention must be employed.

Conflict Resolution and Developing Social and Emotional Competencies

According to Skiba and Peterson, the punitive disciplinary climate that predominates in America’s public schools leads to two important difficulties. First, the punishment approach to motivating behavior change has not been effective. Disorder and violence have not substantially diminished despite four years of national policy explicitly encouraging tough responses. Second, the overreliance on school exclusion represents a barrier that creates conflict rather than reaches the social and emotional needs of students.

A third difficulty that can be extrapolated from the first two, is that to move beyond violence and into conflict resolution schools must help develop students’ emotional and social competencies. By social and emotional competence I mean that students are taught and encouraged to understand what anger is, how to deal with their anger, and how their emotions affect their interpersonal relationships. To be sure, social and emotional competency is not reserved for anger; it speaks to handling and controlling all emotions. Before students can be mature enough to handle conflict resolution strategies (my contention about maturity is based solely on the fact that teaching conflict resolution means that the student-teacher power dynamic is shifted to somewhat equalize the student-teacher relationship), students must be mature socially and emotionally.

Drawing from information used to successfully implement the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP), researchers Elias and Cabby identified a number of protective factors and a fundamental set of skills that will facilitate social and emotional competencies and preclude delinquence(Lantieri & Patti, 1996). The proposed skills fall into three areas:

-Self Control and Self Regulation Skills: These include listening skills, concentrating and following through on tasks, and being able to calm oneself down.

-Social Awareness and Group Participation Skills: These include to know when help is needed and to be able to ask for it and to work as a part of a problem-solving team.

-Social Decision-Making and Problem-Solving Skills: These include recognizing and being able to describe one’s own feelings, to understand the effects of one’s choices on oneself and others, to learn from one’s experiences (Lantieri & Patti, 1996).

At which point students have “mastered” the above skills and become more competent in said capacities, they are ready to move into conflict resolution.

Conflict resolution is quite a revolutionary approach to precluding school violence. Traditionally, conflicts are avoided using zero tolerance and other antagonistic policies, rather than embraced. On the contrary, the overarching theme of conflict resolution is that conflicts are not the problem; rather they are part of the solution. As unavoidable aspects of school life, conflicts are not managed with harsh punishment; instead schools become “conflict-positive” (Johnson & Johnson, 1996) organizations. This is to say that schools work to maintain order, but remain open to encouraging conflict and managing it constructively.

With conflict resolution students’ agency and entitlement to orchestrate a safer environment are not stifled by the arbitration and totalitarian nature of the current prevention strategies. This is to say that students are encouraged to take a stake in building a safer school environment, rather than assuming stoic and obedient personalities to better deal with harsh policies. Also, teaching conflict resolution begets deliberation, a key component of representative democracy, and provides an open forum where students can exercise their social and emotional competencies while working together to solve problems. Similar to the way that adults working in certain fields are afforded the pluralistic luxury of deliberation, wherein they communicate with others and learn from others’ thoughts and experiences, conflict resolution affords students the opportunity to learn from one another. Students should be able to realize their democratic right to a free marketplace of ideas and the opportunity to use those ideas to better their situations. However, when school exclusion is the preferred method of precluding school violence, students are stripped of this right.

Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers is an initiative that advocates and employs conflict resolution in the place of more popular, less effective strategies. This initiative stands behind the fact that when conflicts are managed constructively they can: increase achievement and retention of material, increase healthy cognitive and social development, and they strengthen relationships by increasing individuals’ confidence in their ability to resolve disputes and minimize irritations and resentments so positive feelings are not blunted (Johnson & Johnson, 1996). Through praxis, the relationship between theory and practice, Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers provides a great model for conflict resolution. The implementation steps that this group outlines are as follows

-Step one: Create a Cooperative Context.

-Step two: Help All students Understand the Nature and Desirability of Conflict.

-Step three: Teach All Students the Problem-Solving Negotiation Procedure (this step is particularly involved with social and emotional competencies, as the students have to be well aware of their feelings and others’ feelings)

-Step four: Teach All Students the Peer Mediation Procedure

-Step five: Reinforce and Upgrade Students’ Conflict Resolution Skills (Johnson & Johnson, 1996).

When this initiative was implemented it was a success. As predicted, the frequency of conflicts, some of which would have been punished harshly given new policies, decreased. It was reported that the Peacemakers training not only changed many of the children’s minds about conflict, going from negative to positive, but helped students with interpreting academic material, gave them a point of reference when dealing with conflict mediation outside of school, and above all incidences of violence were not an issue. Most importantly, nonviolence and constructive discussion become norms in the classroom setting (Johnson & Johnson, 1996).

At bottom, conflict resolution is a wholistic approach to preventing school violence. This strategy implicitly recognizes that some students are coming from socially tense situations, wherein they gravitate towards violence and inevitably bring this attitude into the school environment. Conflict resolution understands that in order to counter some students’ propensities towards violence, students must by socially and emotionally competent, they must have self-esteem and they must understand their emotions and know how to manage them constructively. It is well understood that the extent to which any disciplinary strategy is successful, that that success is due in large part to the interpersonal and social skills of the students. Most importantly, conflict resolution is an extension of democracy. In addition to encouraging deliberation and the sharing of ideas it also conforms to the democratic principle of decentralizing power. By teaching conflict resolution, the normative power dynamic in schools is abandoned for a more egalitarian approach to preventing violence. Rather than perpetuating the polarization of teacher/administrator and student that is caused by current disciplinary policies, a more egalitarian relationship is formed giving students some of the power to affect change.

Conclusion

Evidenced by the formerly described initiative, and the ineffectiveness of zero tolerance policies and the like, the benefits of conflict resolution are manifold. Conflict resolution strategies need to become the new way that our society deals with the issue of school violence. Like many other strategies, conflict resolution has its limits insofar as there is no evidence that certain tactics will be effective in situations where students pose an extremely serious threat to the well being of themselves and others. However, the likelihood of that situation occurring will not get any higher if we act now and change the way we think about violence prevention.

Enforcing conflict resolution will force our public schools to return to the cause of promoting and ensuring democracy. As we have seen, when morale in schools is low, and when the trust between student and institution is severed, democracy will not prevail if the call for it is answered with antagonistic policies and short-sighted arbitration. It is necessary for the future of our schools and for the progression of our democracy to understand that conflict resolution breeds deliberation and pluralism, key components of true democracy. It allows the students to regain their agency and take control of their futures. At bottom, it must be understood that the current totalitarian approach to preventing school violence is not going to work and that conflict resolution should be considered a viable option for replacing the current approach.

Introduction

Zero Tolerance

Conflict Resolution and Developing Social and Emotional Competencies

Conclusion

REFERENCES