Education concepts and contexts

Education

Maximum Security: The Culture of Violence in Inner City Schools and How to Establish a Climate for Learning

One of the most notorious school shootings ever perpetrated, the Columbine High School Massacre affected forever the students, teachers, and community of Columbine, Colorado, in addition to the rest of the world. Although this school was not located in an urban area, the horrific events that occurred on one April morning mirrored the terrible events most inner city school children must witness or become victims of themselves. According to the United States Bureau of Justice, for instance, teens and young adults are the most likely to become victims of a violent crime. While statistics from 1978-2005 suggest that 88% of murder victims are over the age of 18, the same report concluded that 45% of murder victims fit into the very narrow age range of 20-35, suggesting that the actions and alliances of adolescence have a profound impact on the criminal nature of a child (United States Bureau of Justice). Studies have similarly discovered that witnessing a violent crime can be detrimental to a young adult or child's psychological, physical, and social health. In fact, in a sample of 62 children ages 7-14, those who had witnessed violent crimes were more likely to show symptoms of stress, a biopsychosocial condition affecting a variety of areas of functioning (Skybo 263).

Skybo also suggested that many of the children who witness such crimes are members of low-income families, a demographic that tends to congregate in the inner-city (263). For this reason, society must be focused on making changes to educate and warn this age group about the seriousness of crime before they become a part of the world not only as victims, but also as offenders. Because members of the adolescent age group spend most of their time at school, this relatively safe environment is perfect for their education about societal living in addition to their academic educations. By studying evidence that suggests juvenile crime is a result of alliances among juveniles in addition to other social factors, one can easily determine that the burden of preventing crime in juveniles falls most appropriately on teachers and administrators.

Although Michael Moore's 2002 film Bowling for Columbine suggested that the 1999 massacre could be partially blamed on the wide availability of firearms, scholarship suggests that juvenile alliances are more to blame for the issue. The subject of peer pressure and the adolescent age group has long been discussed. While the issues of peer pressure and group think have most often been applied to teens' decisions to engage in behavior involving drugs, alcohol, and sex, the issue of teen alliances -- or teens who become friends with other teens already involved in a criminal activity -- has now transcended into the realm of more violent crimes. Teens who become associated with other groups of teen criminals, therefore, are likely to become criminals themselves. For example, in their 2002 study "Juvenile Delinquency Under Conditions of Social Change," Boehnke and Bergs-Winkles suggested that rapid social change does not share a direct correlation with juvenile delinquent behavior, but that rapid social change does tend to throw teens into the arms of their peers who offer "an endorsement of delinquent behavior," as well as the "infrastructure" for this behavior (57).

Because juvenile alliances are such a prominent cause of juvenile delinquency and violent behavior, and many juvenile alliances are formed in schools, it becomes clear that the burden of avoiding these juvenile alliances falls primarily to the teachers and administrators. Because many juvenile offenders come from single parent homes or homes where a lack of supervision occurs daily, teachers and administrators must take the burden on themselves to prevent the teens from becoming involved with further criminal alliances. Although this task may seem daunting to a teacher or an administrator, these education professionals should consider that it is they who probably know the students best, other than their peers. It is the teachers and administrators, therefore, who most students view as authority figures, as most of their parents have not attained that status in their lives. Thus, teachers and administrators can work individually with students, counseling them about the danger of making poor choices, encouraging and aiding them to make correct choices, and rewarding them with options in life for the positive choices they make.

A particularly stunning example of this type of administrator and teacher involvement occurred in an inner-city Indiana high school, where a great deal of students were falling into gangs and crime at an early age. Abandoning the approach that all children were college bound, teachers and administrators attempted to counsel each student individually, to listen to their problems with home life, school, and friendships. The teachers and administrators were then able to point each individual student on a path to success. Those who desired and could attain a position at a college were given help in preparing for college exams, assistance in filling out college applications, rides to college visit days, and money for college application processing fees. Those who did desire or who would not be able to attend college were encouraged to take free vocational training. There, students were able to begin searching for and working in a job field that they chose. Some students even gradated from high school certified to begin a profession, such as nursing or medical assisting, right away. The affect of these choices was to offer students alliances with those who were attempting to live responsibly, instead of offering them alliances with peers already involved in violent criminal offending. By allowing the students to choose their futures, teachers and administrators communicated that students had many options in the years ahead of them, not simply the option to fall into a life of crime. In addition to the positive reinforcement, teachers and administrators similarly sought those teens who were making negative alliances, counseling them to choose different groups of peers with which to associate. By offering this support and chastisement, teachers and administrators were not only able to decrease the students' alliances with offending students, but also were able to steer them on a path that would prevent future offending (Winter).

This example of an inner city school, in addition to studies that suggest the importance of juvenile alliances in the development of juvenile offenders, and therefore juvenile victims and witnesses, reinforces the importance of positive peer groups for juveniles in inner cities. While many juveniles come from broken or single parent homes, schools can serve as a source of authority and resource in inner-city children's lives, pointing them toward positive choices and alliances rather than negative ones. Teachers and administrators must accept the burden of educating these students not only in academia, but also in forming positive alliances because school is the most regular and sold source of authority most inner-city students can find.

In addition to forming positive alliances, studies have suggested that other social factors often contribute to teens and children's likelihood to become offenders. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, impoverished juveniles, or those living below the poverty line, are more criminally involved than juveniles who do not live with this burden of daily life (7). While poverty and juvenile offenses cannot be directly correlated, the U.S. Department of Justice study found that those living under the poverty line are generally found in single parent homes, or become parents themselves at a young age, two conditions that can be positively linked with juvenile offenses or the tendency for juveniles to commit crimes (7). Furthermore, Karen Heimer's 1997 study suggested socioeconomic status along with a host of additional social factors -- associations with "aggressive peers," poor parenting, and previous crimes -- that would likely lead to a juvenile developing "learning definitions favorable to violence" (799). Thus, from socioeconomic status to parenting, a host of social contributions have proven their association with juvenile crimes.

Because these crimes do not affect one juvenile or group of juveniles alone, but also the victims and witnesses of the crime, in addition to those who choose to associate with the offending juveniles, the problem of juvenile's involvement in crime will continue unless something is done to address the social problems associated with juvenile delinquency. Teachers and Administrators are the appropriate parties to address the issue because of their prolonged exposure to the juveniles and state mandated authority to intervene in the students' home or after-school lives. In fact, some programs designed to address the social causes of juvenile delinquency in inner cities have already proven successful. For example, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), a curriculum designed to boost the "academic achievement" of inner-city school students, has done so by implementing programs such as a longer school day and longer school year and increased home-school interactions, as well as greater access to teachers (Ross, McDonald, and Alberg). Although standardized test score improvements have suggested the program's success academically, the methods through which the program is improving academics will also affect the social causes of juvenile delinquency and juvenile's involvement with crime. By providing more time for children to be in school, the program takes away dangerous time that students will be on the streets making negative alliances. Additionally, by increasing home-school interactions and providing greater access to teachers, the program may offset some of the negative conditions caused by single parent homes.