Thinking Violent Thoughts: Students' Attitudes to Violence within Secondary Schools in Trinidad and Tobago

• Author: Jerome De Lisle
• Pages: 133-148

133

THINKING VIOLENT THOUGHTS

INT RODUC TI ON

High rates of student indiscipline and

school violence are growing problems

internationally (Debarbieux 2003).

Despite the importance of education in

the region, the Caribbean has not been

immune to this growing plague of school

violence and in several schools and

communities; violence is an increasing

concern (Chevannes 2004, UNICEF 2005).

The sharp rise in reported incidents of

school and community violence within

the Caribbean has forced a response from

several Ministries of Education and

various stakeholders. In Jamaica, for

example, the Ministry of Education

recently launched an assessment and

intervention programme designed in part

to uncover the causes of violence and

aggression, especially among adolescent

males (Cardien 2004). Community

violence and especially student

indiscipline and violence have also

become a source of concern for key

education stakeholders in Trinidad and

Tobago, with the Ministry of Education

launching a series of costly integrated

programmes aimed at reducing school

violence.

Recent high profile acts of violence

in schools in the United States (US) and

elsewhere suggest notable deficiencies in

the capacity of schools to prevent school

violence. Thus, critical to current school

reform initiatives is the implementation

of whole-school programmes designed to

reduce or prevent violence. School-wide

Thinking Violent

Thoughts:

Students’ Attitudes

to Violence within

Secondary Schools

in Trinidad and

Tobago

Jerome de Lisle1(Noreen

Ramkhelawan, Carol Joseph,

Sean Annisette, Indra Maraj,

Anna Singh, Kameel Ali,

Teckler Thomas, Lyn Murray,

& Joy-Ann Walcott)2

Six

134

CRIME, DELINQUENCY AND JUSTICE

intervention programmes should make schools safer places for learning (Howard,

Flora and Griffin 1999).

Schools are often a focal point of the community, and so violence reduction

programmes might have a much wider impact on neighbourhoods and the school’s

external environment. Of course, it is also possible that school violence is not

really on the increase at all and instead it is the media which is increasingly

prone to reporting it. For example, in the US, the National Youth Risk Behaviour

Survey (YRBS), which focused upon violence-related behaviours among high

school students for the period 1991-2003, found the incidence of major violent

acts such as weapon-carrying and physical fighting had declined significantly

(Brener, Lowry and Barios 2004). While some violent acts such as threatening or

injury with a weapon were up, this would still not account for the increased

safety concerns and fears by students. Likewise, locally, it may be that the increased

incidence of reporting has distorted perceptions of school violence and safety.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Violence prevention programmes often use a broad definition of violence

and are likely to include under the rubric of violent acts: delinquency, antisocial

behaviour, verbal abuse, the threat of the use of weapons, vandalism, and property

crimes (Howard, Flora and Griffin 1999). Thus, the North Carolina Department

of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention defined school violence as ‘any

behaviour that violates a school’s educational mission or climate of respect or

jeopardises the intent of the school to be free of aggression against persons or

property, drugs, weapons, disruptions, and disorder’ (Centre for the Prevention

of School Violence 2002). This definition therefore includes precursors to overtly

violent acts such as ‘put downs’ and ‘trash talk,’ which are relatively common in

the school environment. From another perspective, Henry (2000) has offered an

even more expansive and integrated definition of school violence:

‘The exercise of power over others in school related settings, by some

individual, agency, or social process, that denies those subject to it their humanity

to make a difference, either by reducing them from what they are or by limiting

them from becoming what they might be’ (p. 21).

Such a definition extends the meaning of school violence to include aspects

of workplace violence and institutional inequity, which might also be related to

overt behavioural acts by individuals. Thus, Henry (2000) went further to identify

five levels of violence dependent upon the position of the perpetrator. In Level

one, the perpetrator is the student; in Level two, it is the teacher or administrator;

in Level three it is the school board or education district; in Level four it is national

or state policies; and in Level five it is social processes. Clearly, some social processes

such as tracking students to different schools, and internal school policies, such

as teacher and resource allocation, might themselves lead to violence on the part

of teachers or students (Evans 2001).