By Bouabid EL Khattab
By Bouabid EL Khattab
Morocco World News
Marrakech, January 16, 2012
Violence inside of high schools has become one of the most dangerous social phenomena threatening the learning process and causing a disequilibrium in the relationship among students, teachers and school administrators. It therefore causes a defect in the social system. Recently we have noticed a rise of this phenomenon in some of Moroccan high schools, with either students or teachers being violated or abused either physically or mentally. This raises many questions about what and why this is happening and what are the motives behind all this.
No one denies that school represents a fundamental pillar in every society. Nations’ development and political and social stability is due to skilful and educated students being taught and well cared for in schools. To witness violence in schools seems a little weird and completely unacceptable. Since students who study in high schools are teenagers, we are going to focus basically on teen violence.
First of all, we should bear in mind that violence is not innate but rather a learned behaviour. Kids are not born violent. Students learn violent behaviours from different people, such as their family. For instance, parents are frequently fighting or the father beats his wife in front of the kids. There are also the peers, which encompass friends and class-mates, neighbors and whoever the student encounters on his way coming and going to and from school. These behaviours are reinforced by what youth see on television, on the internet, in video games, movies and music videos. In some cases, the cause of violent teen behavior is due to a turbulent past; teens who, in their childhood, went through some form of abuse, were victims of violence, domestic or not, physical or sexual abuse.
Second, another motive behind teen violence is due to a combination of personal positioning and family socioeconomic factors. In other words, when the student comes to school, they bring with them their whole life, their family, their dreams, their ambitions as well as their problems. This latter affects eventually their behaviour in school in general, and in the classroom specifically. It may result in certain unacceptable behaviours in the classroom like: frequent absence, absent-mindedness, low of interest in studying and so on. And instead of communicating and trying to know what is the matter with that student, teachers and school administrators may provoke the student by shouting, blaming and undervaluing them in front of their colleagues. This type of treatment only makes the matter worse.
Psychologically speaking, adolescence is a crucial and sometimes a delicate period. Through this stage of life, the student is subjected to what is called identity crisis, which the theorist and psychologist Erik Erikson defines as a time of intensive analysis and exploration of different ways of looking at oneself. So, when the student is overwhelmed and trying to establish their new positioning in their social life – including among family, school and friends – and at the same time is subjected to outside pressures exerted by whatever, that make it hard for them to accept any attempts to direct them. As the individual is exposed to more risk factors, the probability that he or she will engage in violent behaviour increases. Clearly, violence leads to violence.
Third, for the last few weeks, students and teachers have been complaining more about drug dealers, who sell hallucinatory pills (known as karkoubi) openly in front of their high schools. The availability of drugs and alcohol within or outside schools is a tempting outlet for students who are either socially frustrated or to those who just follow the crowd. Furthermore, some students carry weapons with them. Consequently, this leads us to the assumption that taking drugs is in fact another factor behind violence in high schools. Because when one’s mental state is altered from drugs, their behaviour becomes uncontrolled as well.
All in all, teen violence in high schools must be stopped or at least minimized. It is the responsibility of the student, the school faculty, the family, and the whole society to work together and collaborate in order to provide the student with required conditions to live decently and afterwards become a mature adult, a good man/woman, a good father/mother and before all a good citizen.
Edited by Benjamin Villanti
Bouabid EL Khattab is a Morocco World News’ Contributor
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy.
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