Although the cases of school violence have dropped to a big round zero in the last month and a half, it remains a serious reality all over Canada. Forgive my joke but I feel it is appropriate considering the issues discussed in this final blog post are heavier than usual. Here is my insight on the subject.
The first thing I want to consider on the theme of violence in schools are all the articles in the series “School Violence” by CBC and the short movie by “marketplace” that accompanied them. Of course, they mainly targeted the school boards for not taking sufficient measures to stop the violence in their schools, failing to report lots of incidents, or even failing to do anything at all when faced with a case of school violence. Due to the lack of information and political knowledge, I cannot begin to explain nor even understand why such a thing happens. I found it interesting though, that one of the articles called “I thought he was dead […]” had a small statement where it said that students in Quebec reported the lowest incidence of experiencing violence at the hands of another student. And it got me thinking. Why?
When I was a student, it somehow happened that I changed a few high schools (due to family reasons) but it gave me the chance to see some of the measures that Quebec schools have put in place in order to stop, or lower, school violence. In one of my schools, there was a rule which was reinforced directly by the principle and was reminded to all the students at the beginning of the school year. The rule was that if you get in a fight with another student on school grounds, the parents of everyone involved would be charged with a fee and the police will be called immediately. I remember when they put that rule in place, they had send a survey to all the parents asking them if they approved of the rule. And I can say for a fact that the number of incidents lowered visibly. Another one of my schools separated the girls lockers from the boys lockers, they were on two different sides of the school, and they were heavily guarded at all times to make sure students don’t go to the opposite sex’s lockers. And this was due to a tragic incident that had happened some years ago: a girl got sexually assaulted by a group of students next to her locker. Back in the day, of course we weren’t happy the boys weren’t allowed in the girls lockers and vice versa because we couldn’t see our boyfriends. But now I am grateful that I went to schools that did everything possible to make sure we were safe.
Some schools are working hard on staying safe, and others are more preoccupied with their reputation. Whatever the case is, the reality is that school violence still exists. Studying masculinities has opened our eyes to a lot of issues men face every single day. Statistics like the ones presented in the CBC series mentioned previously, or in the documentary “The mask you live in” are scary. Realizing that 4 out of 10 boys have experienced violence at school, that more than 70% of students have reported violence by the hand of other students, that one in every 6 men has experienced unwanted sexual harassement or agression is hard. It is even harder trying to explain it, or even understand it. The studies presented to us in class reflect some of the aggressive nature of masculinity and perhaps where it comes from. Lots of modern men are taught from a young age never to cry, never to show weakness, to prove themselves physically and so on. Kilmartin and Smiler’s multiple chapters on masculinity and its different aspects all turn around the same subject. They all explain how men are oppressed to be competitive and strong and of course, this could explain why some men are violent, but I don’t think this is the entire explanation, it cannot be, and I don’t want to blame any man nor the struggles he has been through for the school violence happening around us. I think there is something else.
In this last paragraph I will provide my personal, a bit philosophical, opinion on the subject of school violence. I noticed that all the statistics they provided to us said that most students experience the most physical or sexual violence at the hands of other students between the grades 7 and 10. This is the time of a child’s life when their hormones are completely untameable and their brains and bodies are still developing. I have always thought there is a sadistic side of the human nature, and maybe this is the time when this side is, also, the most untameable. We often hear the phrase “acting like an animal” when someone is too violent physically or even verbally and I think that this is always part of the problem, no matter how much we try to contain it or ignore it. Earlier today, i asked a friend how he thinks we can stop or lower school violence, and he answered “we just can’t”.
It gives me pain to say these things, I am certainly not saying it is inevitable, but I am trying to take the attention off of masculinity. I don’t think masculinity should be blamed for, or associated with, violence. I don’t think we should blame our society for not doing enough to stop violence, or for somehow raising violent men or women. This is my reflection on the subject of school violence, a fairly sensitive topic. It is hard to find a straight forward answer or explanation to why violence in schools happens. I think that the best thing we can do, is encourage more school boards to take the necessary security precautions to try to minimalise the violence in their schools, and be grateful if we never lived it.
Lovers and Fighters | Section 22 