APPENDICES
2.3 Participants’ experiences of School Psychological Services
2.3.4 School Psychological Services and their impact on issues affecting learners
2.3.4.1 School violence and bullying
The protection of human rights is the mandate of School Psychological Services, especially health promotion. Education is a fundamental human right for each and every child, and is crucial for their development to create enabling environments for them to develop creative talents and critical thinking and inculcating them with social and life skills to grow with dignity, confidence and self-esteem. This means that the safety and security needs of learners need to be addressed if they are to adjust well and succeed academically. According to Article 19 of the U.N. convention on the Rights of Children, children have a fundamental right to feel safe in school and be spared the oppression and repeated intentional humiliation implied in violence and bullying (Olweus, 1999). School environments have constantly been plagued with violence creating unsafe environments for learner development and academic progress. Greene (2008, p.12) defines violence as “intentional form of behaviour in which one person threatens, attempts to harm, or does harm another person, and aggression as a form of low-level violence that includes verbal, physical, or gestural behaviour that is intended to cause minor physical harm, psychological distress, intimidations or to induce fear in another person”.
O’Moore (2005, p. 3) defines bullying and violence as “incidents where an individual or a group are abused, threatened or assaulted, and the abusive behaviour involves an explicit or implicit challenge to their safety”. According to Furlong and Morrison (2000), “school violence is conceptualized as a multifaceted construct that involves both criminal acts and aggression in schools, which inhibit development and learning, as well as harm the school climate”. As Favela (2010) points out, “a definition of bullying should include aggression, intention, repetition and an
imbalance of power between the aggressor and the victim, and can be direct, verbal, indirect or relational, with well-known long-term effects on those involved”. According to Burton and Leoschut (2013), bullying can cause psychological, emotional and/or physical damage on its victims, resulting in a decrease in educational performance as victims battle to focus on content and on school work. Mncube and Harber (2013) describe “structural violence as violence caused by oppressive and unequal socioeconomic and political relationships, creating a very unequal society with many people living in extreme poverty. This creates a dysfunctional schooling system for the majority and a privileged, functional sector serving a minority”.
The school climate, as Greene (2008) points out, “comprises of cultural norms in the school, quality of interpersonal relationships, school policies, and student/staff and administrator feelings and beliefs about their school”. These components were found to be significantly related to levels of victimization and offending in schools. On the other hand, Greene (2008) mooted that
“school connectedness was a protective factor for reducing youth violence in general and was predicted by positive classroom management, participation in extracurricular activities, tolerant discipline policies, and school size”. Waters, Cross and Runions (2009, p. 517) define school connectedness as “the extent to which students feel like they are part of the school, and encompasses perceptions that the school supports their academic pursuits, has fair discipline climate and a supportive culture. It is the belief by students that adults in the school care about their learning as well as about them as individuals”.
Greene’s (2008) findings were that “schools in which students felt welcome, schools in which students felt positively connected and engaged, and schools in which students perceived their school rules and policies were fair and consistently enforced, were likely to have lower levels of
aggression and violence and higher rates of respectful behaviour among all key respondents”.
This was echoed by Furlong and Morrison (2000) who noted that “schools having low levels of violence tended to have a firm, consistent principalship (leadership) style, tended to be smaller in size, and have lower levels of crowding. Researchers saw schools as logical settings in which to implement programmes for reducing school violence and responding to the varied needs students invariably bring with them”. The school as a physical, educational, and social environment has to embrace violence as an educational problem and allow it to become a topic worthy of classroom and school attention. This view was reinforced by Furlong and Morrison (2000), when they suggested:
“School violence is an important component of the daily lives of children in schools. It affects where they walk, how they dress, where they go and who their friends are. As long as teachers treat violence at arms’ length, as something that is someone else’s problem they will continue to neglect the opportunity to intervene in a crucial aspect of the children’s lives. By ignoring school violence, the name-calling, the shoving, the fighting, the harassment, they are condoning it. Children see the teachers walking by, pretending not to notice, and they learn that the way we treat others, the way we interact on the street or in the playground, is nobody’s business but our own. Teachers must talk about violence, they must recognise it, examine it, dissect it, and let children see and understand its secrets and its sources. Without this examination it remains an ugly secret that society cannot understand or control” (Furlong and Morrison, 2000: 5).
One school principal recently asked President Jacob Zuma to give them back the power and that if the violence in our schools was not stopped, we would soon be picking up bodies of pupils from the playgrounds (Sunday Tribune, August 9, 2009: 1). It was a drastic thing to say but it captures/indicates the calamity of the situation prevailing in our schools nationally. The recent spate of violence, including violence against teachers, is a matter of serious concern which the
nation needs to take a stand against. The premise and argument presented here is that safe and secure school environments makes for better emotional development of learners and better academic performance. Evidently, a programme of Psychological Services should be able address learners’ need for safety and security, provide them with mental tools settle squabbles without resorting to violence, conduct anger management classes, and counsel learners who battle to control their emotions. However, as O’Moore (2005) points out, “due to the complexity and multi-faceted nature of bullying and violence individual efforts from schools alone will not be sufficient to counteract theses negative forces’. This means that tackling the issue as something that takes place in a vacuum without cognisance of the contextual factors which influence it would be tantamount to over-simplifying. This requires a commitment of government and stakeholders at all levels of decision-making.
Nevertheless, schools should draw up, implement and monitor a national action plan to prevent bullying and violence. Critical cognisance has to be taken of the human and financial resources available. Common to, and at the heart of all bullying and violence is abusive behaviour, which can be verbal, physical, psychological, sexual and racial. These behaviours can be challenged in prevention and intervention programmes, such as School Psychological Services, where children would not only gain knowledge but also learn about themselves, how to behave and interact well with other children. Importantly, a national strategy is needed to prevent and reduce school bullying and violence. All schools should implement a policy/intervention programme, and as O’Moore (2005, p. 4) put it, “a programme that is underpinned by a political commitment will carry more weight”. Intervention should include providing counselling to bullies and victims.
The most promising method to prevent bullying in schools is the whole-school approach (ibid).
In slight contrast, Samara and Smith (2008) says that for schools to show that they take the issue seriously they need to do something about it. But, intervention efforts should not only target the victims and perpetrators but must take into consideration the contexts that exacerbate or serve as deterrent to aggressive behaviours, including the school itself (Samara & Smith, 2008; Furlong
& Morrison, 2000). However, it is important that schools develop and implement an anti- bullying policy, which – amongst other things – will include assertiveness training and peer support. These skills will not only help children learn, but also help to make the whole school a more caring, positive place. As one parent said, you can tell a lot about a child’s family the moment he/she steps into the classroom. Furlong and Morrison (2000, p. 80) confirms the statement when they maintain that “children connected and bonded to meaningful adults in their lives and at school are less likely to commit crimes, use substances, and engage in high risk behaviours”. Hence, children’s upbringing is the one factor which is the main contributor to these kinds of behaviour as most of the perpetrators of violence are from dysfunctional families.
As Oprah Winfrey put it, ‘children are not being properly parented’. In support, Mamphela Ramphele concedes that the root cause of gangsterism, drug abuse and learner violence is a broken social fabric; it starts with absent parents and dysfunctional families, schools and communities (Sunday Times, September 28, 2014, p.18).
According to Batsche and Knoff (1994, p. 3), bullying is “intergenerational”, and that the bully at school is a victim at home. Bullies come from homes where parents prefer physical means of discipline, are hostile and rejecting, have poor problem-solving skills and teach their children to strike back at the least provocation. Hence, the need for some introspection as to why parents raise ‘little monsters’ they too are afraid to talk to. Through School Psychological Services
schools can conduct parent training programmes to equip parents with parenting skills and teach them how to communicate with their children, specifically, listen to them without interrupting or giving lecture.