SPECIAL FEATURE
School violence and bullying What it entails, what’s behind it and ways to deal with it Meant to be safe learning havens, schools throughout the world are struggling with apparently increasing levels of violence.
S
hootings have tended to dominate headlines, with a widespread perception that the phenomenon is worst in the USA. However, the data on Infoplease.com shows that it’s widespread throughout the world. From Dunblane in Scotland in 1996 through the years to Alaska, Yemen, Germany, Sweden, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Finland, Brazil, Norway, France, Argentina, Nigeria, Kenya and Mexico, children have died in school shootings, and the likelihood is that it’s only a matter of time before the next tragedy takes place. South Africa has also buried children over the years, the victims of shootings that took place in schools and on campuses in Soweto, the Free State, the Eastern Cape and Cape Town among others.
in four or more deaths are also categorised as mass shootings. The phenomenon, says Wikipedia, is most widespread in the United States but takes place “in many countries across the world”. According to a report by UNESCO, released at the 2019 Education World Forum in London in January this year, school violence and bullying are serious problems globally. Its findings, from 144 countries, a report by UNESCO revealed that almost one out of every three pupils or 32 per cent had been bullied at school, and a similar number had experienced some form of physical violence. Aside from the main forms of bullying: physical, sexual and psychological, the report also noted the increase of online and mobile phone bullying.
A global problem
What’s behind school shootings and other forms of violence?
We know that school shootings are attacks on educational institutions using firearms. Perhaps not as well-known is that, according to Wikipedia, incidents resulting
14
Widespread studies reveal multiple factors at play. These include but are not limited to dysfunctional families, mental illness and
SECURITY FOCUS AFRICA OCTOBER 2019
psychological issues as well as gangsterism, racism and radicalism. What’s become increasingly obvious in recent years is that there is no single one size fits all attacker profile. Infoplease. com refers to the results of a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the USA many years ago, which after analysing 18 school shootings, described shooters as “middle-class, lonely/alienated, awkward, Caucasian males who had access to guns.” The most recent report, however, says Infoplease.com, cautions “against the assumption that a perpetrator can be identified by a certain ‘type’ or profile”. “The results from the study” it continues, “indicated that perpetrators came from varying backgrounds, making a singular profile difficult when identifying a possible assailant. For example, some perpetrators were children of divorce, lived in foster homes, or came from intact nuclear families. The majority of individuals had rarely or never gotten into trouble at school and had a healthy social life.”
securityfocusafrica.com
