Cities and Schools

EUROPEAN FORUM

SECUCITIES CITY and SCHOOL

Secucities Cities and Schools

Daphne Programme

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Written by Adélaïde Vanhove, Project manager Marie Raynal, Centre National de Documentation Pédagogique (France)

With the close collaboration of all the partners in the programme

We wish to thank everyone who, by his or her experience or warm welcome, contributed to the success of this work. Without the lively participation at the seminars of our partners—Ms. Barbara Grazia, Ms. Maria Manni and Mr Gianguido Nobili of the City of Bologna (Italy); Ms. Annick Droal, Mr Patrick Ansselin, Mr Fathi Benjebria and Mr Frédéric Manceau of the City of Evry (France); Mr Kalle Koskivirta of the City of Helsinki (Finland); Ms. Anne Keller and Mr KarlHeinz Georg of the City of Lübeck (Germany); Ms. Daida Rodriguez Barrios of the Urban Community of Northern Tenerife and the whole team of Los Realejos (Canary Islands, Spain); Mr Francisco Hernandez Diaz of the City of Valencia (Spain); Ms. Brigitte Welter, Mr Francis Dewez and Mr Philippe Bellis of the town of Saint-Gilles (Belgium)—this report would have never seen the day. We extend equally warm thanks to Ms. Elaine O’Connor and Mr James Stearn of the British Home Office; Mr Eric Debarbieux, Director of the European Research Institute on school violence, Mr Raphaël Pena of the ‘Action Collégiens’ Association (Paris, France), Ms. Michèle Olivain of the French National Teachers Union (SNE) and Mr Samih Chafi of the House of Justice and Law of Roubaix (France) for their availability and the quality of their contributions.

Printed in March 2004 On the presses of Imprimerie Pérolle – PARIS N° ISBN : 2-913181-23-6

Translated in English by M. John Tyler TUTTLE (Except from the Lübeck Project)

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When we speak of violence at school, we must take into account that with youth comes an exuberance that the educator endeavours to control in favour of an energy to serve learning and proper behaviour in life. Between this exuberance and what one can begin to describe as violence, there is sometimes a fine line that is difficult to define.

Violence is not only a psychic and physical phenomenon, the absence of control of an inhibition that would be the mark of the civilised man; it is also a social construct with a history and different players. What was considered violent at one time is no longer and conversely. Relative in time, violence is also relative in space: what is violent in one country is not felt to be so in another. Thus our outlook also creates the violence of the other in all senses of the term.

Is violence at school a new phenomenon? Certainly not. Is it more serious? We do not know, even were it owing only to the difference in living conditions of young people and the nature of responses provided at present. Might our tolerance level have dropped? This is not certain, when one refers to what we tolerate in the way of violence in the world. But are we perhaps more easily intolerant in regards to violence at hand? Are we also perhaps less tolerant as regards our image that we see through children?

The progress in our history is that we are talking about it. That was the main object of this network.

The progress is that the practices implemented in the cities are going in the direction of a sharing between the whole community of adults, not only those paid to educate.

Michel Marcus Executive Director

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SUMMARY

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Introduction Above all, this work is the fruit of exchanges of experiences and often lively discussions that took place between representatives of seven European cities—working in the Youth, Education, Security and Prevention departments of town councils—as well as teachers, union representatives, mediators and experts, on the occasion of working seminars organised between the February and October 2003, by the European Forum for Urban Security (EFUS).

Meeting the objectives set by the European Commission in the framework of the Daphné programme1, this work also falls within the ‘European initiative of co-operation on violence at school and security in the school environment’, which began in 1997, following tragic events that took place in secondary schools in Belgium and the United Kingdom and which received considerable media coverage.

If one consults the European press over the past fifteen years, one will notice that there is, in fact, an infatuation on the part of journalists for the subject since the early 1990s, and the proliferation of sensationalistic articles in certain countries (Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium), generally concerning acts of a sexual or xenophobic nature, is almost as systematically relayed by the governments of those same countries. A multitude of studies and reports has been financed, projects launched, actions undertaken, often mobilising considerable means, decrees and laws introduced in most countries: all that in order to better avert or attempt to eradicate a particularly bothersome ill in countries of the old continent where, up until now, school was rather a source of pride of the leaders, and where parents could still be pleased with a system of instruction and education that had held up for several generations, seriously preparing their children for working life whilst making them good citizens.

A central theme of the public debate towards the end of the 1990s, in France as well as in the United Kingdom, ‘violence in schools’ has practically become an idiomatic expression of the language.

But what violence are we talking about? Is it really a matter of violence unique to school? Today, would the schools of our parents inspire students to fight more than to learn? Might schoolyards and classrooms be the arenas of the 21st century?

Reading certain newspapers, relying abundantly on the accounts of teachers discouraged or disgusted at seeing themselves transformed into gendarmes and sometimes even attacked by their students, one might end up believing so. But by looking more closely at the question with a sociologist’s eye, it appears evident that what is called ‘violence in schools’ or even ‘school violence’ practically everywhere in Europe and elsewhere, and most often designating acts of incivility such as racketeering, harassment, insults or damage to equipment, is only the extension or rather the repetition of behaviour of certain young people or youth gangs that occur outside school and whose causes are manifold. Certainly, school can accentuate or exaggerate those behaviours to the degree that all young people find themselves therein, whether they are weak or strong, good or poor students, richer or poorer; that it is often a place of competition where every adolescent, with the attendant doubts and existential and identity anxieties, must assert him- or herself and, if possible, be noticed, especially by the opposite sex. But the problems that one finds there cannot in any case be imputed to the school alone and must therefore be treated in a comprehensive fashion.

1 The Daphné programme (2000-2003) is a community action programme aimed at supporting preventive measures for fighting violence against children, adolescents and women. The specific objectives of the programme can be consulted on the website of the European Commission, DG Justice and Home Affairs: http://europa.eu.int.

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The settling of scores between neighbourhood gangs, domestic violence, the feeling of solitude, injustice or exclusion in relation to one’s social or religious affiliation or ethnic origins, the reaction to a stigmatisation of one’s identity largely reinforced by the media, the influence of action films, video games, deteriorated urban setting, absence of social bonds or solidarity between inhabitants of the same neighbourhood… all these phenomena (of which the natural character of some of them or their distant historic origin must be recalled: the feelings of hatred, vengeance, hand-to-hand justice, rivalry between neighbourhood gangs…) are to be taken into account to foresee and make up for the malaise of young people that is found in the school and which sometimes has serious consequences on their academic career.

Thinking globally to act locally on the territory in which the school lies, i.e., the city; responding to violence not with violence but with understanding and communication (with young people as well as between adults): such is, in our opinion, a responsible, fair and democratic attitude for responding to a phenomenon present in most European cities where a portion of the youth—and thus the future of those cities—having lost references, identity and moral values, is undergoing a profound crisis.

However, a good number of European cities have not waited ten years to become interested in and react to this phenomenon. Interesting experiments, often for heightening the awareness of students to the question of violence or encouraging them to adopt peaceful behaviour that is respectful of their schoolmates and teachers, have also been carried out by local authorities in several European cities, beginning in the late ‘80s.

In order to bring about synergies between all these actions and mutualise the experiences of violence prevention at the local level, in 1997 the European Forum for Urban Security created, on the basis of an interactive Internet website, the ‘European 40 cities - 40 schools Network’.

Today, faced with growing aggressiveness in certain neighbourhoods and schools of their cities that they sometimes no longer succeed in controlling, politicians, municipal technicians in charge of questions of education, security or youth, such as teachers, social workers or students’ parents are, more than ever, seeking solutions and new ideas for containing a phenomenon that affects the whole community or for preventing this phenomenon that they observe with their neighbours.

The objective of the ‘Sécucités City and School’ programme that we began at the end of 2002 was to allow seven European cities (as different, culturally, as Tenerife, Evry and Helsinki) to exchange their experiences and think together about different means of optimising actions by consulting all the local players concerned.

The three meetings between these three cities took place during the year 2003, and participating were specialists on the issue who exercise duties within national institutions of their countries. The meetings were able to stress the importance of working in partnership with all the following players: -

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local politicians, whether elected or technicians in the departments of education, youth, security and prevention, mediation, justice or cultural and social actions; the academic community as a whole: the students themselves, teachers and their representatives as well as all the non-teaching personnel present in the establishments (supervisors and employees of the social and medical services); the regional and national authorities concerned by the questions of education and the wellbeing of young people at school and, more generally, in the urban environment; 6

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the association sector and civil society (socio-cultural associations and non-governmental organisations, as well as those dealing with education, rehabilitation, mentoring or mediation, and associations of student parents or former students‌).

While cross-disciplinary work between these different sectors allows for mobilising considerable knowledge, persons and sources of financing, it is not always easy for the players to understand one another, share information and go beyond one’s strict sphere of intervention. Furthermore, it is important to take into account the specificity of every situation and its causes in order, not only to define more precisely the players who will have the most competence but also to avoid solving the problem as a whole by considering all young people in the same way, like the same gang, for example. Thus, the pinpointing and identification of perpetrators of violence, gang leaders, etc., which precede prevention, must be as precise as possible to ensure a follow-through adapted to every case.

The partners stressed these various points and insisted on the necessity of receiving additional training adapted to this type of project.

Finally, the diversity and complementarity of the experiences that were presented in the course of this programme, and which we have been anxious to integrate in this work, only confirms the importance and interest of the exchange of practices between European cities.

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1 The Educational Watch

by Marie Raynal, Director of the “City and Education” Department at the National Center of Pedagocical Documentation, France

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Educating to avoid having to repair And what if one were to look back to how it was beforehand—before the ill was done, before violence had settled in? If one were to restore a mental virginity to once again think about the question of violence prevention? Or, more exactly, if we were precisely to refuse to speak about violence so as to consider only the act of educating even before the question of prevention arose?

That necessitates setting a veritable change of position in motion: educating in order not to have to repair. For we will be able to turn the question of violence around in all senses, we will always be brought back to the point of departure, i.e., to the education of children and our obligation to close the ranks of adults on this stake. And then we speak of youth, of learning—thus, of a ‘before’, if not a beginning. One will also refuse the automatic conduct towards school, for the spatial projection on the school masks the real stakes that overflow in every direction on the school issue.

We can confess to powerlessness. We can avow not knowing how to set about taking young people in hand. We can scatter the children to get rid of the problem. We can play werewolf to pretend to frighten. But we can also look reality in the face, refuse the strategy of remedy or the afterwards and take highly effective educational measures that project young people towards hope rather than aiming at locking them up.

Our societies describe, put into statistics and denounce youthful violence at school or outside of school. This recurrent, inexhaustible subject, of rare media effectiveness, arouses very intense, sometimes disproportionate reactions, which die down until the next flare-up but leave a bitter taste in all, that of helplessness in holding back both this unleashing of passion and its cause. Violence exists, and it is not a matter of denying the importance of the events—sometimes serious—, which provoke this storm of opinion, even if the way between possible exaggeration of the facts and an under-estimation of them is narrow. The handling of these phenomena in terms of public security is indispensable for it is the responsibility of those in power to ensure public tranquillity. But why are we contaminated and poisoned to this degree by the uninterrupted flow of a consensus of violence?

One can ask oneself about the contemporary mania for speaking only about that, not respecting the fair share between violence and generosity, between brutality and love, between mean interest and a propensity to giving. For the alarmist discourse is no more legitimate than the confident one, and in the current state of human sciences, without relying on considerations of moral order or erring through naïveté, we know that human relations depend on complex interactions that cause vital energy and deadly designs to alternate. The theories related by Mauss indicate precisely that men are moved by contradictions and mobilised as much by goodness as by cruelty and individualism.

Yet, we observe that on the radio-waves the unique and immense wave of violence of all sorts is being propagated, only interspersed from time to time with short bits of insipid talk doubtless aimed at making us better digest the horror. Not content to live through the violence, we must still see it over and over again daily on the flat screen as if to wallow in it and become saturated with it.

Immunised by force, we capitulate, and violence even brings us together, especially when speaking of youth.

Let us recall the legend of Mithridates VI, called the Great, who lived in the 1st century BC. After an unhappy childhood, preoccupied above all by an obsessive fear of being assassinated, every day he ingested small doses of each of the poisons that he feared in order to immunise himself. Aside from the fact that we are at the dawn of homeopathy, we must discover the extreme interest of what this legend teaches us. Like this ancient king, we indeed live in a period of fear and are condemned to exorcising it. In fact, we are confronted with civilisational upheavals, which, in the name of progress, promote violent, frenzied economic competition, speed and change as lifestyles and the progressive smashing to pieces of the principal brakes or traditional resistance. This fear, and the insecurity that ensues, becomes chronic, ravaging ideals and hopes and destroying confidence in 9

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any form of political resolution. Henceforth incapable of envisaging society in any other way, as if consenting to a misfortune repeated over and over, we become immunoresistant. But ever more poison does not protect from fear and, as concerns education, it would be wise not to transfer our collective anxiety onto the children, for risk of ending up by being afraid and making them bear the brunt of it.

This question concerns politics, politicians, all the educational players and all citizens. It obliges us to open our eyes, to question ourselves on the attitude of adults as regards young people and to envisage the necessary readjustments for thinking about the place of children in society, for envisaging a more humane education that would spare them from the spiral that leads, in a fatal sequence, from suffering to violence. It is therefore quite necessary to attempt a cleansing of thought and taking things at the root to refuse the crucible of harmful repetitions. That risks giving us a few surprises and, in a way, giving us back to ourselves so as to facilitate a new judgement.

Let us go back up the thread of our demands and go over reasoning again on living bases, indispensable for thinking about education and the instruction of children. And, as they are not totally delinquent when they are born, it is easy for us not to start off immediately from the presupposition of their potential violence in order to envisage how we can act, not in a preventive manner but simply an educational one, so that children who are born today will live a peaceful existence.

To decontaminate oneself of a few illnesses According to a drift that has henceforth permeated society, one most generally acts when violence is already present. A simple metaphor can illustrate our meaning. Imagine a very fragile vase. It is beautiful and new, and you are very fond of it. But what happens? You don’t take care of it properly, and the vase breaks. You are upset, you get angry with yourself, you reproach your negligence, you detest this subconsciously deliberate mistake, you ruminate over your sadness.

But, well, it’s not serious. There exist good, transparent glues on the market—expensive, certainly, but solid. So you glue the broken pieces back together and pretend that the vase is the same.

We are experts at repairing what we neglect but quite insufficiently concerned with preventing breakage. Educational negligence as regards children is unthinkable. With a great many experts, we invent research and diagnoses, solutions to ills that we provoke. Especially concerned with remedies that reassure us on our inconsistencies, we forget the essential: namely that the illness is not inexorable.

Let us take one example amongst others, for numerous red lights are flashing in an ageing Europe.

Let us consider the public space, particularly in cities. It is not made for children: a few sandboxes, and then bah! the children must disappear. They are, in a way, ‘temporary’… As if childhood were not a real period, as if children lived because they are adults constantly evolving in a sort of nonexistent space/time. Let them just hurry a bit and grow up, and the trick will be up. No need to install anything durable between the two times. So it is that the social organisation outside of school plans nothing, or not much—in any event, not enough. We need think only of architecture, urbanism, youth centres, day-care centres, etc. Are the spaces sufficiently numerous, welcoming, adapted? And yet this stage of life, which is called youth, is getting longer, gaining importance owing to the increased life expectancy in general and the democratisation of studies. It is a sort of intermediary generation that has come to settle in before adulthood. Until fairly recently, adolescence was to get the meanest share. Henceforth, the 15-30 generation dominates. We are therefore highly unbalanced.

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Do children and young people disturb? No one would dare say it, and we even make a show of the opposite: we love them, they are our future, etc. But looking more closely, one observes the contrary. Our societies are not terribly hospitable towards children. They are modelled on the lifestyle of adults, their concerns, their work, the poor adjustments in public transportation and, still in our so-called modern era, between the lives of men and women. Children, at the end of the chain, must follow the rhythm that is imposed on them: getting up early, going to bed late, quick! quick!, kept by whomever one can find, with the flood of bad conscience, guilt and sadness that often go with it. The daily life of children is determined by that of adults, which is not a model for self-fulfilment.

And school time in all that? Well, it is totally dependent on that of adults. Why does a child of 6 go to school for the same number of hours as a secondary school student? Why do pupils remain in class for 6 hours at a stretch and, on average, spend 8 hours per day on school premises? Because the parents are not at home. And what is to be said about the very young? Not to mention schooling at the age of two: is this an additional means of babysitting at lesser cost or real need for children?

School hours are set, not pedagogically, but according to company work hours. However, in France, since the introduction of the 35-hour workweek, they have not diminished…

On the construction of the equilibrium of children depends that of our society. One speaks of fidgety or even manic children, incapable of concentrating. They are punished at school and at home because they cannot remain still but, above all, they are paying for our own agitation.

The list of our acts of negligence would be long, and everyone, whether in professional or private life, can reflect on his or her own. For what place, what attention do we grant the new generations?

How do we expect to educate children to harmonise our discourse of love with our acts and not make them pay the price of our negligence?

Educational security In most cases—and fortunately so—, children having academic difficulties are followed, and after the period of adolescent turbulence, rediscover a path to success. In some, better-off families, it is even the occasion for travels, status-enhancing training programmes or else the parents pay (rather dearly) for private institutions, which will provide the time necessary for handling the crisis. The young person then comes out above the difficulty to get into an ordinary degree course or career path. Alas, it is almost a platitude to repeat that all children are not equals before the difficulties they may experience, and difficult inequalities widen between them, which our democracies have trouble combating. Two weights, two measures. In working-class neighbourhoods, failure is, in a way, forbidden. It provokes an inflation of difficulties impossible to curb. The solutions seem unimaginable, and the consequences are well known. Failure of these children weighs heavy on their life and negatively overdetermines their future. It also weighs heavy on the image of the city, strongly marked by the tragic symbolism of the ghetto. Finally, it weighs heavy on the security of all. The study of the careers of these young people shows that it is sometimes, exhausted after several years of hardship, that they finally succeed in finding a direction, but obviously not without consequences.

Researchers show that the inequalities are cumulative, starting in kindergarten, and are reinforced by the families’ strategies of choice. In general, students succeed better if they come from a privileged background. On the other hand, all the studies on school violence show the correlation with failure and the bringing together of the weakest students in special classes. The figures vary according to the country, but none avoids school failure. Every year in France, 60,000 children are in a situation of estrangement with school and society, whether they are dropouts, not enrolled in 11

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school or without any qualification at the age of 16. This represents 8.5% of the age group, which is a low ratio, and we are continually bringing it down. But anyone can see that it remains a number that is totally intolerable, for them as well as for education in a modern country. We have reached a threshold beyond which we are not managing to progress because we cannot ask the school to do everything. These children need to be taken care of in a different manner, according to their particular difficulty. They finish school with the terrible feeling of being out of the running, rejected, misunderstood and profoundly unhappy, even when they conceal their anxiety, even though they sometimes seem to provoke failure, even though their violence often boils over. Every year, thousands of children put themselves in a situation of exclusion, lapse into delinquency and become ‘precocious outlaws’, for lack of finding their full place in society. In both cases, they experience a situation of great psychological distress that there is a tendency to underestimate since, most often, they do not talk about it. With no grip on the future, a black hole in the way of a tomorrow: who would accept such an injustice? Who can tolerate such a waste of intelligence?

Obligatory schooling has not allowed all children to achieve success, and, too often, school has reproduced the cleavages observed in society between rich and poor, between intellectuals and manual labourers. Resignation is not conceivable. One cannot admit that some be left by the wayside and that they have already lost the game even before it begins.

The notion of school failure goes against the very idea of education, whose primary role is to open up to the world. One then better understands the violence resulting from repeated humiliations: violence against oneself (depression or suicide) and/or violence against others (vandalism, aggressions). Shedding light on hidden violence, whether it be that to which young people are subjected or that which they commit, is to reveal crude verities, for example that the democratic school is seeking itself, that the school for the masses brings out inequalities, and that the violence of some is the result of a latent, much crueller violence, that which consists of pushing deeper into failure children who are asked to know that they came to learn.

This state of facts is reinforced by the dominant model, families and teachers combined, which organises the time of learning like a chase. It is often summed up thus: being first, faster than the others and without worrying about the others. The putting into a competitive situation is founded on the ejection of the weakest and the poorest, as if the value of a man were measured in terms of his strength and combativeness, as if intelligence were to be taken into account only after a symbolic or real combat to impose oneself at all cost.

For example, a great number of children learn to read badly when they are small because the passage to written language necessitates extremely complex skills as well as a serene psychological state. Moreover, we do not know very precisely how this learning functions but, for lack of taking all necessary precautions and time, we often make children bear the responsibility for the failure.

The consequences then require very costly remedial actions. This is why it would perhaps be necessary to establish a speed limit elsewhere—not only on the roads. The model of acceleration is not that of learning and intelligence. Children born today will live 100 years, so we ought, quite simply out of a humanist concern, to leave each one the time to learn at his or her own pace. That would reduce the feeling of failure and violence, limit collective anxiety and attenuate guilt.

It is therefore necessary to overturn the logic of failure that puts a large number of children and adolescents in a situation of multiple exclusion and, beyond academic success, encourage integration, i.e., take into account all the skills of young people who are not solely students. The end of schooling must not be the end of a journey but the beginning of another—one that is different but equally rich. Learning, the access to fundamental knowledge and culture, which school owes itself to provide for all young people, should not be the sole recourse. It is a matter of placing the accent on integration in the professional world with the help of companies and participating more generally 12

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in forming citizens. That is what, for example, the ‘second-chance’ schools propose, weaving the link between companies and professional training.

It thus seems that one must henceforth think beyond obligatory schooling and about the organisation of educational continuity. The age barrier of 16, which only touches the poorest and adolescents in suffering, must be done away with. If school is no longer mandatory, education, on the other hand, must remain so. Highly diverse set-ups exist, but premises are often lacking, and too many young people remain outside. In certain sites, there is thinking about the creation or adaptation of existing structures so that, when the academic career is interrupted, the educational career will continue and that all young people find the path to success.

Educational continuity is also necessary between the different places of young peoples’ education, culture and leisure activities. In school, on playing fields, in libraries or leisure centres, one must reflect on the common wagers, we must construct concerted educational projects. One cannot rethink the education of children, their health and protection, without rethinking the city. Urban programmes ought to contribute to this for they are in no way merely projects in stone, but human projects, at the heart of which the security and quality of life of inhabitants must have their full share.

Security begins there: reassuring everyone as to the place that he or she can occupy in society and possible success. Education is the best of securities. It is the very foundation of the protection systems that we all need.

Education in the broad sense Education concerns everyone. It is not the private property of the school, of which too much is asked, everything and its opposite. The load is too heavy for this single institution. It is therefore necessary to organise education with all those who are in charge of it, and stop acting as if school was meeting all needs. We must make actions and initiatives converge in order to organise a shared responsibility of education. Teachers, parents, doctors and nurses, the police, associations, youth workers, magistrates and elected officials, all the services of the state with all the inhabitants, must contribute to recasting Education in the broad sense, to train all children.

That begins with greater involvement of parents and families, the respect of their authority and, if need be, the organisation of aid to parenthood, for being a parent is not a natural given. Too often, meetings between parents and teachers occur in a corridor or a classroom, in a duelling and occasionally conflictual relationship, since the parents are generally ‘convoked’ when and only when there is a problem, to be told that the success of their child depends on their capacity to make him or her work, which makes them feel guilty, without their having the means to escape their helplessness. Indeed, how could they hope to succeed in this task when they themselves have sometimes had difficult relations with school or, at very least, poorly understand how it functions, whereas the teachers, whose profession and responsibility it is, have failed? As is already the case in certain cities, the creation of an area open to parents enables them to get together, confront theirs difficulties, exchange their feeling of helplessness and sometimes their suffering, inform themselves mutually and, moreover, meet with teachers in better conditions. A place of listening and speaking and thereby mutual knowledge, there is every chance of calming relations between teachers and parents and ridding them of the usual reciprocal accusations. In this place can also be organised, in connection with student parent federations, information and training facilitating the participation of parents in school or establishment councils.

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Education for becoming the affair of all must be organised locally, round local educational projects, guarantees of a new and more effective way of thinking about the education of children involving all players. This is what is happening, for example, in the network of educational cities. (cf. appendix) Going from one logic, centred on the school, to another, which affirms the entire territory as a carrier of education, new, more collective responsibilities are taking shape, and the school is no longer the only one to be enjoined to give an accounting. Getting away from reciprocal accusations, the whole challenge of the collective elaboration of an educational project is to permit each one to find his or her place, according to personal skills, but with the capacity to evolve in keeping with this overall vision, including in its professional practices. Certain decisions come under the authority of the State, others from the political will of local elected officials, and still others from the personal involvement of citizens. What is at stake through this new-found coherence is the return of confidence. It is to see to it that parents believe in the school, that the players feel reinforced in their common capacity to act, it is at the same time trying to reconcile young people with their own success.

Educational projects only succeed if they are closely organised with the projects of municipalities, and conversely, if the necessary complementarity of all public policies is organised: family, justice, town and country planning, infancy, health, urbanism, architecture, housing, transportation, employment, etc. For, in the educational sphere, if there is not an attack on several fronts, all efforts risk being in vain or, worse, leading to discouragement. This step is the occasion, getting away from the usual stereotypes, to institute a transformation process that makes the city and school evolve in one movement. It has the ambition of affirming the territory as a place of excellence and innovation, inside and outside school establishments, within an educational city that strives to transform the urban space into a true learning area. It can design an urban face inspired by a new way of thinking about the place of young people in the city.

It is therefore a matter of balancing the opposing forces to organise a harmonious educational development. That leads to establishing dialogues of professionals and redefining the tasks on all sides in the sense of greater effectiveness, in order to develop the network of adults whose children need it for learning and living better. It is at this price that one can tend towards an educational society.

Educational watch It is said colloquially that young people ‘hold the walls’ in the housing estates, but one should invert the order of the words and affirm that it is the estate that should hold the young people. Preventing violence goes by such turnarounds, for words have a meaning and shape our acts.

The word ‘watch’2 is lovely and even more so when attached to the word education. Between surveillance and benevolence, it evokes at the same time two things that are indispensable to a child’s education: authority and love. In the daily life of families, and without any interruption, when there are children, each adult, even though busy with other tasks, watches without saying so.

That is obvious. It is in a sort of continual ‘soft tension’ that prevents the accident. Let us take an example. At the beach in the summer, adults and children share moments of leisure and pleasure.

Everyone swims, discusses and tans, and the relaxation is total. But the adults are always watching, they keep an eye on the children; without saying it, they organise vigilance. They stretch an invisible and tranquil thread between themselves and the children. This is what is lacking for some.

2 veille in French 14

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They go through institutions and places, but there is not the sufficiently constant coalition round them that makes them feel in security and that they can succeed. The educational watch thus consists of re-establishing this forgotten vigilance.

To be quite concrete: all those who drop out or who are left by the wayside cruelly lack three things that are indispensable for ‘growing up straight’. They need a shelter. Simple common sense requires that the street not be an educational place. Children deserve better than loitering in the halls of blocks of flats. They need a schedule that structures their daily life, to get up in the morning and have things to do. In sum, they need a project.

The educational watch is a new form of collegial work that allows for crossing the institutional and professional logic that puts people together, tightening the ranks of youth worker-adults round young people in difficulty. The response to problems is organised at the neighbourhood level with people from the neighbourhood who know the children, who know the city, who know what the needs are. It is therefore the mayor who is the bearer and guarantor of the educational watch approach since it is he who organises the local educational project. The educational watch anticipates situations of failure and establishes a continuity, even and above all when the academic career is interrupted. It is, of course, a matter of endeavouring all for academic reintegration, but when that is not wished or possible, to construct an individual itinerary for every young person. Educational watch units are set up in each city, run by a co-ordinator, in the framework of structures or arrangements that already exist in the city and which appear the best adapted. They rely on the skills of the different partners in the educational action: parents, teachers, social workers and doctors, as well as associations and local officials, putting them on the network, however without there being any confusion as to the responsibilities and roles of each one. The co-ordinators organise the meeting of youth workers, social contributors, professionals in integration and health, and elected officials. They pinpoint young people who have broken with school or who are on the way.

Sometimes it is necessary to create complementary educational structures as certain children have school behavioural problems and must benefit temporarily from poly-functional places: simultaneously school, youth centre, health centre and local mission, these places exist already but in insufficient numbers.

Let us take a few concrete examples.

• The case of a 14-year-old child, a notorious truant for months. The educational watch unit received the mission of making the connection between the school, the social worker and the parents. It must relieve the school of the terribly restrictive monitoring and help resolve the situation.

• The case of a 15-year-old, suspended from his secondary school for 8 days. Instead of staying home or outside, parading in front of his mates, he is going to be taken care of in connection with his parents, and in the framework of agreements made between the school and elected officials. An association is receiving the mission of giving this student school or civic tasks to accomplish.

• The case of an adolescent of 16 and a half who, at the end of middle school, was oriented towards a vocational school. He did not show up. The school got in touch with the educational watch unit as of the beginning of the school year to inquire as to his whereabouts. The unit got in touch with his family via an adult relay and is going to take charge of the situation.

• A 17-year-old youth lost his job. The street youth worker sent him to the local mission and the educational watch unit, which will look for both another employment contract and also offer him a temporary activity in one of the places set up in the city so as not to remain idle.

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Protecting children one by one is a heavy task. Yet it is the sole solution, for the individual always resists, and the general treatment of academic difficulties from atop the State, with strokes of magical arrangements, is a delusion.

Conclusion Fighting violence inside and outside school thus requires, first of all, overthrowing the usual logic which, as we have said, too often results from a fatalism of failure. Prevention deserves to return to its original meaning, marked by generosity and benevolence towards children. In sum, it consists of betting on their ability to be educated and constantly imagining paths to success. It boils down to making a promise to young people so that they can find the strength to project themselves into the future.

Education in the broad sense of the term, going beyond the sole school sphere, should therefore become a real priority everywhere. This priority is expensive, it is true, but would spare us a great deal of ills in terms of repairs and prisons.

And then, even when they have transgressed the yellow line of taboos, children still have the right to every regard, every attention, every chance. It is a matter of giving the best, especially to those who lack everything, so that they simply have the same things as the others: comfort, kindness, protection, constant attention, a demanding education and security. This is the price for enabling them to revive a taste for knowledge, to rekindle the life force present in each of them. Because violence, which, as we all know, is part of life, must be channelled to constructive ends. Culture, ‘which gives form to the mind’ (to borrow Jerome Bruner’s phrase), allows for the symbolisation and possible expression of violent impulses by transforming them into a life instinct.

That necessitates following a few, fairly simple main guidelines: - resolutely resist the pressure of only current events and begin long-term work. The time of education is always long; - lift the scarring pressure on young people and thereby effectively combat a number of prejudices; - reflect upon an urban organisation that allows for an area, i.e., areas, for young people within the public space; -develop occasions and structures allowing young people to express themselves and participate in the life of the housing estate; - reduce the suffering of adolescents and young people, which comes down to reinforcing their material, psychic and social security; - lever to validate steps already set in motion and prepare new actions, especially to implement local educational projects that involve the family, the school, the city and all the institutions that shape the daily life of young people; - set up a right to education after the age of 16 for equal opportunities between adolescents; - make responsible and mobilise all adults on the educational wagers.

By relying on the abundance of initiatives that already exist throughout Europe, one might reflect on this scale about a convergence of actions undertaken and create an ‘educational watch’ programme to exchange, pool and harmonise practices concerning breaks in education.

‘Look for your black holes and your white walls.’ The famous philosophers Deleuze and Guattari had this magnificent formula for speaking of the difficulty and the quest of all men in finding their own way. Anxiety to make good, projects to write. Blackboards and white pages, i.e., education.

Such is the key.

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2 EIGHT EXAMPLES OF GOOD LOCAL PRACTICES IN EUROPE

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The Educational Watch unit, Evry (France) A practical example allows for illustrating the functioning of the Educational Watch system such as it was set up in the city of Evry: Case X, born September 87 (15 years 4 months) First information: February 2003 Via the principal of the adolescent’s school ± Initial situation An adolescent whose conduct at school over the past few years has been quite difficult. Beginning in 2001, the principal set up numerous pedagogical measures and prompted the meeting of an educational team, which in turn led to a meeting of partners (with a favourable opinion for a measure of psychotherapeutic support). The family did not follow up.

The Principal informed the deputy public prosecutor as of March 2001 on violent, ‘follow-myleader’ conduct and the immature character of a child refusing any structure. He reported him as being a danger to himself and to others. ~ In early February 2003, the adolescent committed acts of serious verbal and physical violence on the school premises, damaging equipment and threatening the firemen who had been called. He was suspended by protective measure awaiting the disciplinary committee.

Complaints were lodged (firemen, school).

The principal informed the Educational Watch co-ordinator, providing him with numerous elements from the student’s file. Amongst them: a letter in which he explained that, in early November of the same school year, he received a youth worker from an association acting on the behalf of the ASE, mandated to follow the adolescent’s situation in the framework of a judicial AEMO. The principal, having informed this youth worker of the acts committed in early February, learnt that the latter had not succeeded in making contact with the adolescent or his family since November, the mother being a particular hindrance. ~ The co-ordinator contacted the youth worker. On the occasion of numerous conversations, it was agreed that the youth worker increase these attempts at contact with the adolescent and the family, in particular whilst awaiting the disciplinary committee and to prepare for its consequences.

Following the winter holidays, the co-ordinator was invited to participate in a meeting at the school, arranged by the principal to prepare for the meeting of the disciplinary committee. The student, his parents and the youth worker were invited. Only the mother was present. Thanks to a teaching aide who served as interpreter, she expressed her wish that her son be kept at the school but gave no guarantee of participation in more general educational work. ~ The disciplinary committee met in early March and pronounced a measure of a month’s suspension, with the student being obliged to return to the school on a regular basis to meet with a CPE [year head] and get schoolwork. The youth worker was asked to use this period profitably to look for companies where the adolescent might carry out a motivation course.

During his month of suspension, the adolescent met regularly with the CPE and his form tutor. He went to school especially to maintain a link with adults.

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He regularly met with his youth worker, doing research with him regarding his academic and professional future. A training course was arranged. The adolescent went one morning then dropped it. Another course, negotiated by the form tutor, was also refused, in the same way. ~ During the month’s suspension, the co-ordinator contacted the city’s integration service for 1625 year-olds, which, even though the youth was just under 16, agreed to follow the case. One of these agents made contact with the youth worker to offer his help.

The adolescent was reinstated into his school the week before the spring holidays. The CPE filled out a report on the month of suspension and the first week back at school; she observed a high number of lateness and absences for those five days.

Before the end of the school quarter, the Principal indicated that the other, younger, children from the same sibship and also enrolled in his establishment, were showing increasingly heavy signs of break. ~ The CPE and youth worker agreed that it was necessary to find means for removing the adolescent from the family setting. The youth worker proposed a break stay during the spring holidays, which the adolescent refused.

During those school holidays, the co-ordinator organised a meeting between the youth worker, the agent from the 16-25 year-old integration service and himself. The youth worker described the difficulties stemming, to a large degree, from the family context (depreciated paternal authority, alcoholism, elder adolescent son of the sibship overprotected by the mother, serious psychological problems). He explained that he could not impose measures in the framework of the AEMO, of which, moreover, he was going to request the prolongation and extension to all the siblings.

The co-ordinator also learnt from the police superintendent that the teenager was known by his services only for two affairs, including the one from the month of February and another from the previous year.

Situation in early May The youth worker found a place in the provinces for the adolescent to live. The mother was totally opposed to this solution, and refused even a one-day visit. The adolescent, who initially agreed, backed down.

At school, the student’s presence remained the same (poor results, lateness and absences) without justifying a new disciplinary committee consistent from the viewpoint of the whole context.

The co-ordinator contacted the youth worker, who informed him that the matter was going to a hearing before the children’s judge in early June.

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Outline of the organisation principle of the Evry Educational Watch set-up Steering committee of the Evry Educational Watch 3 or 4 meetings per year Identifies and evaluates the needs and means of action Defines the framework of actions and sets their objectives Guarantees the involvement of partners in the system Validates the missions of interveners from the technical units Ensures the course appraisals, observes and analyses

. Mayor and/or Deputy-Mayor (delegations) Co-ordinator Sub-Prefect and City mission (Prefecture) . National Education (IA*) . Justice (Public Prosecutor’s Office, PJJ) . CAF . DDASS* . GIP Centre Essonne . DDJS (*) . FASILD . Public security (*) . Local mission of Evry . Departmental Council (*) . City of Evry (DGA concerned) (*) and services designated by institutions

- Favours contacts between partners - Organises and attends meetings - Guarantees activity reports - Ensures the link with the departmental Watch set-up

Educational Watch Co-ordinator

Technical watch unit Monthly meetings (or 8-10 per year) Pinpoints individual cases of rupture (children or young people) Seeks responses and implements them Designates field players and puts them in charge of missions Indicates the dysfunction of public intervention

. Organises and runs meetings . Monitors actions decided upon . Relays information from and to the Steering Committee

. defined by age group of the publics (e.g. 11/18 years), by geographical areas (e.g.: neighbourhoods), or by the combination of these factors. . At least 2 technical units and doubtless 4 or 5 Professionals only, in an intentionally limited number and designated according to the definition of the cells: e.g.: - IEN, School Principals, Headmasters, CIO, Local mission…

- Director CAE/PJJ, Substitute, Social workers, Police superintendents, …

- Heads of municipal services

Field players – Educational interveners Professionals, parents, associations:

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Mediation at school, Bologna (Italy)3 The violence of young people in schools is not the only sign of the malaise they are feeling in their life. Malaise is evident everywhere.

The adult world questions itself on this new behaviour and seeks answers. Sometimes it finds temporary remedies that do not take into account the profound helplessness and confusion of young people but which give the illusion that one has the means for facing up to all the problems.

The cry of young people asks to be heard and received. It contains an implicit demand for learning how to live, giving meaning to life, growing up, being able to recognise and give space to their emotionalism and identity.

It is absolutely necessary that young people learn to recognise their emotions and give a name to them, to grant them an identity, a role. It is only in this way that they will be able to speak about them and not fear them.

Objectives of mediation Learning mediation means discovering by oneself the mechanisms that are at the origin of interpersonal conflicts, learning to transform them and improve relations between the persons in conflict.

Mediation is a means for permitting dialogue, letting persons speak who would otherwise avoid the contact or manifest their frustration in a negative manner. They allow young people to familiarise themselves with conflictual situations without dramatising them.

In workshops, young people carry out a practical experiment through role-playing and other exercises that provide an ever-deeper experience of the relation of opposition.

They learn to recognise and give a name to their emotions.

The ‘game’ constitutes an excellent way of learning, permitting the expression of real-life experiences and experimentation with situations that, in daily life, would provoke anxiety and fear.

The project involves 4-hour workshops that take place once a week. Each group is made up of 4 pupils from primary-school classes (aged approximately 9 to 12).

Realisation of the project The project is organised in work units, each of which has a main subject. Every unit is divided into 2 or 3 meetings, and a final meeting takes place, allowing for an evaluation of the work accomplished.

Here is an example illustrating the type of activities proposed to the children: Unit: The relationship to the other - Subject: diversity and prejudices - 1st meeting on the topic of difference: Objective: understanding oneself and understanding others, thinking about the question of diversity.

Game no.1: the basket of apples - reflections on the similarities and differences between persons.

Game no.2: equal and different - reflections on what we find in common in diversity.

Activity: expressing situations in which one felt a difference with others.

- 2nd meeting on the topic of points of view: Objective: thinking about prejudices and stereotypes; practice in relativising one’s point of view.

Game no.1: the stereotyped acknowledgement (showing a few stereotypes to become aware of them) Game no.2: the evil spell (thinking about the flimsiness of perceptions and judgements)

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Activity: decentralisation (taking stories apart to bring out the different points of view). Reading the story of Little Red Riding Hood told by the wolf. Reading/dramatisation of stories in front of the group.

Evaluation The aim of this last meeting is to evaluate what the children experienced in the course of the activity. We asked the pupils to: - bring out the strong and weak points of the activity; - state the significant contents of the learning; - express the degree of satisfaction and interest.

Finally, the pupils make an analysis of the results of the work carried out.

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Community school mediation, Saint-Gilles (Brussels, Belgium) Introduction The project stems from the observation that a fringe of the population of young people attending school is in the process of disengaging with school or encountering difficulties in schooling (in particular, relational problems with the academic institution, problems of school orientation, inability to give meaning to one’s schooling, academic failure, etc.).

The aim is to facilitate young people’s access to studies by making sure their schooling goes smoothly. It falls within a concern for social emancipation and equal opportunities.

The work framework The mediation project is subsidised and supervised by the Brussels Region, but the towns enjoy a certain autonomy in carrying out the project.

The Town of Saint-Gilles has assigned a person to take care of social mediation at the Town Hall (primarily at the registry office and the ‘foreign’ persons’ counter), and two other persons work in the community school mediation department.

The population of Saint-Gilles is multicultural, its 44,644 inhabitants representing no less than 154 different nationalities, including approximately 9,000 between the ages of 3 and 20.

Teaching in Belgium offers parents the possibility of ‘the free choice of schools’ (different networks, within the town or outside…). We observe considerable student mobility throughout the Brussels region, especially in secondary education (e.g., in a survey we carried out of 168 young people enrolled in the secondary level of Saint-Gilles, 42% lived in Saint-Gilles, the other 58% coming from neighbouring communities and sometimes farther away). The large majority use public transportation, which gives them a space of freedom and autonomy.

Consequently, our service is aimed at the parents and young people who are town residents, particularly the young people enrolled in a school in Saint-Gilles, but the mediators are induced to making contact with all the schools in the Brussels region.

The mediation service is located on the premises of the Local Mission (an organisation of socioprofessional integration). It is above all a public service at the disposal of young people and parents.

It is outside academic establishments, which allows for guaranteeing a totally neutral place for listening, talk and information, and which is carried out in respect of the code of ethics of mediators of the Brussels Region.

Three main lines of action are developed: the individual line: Above all, the service has become known by word of mouth, but also thanks to social partners (youth centres, homework schools, parents’ associations, literacy classes, social services, medical centres, street youth workers…).

In the course of the year 2002, the two school mediators intervened in 345 situations linked to young people in school, resulting in 709 interviews and steps undertaken (primarily trips to schools).

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Most of these situations (approx. 75%) concerned young people in secondary school, essentially minors.

18% of these situations concerned requests for information: about school legislation, the organisation of instruction (options, specialised instruction, forms of instruction…), professions…; 17% were requests for help in enrolment in a school: obstacles encountered for enrolment in certain schools, lack of room in certain schools where enrolments sometimes take place a year in advance, the refusal to enrol a student with unsatisfactory grades or one having presented conduct problems, orientation from ordinary instruction towards specialised instruction or a very specific type of specialised instruction (behavioural disturbances, instrumental problems, slight mental problems…), a young person incarcerated who must define a training project to benefit from parole…; 17% of the situations were linked to school orientation problems and construction of life projects.

The other situations concerned diverse problems: immigrant or first-generation child, definitive expulsion from a school, recourse against a decision of the school staff meeting, other disciplinary measures, search for remedial work, activities, problem with family allowances, request for studies subsidy, search for a student job, running away from home, problems of upbringing…

During the first meeting, the children or young people appear, either alone or with their parents or someone from the family; it also happens to receive the parents by themselves.

It is not always easy to undertake steps with a service and explain or verbalise the situation. Once the service is known—but especially once a connection has been made—, it is easier to come back, even if it is a year later… As far as possible, we try to meet the young person and his or her parents together and intervene individually (sometimes young people come in a small group).

Given the relative difficulty of the procedure, we try to be as available as possible (everyone is received, sometimes we make an appointment, but above all, we establish a contact).

In many situations, we refer to the law (primarily the decree ‘mission of instruction in the Frenchspeaking community’ and school law). The law is formative, and respect for it must guarantee equality between citizens.

It is difficult for us to evaluate our work for, as mediators, we do not provide the follow-up. The person is free to come or not. As a ‘resources’ service, it is important, especially with an adolescent public, to guarantee this freedom.

We are not youth workers. We supplement other services and projects (youth workers in the street, youth centres, academic support groups, homework schools…). We also receive little feedback. It is sometimes long afterwards that a person will come back and tell us…

The collective line and the synthesis and analysis line - The collective line primarily concerns information sessions of social workers or in contact with the public in order make them aware of the questions that must be asked to favour the schooling of children and young people.

We also organise information sessions aimed at parents, centred especially on questions they may raise in regard to the school, in relation to their anxieties as parents and as to the present and future of their children.

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making them aware of certain information, but especially making them want to ask questions, anticipate and go looking for answers in an active and personalised manner.

Concerning point three, it is a matter of analysing recurrent facts of which here are a few examples: the specific status of students in secondary education who are of age, excessive school suspensions, discrimination in enrolment, the lack of place for immigrants in reorientation class, school failure and poor academic orientation, the non-respect of free education, the absence of remedial hours for the second and third levels of secondary education, the lack of means of associations proposing remedial help outside of school….

After analysis, the mediators make contact with the competent authorities or mobilise the potential partners to seek solutions that will be proposed to young people or their parents.

The ‘Action Collégiens’ system of the City of Paris (France)4 Presentation of the system Set up by the City of Paris, ‘Student Action’ is an educational prevention system aimed at children aged 11 to 17.

Given the specificity of the action to be carried out with these young people, in 1992 the City of Paris turned over the running of this system to the Leader and Community Training Institute (IFAC). This system is characterised by the intervention of a non-certificated teacher, supervised by a school social worker, in the three main places of young people’s lives: school, the neighbourhood and the family.

Initiated in 1988, the Action has undergone considerable evolution since 1998, linked to making young people recruited in the framework of the ‘youth-jobs’ programme available for the development of this arrangement. Currently, a team of ten school social workers and some forty non-certificated teachers intervene on a daily basis in 35 middle schools spread over 11 arrondissements (+ a centre located in the 13th arrondissement).

To carry out this mission, the non-certificated teachers benefit from the presence of guidance provided by the school social workers (who, after working on this Action for several years, have acquired knowledge and definite professional competence), on-the-job training and a certificate course centred on the leadership activities.

The system is set up, with the agreement of the principals, in the middle schools in problem neighbourhoods. These schools, established in political sites of the city, are endowed with a section of alternating general vocational training and a committee of education for health and citizenship.

This involves at least 400 students.

The specificity of Action Collégiens

4 Even though Action Collégiens is not one of the ‘official’ partners of the ‘Sécucités City and School’ programme, we were anxious to include this experience in our work (which was presented to us by one of its representatives, Mr Raphaël Pena, during the first work seminar in Paris, February 2003), given its specificity and its interest concerning cross-disciplinary work.

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Action Collégiens owes its effectiveness to both its cross-disciplinary nature, engendering a dynamic and permitting better co-ordination, and to its implantation in the school, which is the obligatory point of passage for young people.

One of the interests of Action Collégiens lies primarily in the fact of its being in daily contact with young people and building bridges with the institutions and structures that can help the young person to integrate him- or herself into society, whether by organising leisure activities, administrative formalities or preparing his or her entry in professional life.

In this regard, the role of the non-certificated teacher consists not of providing academic support (which is primarily the role of the teachers), but helping young people in difficulty become organised and develop their motivation, making them assume responsibility and helping them, through recreational means, to accede to the discovery of culture and better master reading and writing.

Operating methods The non-certificated teacher and students have facilities within the school (one or more rooms fitted out as a club, games room or library, workshops, documentation, information). This is a place open to all students, which they appropriate and where they come to relax, work or meet the noncertificated teacher. Saturday afternoon, the team of teachers and school social workers proposes activities, workshops, cultural outings, athletic competitions and parties in the neighbourhood and in the city at large.

The goal of Action Collégiens is also to be able to organise week-ends, outings as well as stays, during the holidays, self-managed if possible, in order to bring young people to assume the constraints of daily life and acquire the sense of responsibilities and respect for the rules of life in society.

A few figures Out of the 16,000 children enrolled in the middle schools where the non-certificated teachers intervene: During school time 5,845 students participate in the games library club 1,837 benefit from academic support

Outside of school time 771 students go on trips during the school holidays 502 go on trips during the summer holidays 3,961 benefit from the ‘Paris invites 640 participate in weekends children to reading’ operation 496 benefit from the ‘orientation’ 1,991 participate in evening outings operation ‘You can do it differently’, Lübeck (Germany) a project for pupils to take part in and to follow what is being said on the topic of violence.

The project does not concentrate on a certain form of violence, but rather focuses on solving problems of violence in various spheres of life, especially in domestic and school surroundings.

The target-group is 7th-grade pupils in different state schools.

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The goals of the project are: to be more sensitive about violence to increase awareness of the dynamics of interrelations in violent situations to understand the role patterns of the people involved to learn by example of alternative conflict-management.

This reduces the possibility of using violence yourself and increases the possibility of intervening in a helpful manner.

The project has four elements: the theatre-element, teacher-training, the presentation of material for lessons and the city-rally.

In the theatre-element, a professional theatrical company presents scenes on violence. In workgroups, pupils work on new endings, teachers support and help in conflict-management. Then the actors perform the scenes with the new endings. Pupils, teachers and actors discuss this solution.

This part of the project attempts to motivate pupils and teachers to carry on in this area.

In teacher-training, teachers learn to deal with normal conflict situations in daily school life. The topic is ‘Conflict-management instead of avoiding conflicts’. The teachers realise that conflicts, arguments and fights are useful integrating parts of human relations.

They have to teach the pupils that social behaviour and conflict-management must be dealt with through dialogue. Teachers have the responsibility of: using conflicts constructively supporting verbal management in experiences of violence supporting conflict-management in recreational structures supporting fairness in disputes accepting constructive conflicts as a search for solutions supporting the growth of self-confidence and individuality establishing rules and showing how to work on them and respect them.

Important for work on this topic is an atmosphere of trust, limits and consequences at school.

Another element was the preparation and reflection on material for lessons. The teachers receive didactic-material on this subject. One was the theatre-forum. The key elements of the role-playing are: - in reference to the children: The combat involved in children informing the teacher and the other children in the class about the facts, as they see them.

The involved children choose actors for the playing and instruct them like a film director as to what they have to do or to say.

The actors play the real situation according to their instructions.

Spectators are asked to watch the play and say STOP at the point they would change the behaviour.

The theatre-forum ends when all involved are satisfied with the found solutions.

- in reference to the teacher: The teacher has to accept a new aspect of his or her role.

He or she has to avoid taking somebody’s part, being only the mediator and having to help the children to solve their problems themselves.

- in reference to the playing: No partiality The adults can help to show: You have many chances to behave. Aggressive behaviour will be followed by negative consequences. Fighting is a part of life but it is possible to handle a fight in a fair way.

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The message of the intervention: You can do it differently! You can do otherwise….

It is also possible to use forum-theatre in lessons of prevention of sexual violence against boys and girls. Pupils learn in gender-specific groups or in mixed groups - How to say ‘no’; to ask for help; to react to unpleasant touching…

Whether this knowledge leads to competent reactions in dangerous situations cannot be proven.

Every project against violence has to offer presentations of helping-institutions for incriminated children and youths.

The last element is a city-rally where the different governmental and non-governmental institutions present their various offers in conflict-management.

The pupils and teachers have the possibility of speaking to the social workers, asking questions and talking about violence-management in general.

After this day, the teachers have to work on the experiences the pupils had and the questions they might have.

We know we cannot solve all the problems that children and young people have, but we can offer them support and possibilities for reacting in difficult situations.

The question after the project was: Can it be proved that the project is leading to increased knowledge about prevention and violence amongst children and teachers?

We obtained results suggesting that the level of information amongst the pupils and teachers about the topic of violence and its prevention was relatively high. The teachers want to continue to work on the topic of violence.

But in the meantime we learned that work on violence-prevention at school never ends. We have to continue our work because school, teachers, students, pupils and the surroundings change all the time.

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The ISIS project, Prevention of violence of a sexual nature, Urban Community of Northern Tenerife (Spain)

Introduction The ISIS prevention project was set up in January 2003 throughout the towns of Northern Tenerife, following a study showing that sexual aggressions against women were numerous on the island and more so than in the rest of the country.

Moreover, the project relies on the following two observations: children who, as of their earliest age, have witnessed repeated scenes of violence in their family environment, will tend to reproduce violent behaviour towards their close friends and family, considering violence the sole means for resolving conflicts; in numerous cases, aggressors presented violent behaviour when they were younger.

It was thus decided by the Urban Community of Northern Tenerife to develop actions for prevention of sexual violence and, more particularly, violence towards women, in all the secondary schools in the Northern part of the island, or with young people aged 11 to 18.

This project, which is subsidised by the Governmental Health service of the Canary Islands and carried out jointly by the Youth, Women’s and Social services of the towns as well as by members of the direction and orientation departments of school establishments, has two objectives: on the one hand, promoting in young people the acquisition of attitudes and conduct that are tolerant and respectful of the opposite sex, allowing for offering them a healthy affective and sexual life; on the other hand, developing a specialised orientation and resources service for professionals working in this sphere of prevention (teaching and non-teaching personnel in schools, the personnel of the socio-health and medical services and also municipal technicians), giving them work tools and also wanting to be an area for discussion and reflection, where anyone might contribute to the development of the project and offer proposals as to the approach or methodology to follow or develop in the towns and school establishments concerning the prevention of sexual violence.

The first part of this project is being carried out in the secondary schools by a team of three psychologists specialised in this field.

A group evaluation of the project should be realised in the coming months.

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The new approach to preserving peace in schools in Helsinki (Finland) The City of Helsinki Education Department appointed a working party to prepare propositions to make schoolwork and the learning environment safer for students, teachers and other persons working at schools. The group was appointed on 2 June 2002, and the work was completed on 31 January 2003. The working party’s memorandum is entitled ‘Developing the comprehensive schools into safe learning and working environments’.

The working party first focused on improving safety in comprehensive schools, from the point of view of both staff and students, also considering situations in class and during breaks as well as all other situations connected with schoolwork, such as mealtimes, field trips, school transports and so on. Another aim of the group was to preserve the safety of all those visiting schools, e.g. parents and people having business with schools.

The strategies connected with the safety of the City of Helsinki According to The General Safety Strategy of the City of Helsinki, safety is one of Helsinki's top priorities. Developing safety requires co-operation and activities to be considered on three levels: acts that include the whole population or any large number of people co-operation with the risk groups supporting those who have committed criminal acts as well as crime victims, preventing the recurrence of criminal acts.

The Child and Family Policy Programme of the City of Helsinki duly observes that, besides all kinds of supportive programmes aimed at children, interest must also be focused on the community itself and its well-being. When a good atmosphere prevails in a school, the students feel better, and the school is likely to be free of harassment and other problems.

The City of Helsinki Drugs Strategy promotes the population's health and safety. The target is to bring about good childhood and youth by strengthening adult networks and homes in their everyday task of raising children.

The strategies of the City of Helsinki emphasise that, in creating safety, early intervention is essential. The way the schools operate, the atmosphere in schools and the contents of teaching and education work are important. The strategies also stress that in the co-operation between different players and the schools, adequate tools are necessary for intervening in incidents that threaten the safety of the individual, the community and the environment.

Experts’ viewpoints The students: Students were heard as one group of experts. They stated that schools must have clear rules so that everybody knows them, and teachers should discuss them in class every year when school starts. Adults must always take prompt action when school rules have been broken.

Students should have the opportunity to take part in school affairs and play a real role in making decisions concerning the school. Students’ own activities are also important when new pupils arrive in school. The police should provide more information about crime and subsequent punishments.

A school's physical environment is important (broken windows, etc), as are traffic arrangements.

Parents have their share in the responsibility and a role in creating a safe learning environment.

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The teachers: The generally-accepted rules for acting in violent occurrences are critical. If no rules exist, violent situations will get out of hand and escalate. It is important that all teaching staff be devoted to following those general rules and acting as agreed beforehand. It is essential that all groups working in schools be aware of the general rules and work together to achieve a safe atmosphere. The role of the teachers’ union, the support of the police and perhaps advice from the occupational health personnel will create safety for teachers in their work. A plan to teach and educate provides a good starting-point for making schoolwork safer.

The parents: Good and adequate co-operation between school and home are the basis of good schoolwork. Co-operation should be open and supportive, and parents have the right and possibility to take part in the school’s everyday work by creating networks especially in the first school year and when children enter the upper grades and puberty. Parents suggested that there be a small waiting room for parents who come to fetch their children after school. Schools and teachers are not responsible for parents’ activities but a partnership is necessary. Parents have the prime responsibility of raising their child, but schools share this responsibility by improving a child's or youth's learning environment, safety and well-being at school.

The pupils’ maintenance group: This multi-professional group consists of different kinds of professionals related to schools. There may be a teachers’ representative, a psychologist, a social worker, a youth work official and even one from the police or the cleaning and maintenance staff, etc. The group concentrates on a certain problem and tries to solve it. The group needs clear procedures for handling various matters ranging from, for example, broken windows to family violence and its impact on a child's ability to attend school.

Safety as part of the curriculum The aim of the national bases for curriculum is to expand on the objectives defined in legislation related to education and to lay a foundation for education at the municipal and school levels. The new national regulations went into effect in 2002. The school as a learning environment shall be both physically and psychologically safe and supportive and it must be healthy for the students.

Reference is also made concerning co-operation between home and school, and the most important regulation concerning safety at school is that safety be part of the curriculum and the work in class.

In Helsinki, the Education Department has underlined, among other things, that schools must have common work procedures and preparedness to solve conflicts. This can be done by: common order regulations and action procedures; different kinds of programmes to ensure safety; consistency of actions; managing the school and the role models given by the adults; good co-operation among teachers and shared responsibilities; good co-operation with homes and the surrounding community all curricula shall also define the students’ maintenance group and its objective The curriculum reforms should be completed by September 2005. In all Helsinki schools, follow-up investigations will be carried out regularly, and the audition procedure is aimed at safety issues during the next few years.

Miscellaneous:

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The Helsinki Education Department is involved in many projects connected with various sectors of the safety project. A large proportion of the educational establishments works in co-operation with the interest groups in their districts or suburbs. The legislation for basic education prescribes the guarantee of a safe learning environment for each person. The schools’ general ethical and basic educational objectives and values form the starting point for this. Crime prevention is part of a school’s educational work. For instance, grandparents are a good reserve for supporting safety and also other areas of schoolwork. Parents have been interested in taking part in discussions concerning the values at school. PTA meetings are a good forum for handling a variety of issues, and school committees are official forums for planning and executing safety measures.

The constant training of the school personnel needs a new approach. The observation that a child needs space in order to become a good citizen should be taken into account, too.

A large variation of interest groups consists for instance of social workers, health services, fire and rescue department, parishes, the Red Cross, the traffic planning department, school buses and the police. For instance, the police can inform schools to make early interventions, if a crime or a comparable act has been committed. Through neighbourhood policing, the police co-operate with non-governmental groups and organisations and are able to prevent crime and disorder. The aim of the work is to achieve a safe and pleasant environment.

The new approach to preserving peace in schools demands a lot of work, and many new procedures must be found.

In Helsinki, safety in schools must be taken care of in three fields: early intervention activities and acts building the whole school community into a safer place of work; recognising problems early and intervening in acts that threaten students or school personnel; seeking solutions for acute problems found, supporting those who are suffering and acting in crisis situations.

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The ‘Living together in the city’ campaign, Valencia (Spain) Premises and context of the action In 2000, the Upper Court of Justice of the City of Valencia noted an increase of 88.32% in acts of juvenile delinquency in relation to the previous year. To fight this continually growing violence, several years ago, the City’s education service (Studies and Research section), which is a member of the European Educational Cities network, instituted a series of prevention policies, in particular through the City/school relationship. The most important of these actions is the ‘Living together in the city’ campaign.

This comes from the following working hypothesis: ‘Recognising the symptoms and causes of the phenomenon of violence and aggressiveness in school and in the various city institutions and social spaces constitutes a taboo. It is therefore difficult to introduce dialogue, debate and reflection on this phenomenon, which might allow for becoming aware of daily situations of lack of communication, aggressiveness and violence.’

Thus, it is first of all necessary to observe and analyse the facts and dialogue that results, before the citizens and institutions take measures and actions aimed at preventing this phenomenon.

We therefore propose that, in the educational area, conditions conducive to an appropriate mood for dialogue, debate and reflection be created. In the present case, it will be thanks to the realisation of this campaign, to bring out, to be able to detect and identify and to heighten awareness of the daily situations described above. The project intends to respond to the problem of violence in all fields of daily life, whether inside or outside the school, and falls within a relationship of the school with the city.

Description of the action The action takes place in the establishments of the City of Valencia, particularly in the primary schools. The pupils are asked to make large drawings or collages (1.17 m x 1.20 m), or else small texts or slogans in different areas (the home, school, neighbourhood, sports centres, means of communication, etc.).

It is a mid- to long-term project that has been carried out every year for the past seven years (19952002) and which is financed by the municipality.

This one focuses on the learning of values such as Peace, Tolerance, ‘knowing how to live together’ (convivencia in Spanish).

A team of technicians and leaders offer their assistance to teachers who work directly in class with the students.

Partners involved in the project are the students themselves, their teachers and masters and, indirectly, parents and the rest of the citizens.

The works executed by the students are exhibited the entire month of March, during the Fallas folk and tourist festival, in various public places throughout the city, thereby inviting, in addition to the city’s inhabitants, foreign visitors to contemplate them and, in turn, think about the theme of violence, transforming these places into educational areas accessible to all.

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This allows for reflection that doubtless leads to dialogue, this dialogue being the front door to better democratic cohabitation and therefore allowing to see to it that violence decreases first in class, in the case that it existed, as well as in society.

We have been able to observe that the project was more difficult to carry out with students in the upper levels (16-18 years) than with the younger students. Moreover, we observed a reticence on the part of some school principals in recognising the existence of acts of violence in their establishments, particularly in private schools. Overall, however, the action was well received by the schools.

Student participation has been massive and aroused considerable enthusiasm (an average of 4,000 participants per year, representing 197 schools in the city). The action permitted intense debate between the students and the teaching staff, and the democratic method, both in the choice of themes as well as the realisation of the works, was primordial for the success of the operation.

Furthermore, the taboo that constituted the fact of tackling the theme of violence in schools could be lifted. Finally, the communication that was established between the students’ works and the average citizen who could observe them in an open space like the city streets, on a daily basis, was quite positive. It is thus planned to continue this project in the years to come.

Conclusion Verbal and physical violence, the phenomena of racketing and harassment between young people today is manifest as much in the school environment as in other places in the city.

Quite often even, the school is the receptacle for problems experienced by the young person outside the establishment; in certain cases, it can also accentuate them.

Violence in the school can therefore not be treated as a phenomenon isolated from the rest of society. Since it lies within the city’s territory, the school must have its full place in the local security policy.

To be effective and lasting, this must not only have prevention as a central point for all action, but also combine all the players from the local community and educational system. Young people, parents, teachers, social workers, police…, all must unite and co-operate to return to the school its sole function of education, learning, blossoming and leisure.

Such are the principal recommendations that came out of the exchanges that took place in this programme between the representatives of the cities of Helsinki, Tenerife, Bologna, Lübeck, Evry, Valencia and SaintGilles, whether they were teachers, mediators or municipal technicians from the security, education or youth services.

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APPENDIX The Charter of the Educational Cities Barcelona Declaration– 1990 (amended in 1994) Introduction Today more than ever, the City, whether small or large, has innumerable educational possibilities.

In itself, it encompasses, in one way or another, important elements for integral training.

The Educational City is a city with its own personality, inserted in the country where it is located.

However, its identity is interdependent on that of the territory of which it is a part. It is also a city that is not closed in on itself but maintains relations with its surroundings: other urban centres of its territory as well as cities in other countries, seeking to learn, exchange and thereby enrich the life of its inhabitants.

The Educational City is a complex system, in continual evolution. It can be expressed in different ways but will always give top priority to cultural investment and the ongoing training of its population.

The city will be an educational one when it recognises, exercises and develops, in addition to its traditional functions (economic, social, political and provision of services), an educational function: i.e., it will assume, in a deliberate manner, its responsibility as regards training, promotion and development of all its inhabitants, beginning with children and young people.

The reasons justifying this new function must evidently be sought in motivations of a social, economic and political nature in the same way as cultural and educational. This is the great challenge of the 21st century: ‘investing’ in education and in every individual, so that, each time, he or she be capable of expressing, asserting and developing his or her own human potential— potential made up of individuality, creativity, responsibility and socialisation, i.e., a capacity for dialogue, confrontation and solidarity.

A city will be educational if it generously offers its full potential, letting it be seized by all its inhabitants and teaching them how to do so.

The Educational Cities represented at the international congress of Educational Cities, which was held in Barcelona in November 1990, propose grouping in a Charter the basic principles that must be formed by the City’s educational momentum, because the development of its inhabitants cannot be left to chance.

In fact, the City has a wide range of educational initiatives of diverse origin, intention and responsibility. It has at its disposal institutional educational organisations, means of non- formal information, pre-established educational objectives, as well as offers or experiences that come into being in an aleatory or commercial manner. And, even though contradictions or inequalities are occasionally to be found in all these offers, the Cities will always encourage ongoing learning and the knowledge of new languages; they will offer the occasion for knowing the world, in order to enrich oneself individually and collectively.

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The Educational Cities will develop a bi- or multi-lateral collaboration for the exchange of their experiences. They will mutually support each other for what concerns the study or investment projects, either in the form of direct collaboration, or as intermediary for international organisms.

In addition, children and young people are no longer passive protagonists in social life and therefore the City. The United Nations Convention of 20 November 1989 develops and makes mandatory the principles of the Universal Declaration of 1959, making them fully-fledged citizens by granting them civil and political rights. Depending on their maturity, they can thus associate and participate.

It is for this reason that the protection of children and young people in the City no longer consists solely of favouring their condition, but finding their rightful place, alongside adults who considered as a civil value the mutual satisfaction that must prevail over the coexistence between generations.

In sum, a new citizen’s right is thus confirmed: the right to the Educational City. The first step in this direction is to ratify, at the level of each city, the pledge which, coming out of the Convention, was assumed during the World Childhood Summit that took place in New York on 29 and 30 September 1990.

PRINCIPLES - 1 – All inhabitants of a city must be able to enjoy, in full liberty and equality, means and opportunities for training, leisure activities and individual development that the city offers. One must therefore take into account all categories, each with its particular needs.

We must promote an education aimed at favouring international diversity, understanding, collaboration and peace, an education that allows for avoiding all exclusion based on race, sex, culture or other forms of discrimination.

As concerns the cities’ planning and political objectives, all necessary measures will be taken for eliminating obstacles of any sort, including the physical barriers that prevent the exercise of the right to equality. The municipal government will be responsible for this policy along with all other institutional organisms that intervene in the city. Its inhabitants commit themselves individually but also within associations to which they belong.

- 2 - Municipalities shall effectively exercise the powers that are devolved upon them regarding education. Regardless of their competencies, they shall formulate an exhaustive educational policy integrating all modes of formal and non-formal education, as well as the various cultural events, sources of information and means of discovery that exist in the city The role of the municipal government is as much a matter of obtaining legislative dispositions coming from other State, departmental or regional governments, as implementing local policies; all this whilst encouraging inhabitants to participate in a group project that would emanate from the totality of political and social institutions, and even the spontaneous participation of individuals.

- 3 - The city shall envisage training opportunities in an overall manner. The exercise of competencies as regards education must be carried out in the broadest context of quality of life, social justice and the promotion of children and young people.

- 4 – For their action to be appropriate, those responsible for municipal policy must have exact knowledge of the situation and of the needs of its inhabitants. For this purpose, they shall carry out studies that shall be updated and made public. They shall formulate specific propositions and determine the overall policy that can result from it.

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- 5 –Still in the framework of its jurisdiction, the municipality must be able to know, by encouraging innovation, the progress of training actions that are carried out in the schools and universities of its city, both those for which it has the responsibility, and the others, including private institutions. It shall be the same for the initiatives of non-formal education to the degree that the objectives pursued are knowledge of the City, the training of the inhabitants, enabling them to become responsible citizens.

- 6 - The municipality shall appreciate the impact of cultural, recreational offers, promotional or otherwise, formulated for their benefit; or others, which, outside their level, succeed without intermediary. It shall try, if need be and without imposing itself, to undertake actions that give rise to an explanation or an interpretation. It shall attempt to establish an equilibrium between the obligation of protection and the necessary autonomy of discovery. It shall furnish places for debate, including exchanges between cities, so that the inhabitants might fully assume the evolution of the urban world.

- 7 - Satisfying the needs of children and young people presupposes, for all that depends on the municipal government, that they be given, at the same time as to all citizens, areas, facilities and services adapted to their social, moral and cultural development. The municipality, during the making of decisions, will take into account their impact on the life of the inhabitants.

- 8 - The City shall offer parents training enabling them to help their children grow up and use the City in a spirit of mutual respect; it shall finalise similar projects aimed at youth workers and make the orientations known to all persons in contact with children, whether it be municipal civil servants, association personnel or private individuals. The municipality shall also see to it that instruction be taken care of by security and civil protection bodies that are directly answerable to the town.

- 9 - The city must offer its inhabitants the hope of occupying a place in society; it must provide them with advice on their personal and professional orientation and must make it possible for them to participate in a broad palette of social activities.

In the specific area of education/work relationships, it is necessary to point out the close relations that must exist between the training courses and the needs of the labour market. The cities shall have to define training strategies that take social demand into account; they shall have to collaborate with workers’ and employers’ organisations for the creation of jobs.

- 10 - The cities must know the mechanisms of exclusion and marginalisation that affect them and the forms they take in order to undertake the necessary compensatory actions. They shall take particular care of new arrivals, immigrants or refugees, who must be able to sense freely that the city that is taking them in is indeed their own.

- 11 - Interventions aimed at correcting inequalities can take multiple forms, but must start with an overall view of the individual, of a conception satisfying the interests of each of them as well as all the rights that belong to them. Every significant intervention in this sense supposes the guarantee, through the specificity of responsibilities, of co-ordination between the administrations concerned and their different services.

- 12 - The city must help in the creation of associations allowing for training young people in decision-making, channelling their actions in service to the community, providing them with the information, materials and ideas aimed at promoting their social, moral and cultural development.

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- 13 - An Educational City must teach its inhabitants to inform themselves. It must determine the useful instruments and the suitable language in order for its resources to be accessible to all. It shall verify that all citizens at every level and all ages attain the information.

- 14 - If circumstances so require, children shall have specialised information and help points at their disposal, and, if need be, a counsellor.

- 15 - An Educational City must be able to find, preserve and present its own identity. It shall thereby make something unique of it, which will be the basis for fruitful dialogue with its citizens and other cities. The enhancement of its customs, origins and practices must be compatible with international forms of living. It will thus be able to put forward an attractive image without misrepresenting its natural and social environment.

- 16 - The transformation and growth of a city must be harmonised between the new needs and the pursuit of constructions and marks constituting clear references to its past and its existence. The urban project must take into account the impact of the urban environment on the development of its inhabitants, on the integration of their personal and social aspirations; it must fight against the segregation of generations that have much to learn from each other. The organisation of the physical urban space must bring out the need for games and leisure activities, must allow for an opening towards the natural environment and other cities, taking into account the interaction between them and the rest of the territory.

- 17 - The City must guarantee the quality of life by relying on a salubrious setting and an urban landscape in equilibrium with its natural setting.

- 18 - The City shall encourage cultural freedom and diversity. It shall favourably receive initiatives both avant-garde and popular. It shall contribute to correcting the inequalities that appear in the cultural offer resulting from criteria that are exclusively commercial.

- 19 – All the City’s inhabitants have the right to reflect upon and participate in the finalisation of educational programmes. They have the right to receive the necessary instruments allowing them to discover an educational desire in the structure and running of their City, in the values it encourages, in the quality of life it offers, in the celebrations it organises, the campaigns it prepares, in the interest it shows in their regard and in its way of listening to them.

- 20 - An Educational City must not separate the generations. The stated principles are the starting point for the development of the City’s educational potential in order to apply to all citizens.

Consequently, this Charter must be supplemented by aspects not dealt with.

The undersigned Cities assume these principles and express their will to take the opportune administrative measures so that they be put into practice and pledge to regularly presenting evaluations of their application.

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GLOSSARY

ASE (Aide Sociale à l'Enfance) DDJS (Division Départementale Jeunesse et

Social Security for Childhood

Sport) AEMO (Aide Educative en Milieu Ouvert)

Youth and Sport Local Department

Non-custodial Educational Support DGA ( Direction Générale de CAE (Centre d’Action Educative)

l’Administration)

Educational Centre

Administration

CAF (Caisse d’Allocation Familiale)

FASILD (Fond d’Action et de soutien pour l’Intégration et la Lutte contre les Discriminations) National Fund for Integration and Fight against Discrimination

Family Allowance Office

CCSD (Commission de circonscription du 2° degré) Partners’ Meeting

GIP (Groupement d’Intérêt Public) Public Interest Organisation

CIO (Centre d’Information et d’Orientation)

IA (Inspecteur d’Académie) Regional Inspector for Education

Careers Advisory Centres

IEN (Inspecteur de l’Education Nationale) National Education Inspector

CPE (Conseiller Principal d'Education)

IRP (Institut de Rééducation Psychothérapeutique) Psychotherapeutic Support Institute

School Councillor

PJJ (Protection Judiciaire de la Jeunesse) Legal Protection for Youth

DDASS (Direction Départementale des Affaires Sanitaires et Sociales Local Department. of Social Services

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