Understanding School Violence in the Wake of War

I had dinner with a Muslim friend on October 13th, designated as a day of Jihad by a former Hamas chief. Wile somewhat uneasy, I wanted to explore this awful development with a person who is sensitive to the plight of the Palestinians. Concerned about how the events in the Middle East were reverberating here in the U.S. I needed to explore the extreme deterioration of humanity, finding some kernel to help support health and safety in schools.

While I recognize the limits of objectivity, this brief article is written through the lens of a psychologist, trying to make sense of the extreme violence in Israel (note: this essay is not intended to explain, justify, or address the response to that violence). My purpose here is to consider the intention to harm others at this scale and severity, applying that understanding toward catastrophic school violence prevention (recognizing there are 10 different types of violence in schools).

The following is my pith oversimplification of the Hamas attack on Israel extrapolated to mass violence in schools:

Young people who commit campus mass shootings seem to have similar motives to the terrorism on October 7th. At the core, a constellation of frustration, hopelessness, a lack of volition (real or perceived), and despair, scaffolded on top of an ideology that justifies exclusive aggression as the only option. Exclusive aggression includes a belief the world is unfair with needs unable to be met. While delusions of religiosity and grandeur can play a role, our society has become desensitized to violence, blurring unspoken rules of conflict, even for those whose reality is intact.

Here are some lessons for schools. With a sense of the conditions that give way to extreme acts of despotism, or the attempt to regain power through the harm of others, we need to assess volition in students. Since that is difficult to do, our next best option is to evaluate the experience of the faculty, which tends to mirror the students or is at least germane. The best evaluations are dynamic, looking for trends as opposed to static images.

We can measure the health of any system by those who are least happy. Every organizational system has people who will complain about some perceived injustice, but the quality and quantity of those persons is telling for the potential for destabilization. For adults that often means attrition but for young people who feel trapped, more intense forms of protest. Thus, if we resist the urge to disregard or marginalize expressed displeasure, listening with genuine empathy to at the very least, prevent perceived deprivation from declining into desperation.

At a time when polarization is so high and the skills of differencing are so low, we want to remain vigilant. It’s not whether somebody is oppressed it’s whether they experience the system that way. As leaders we want to be seen as doing everything we can to create equitable teaching and learning environments.

Lessons:

1.       People who feel hopeful generally don’t act violently.

2.       People who believe the world isn’t unfair to the degree they cannot get their needs met, generally don’t act violently.  

3.       People who have a voice and the skills to use that voice constructively, generally don’t act violently.

Click here for a link to the full infographic on the Etiology of Mass Violence.