Peaceful Schools Project Tackles Bullies

Article for reference regarding school activities.

Peaceful Schools Project Tackles Bullies
Created: August 22, 2003

Schools ignore the problem of classroom bullies at their peril, say Menninger Clinic researchers. Bullying is a pervasive behavior problem with profound and long-range consequences that can influence and shape the lives of young children. Bullies have been linked with school shootings and child and adolescent suicides.

Interrupting the tendencies of bullies and their victims is important and possible, said Stuart Twemlow, MD, a Menninger psychiatrist and an international authority on community and school violence. “Bullying is nothing but child abuse by peers,” said Menninger Child & Family Center Director Peter Fonagy, PhD, an internationally recognized authority in infant and child development. “In a typical Midwest school, 88 percent of the children are likely to observe bullying, and 77 percent are likely to be victims of it at one time or another. Bullying leads to violent crime. Sixty percent of playground bullies will have a criminal conviction by age 24, and 90 percent of young offenders were themselves found to be victims of bullying.’’

“In more than two thirds of school shootings,” Drs. Twemlow and Fonagy wrote in a published paper on threat assessments, “there was clear and obvious bullying by social groups and individuals. The larger social and environmental issues involved in school shootings include factors such as easy access to violent and hate-laden media, weaponry and information on strategies for terrorist attacks. Less frequently noted is the school’s response to fixed patterns of teasing, ostracism and bullying among various groups in the school. A school climate that tolerates physical and relational aggression, especially by popular groups such as athletes or economic elites, is at high risk for violence.”

From a three-year, ongoing study known as the Peaceful Schools Project, Menninger researchers have devised an integrated set of low-cost school violence prevention techniques developed under the rigorous scrutiny of scientific evaluation. Since so few programs develop their interventions relying on evidence based on randomized, controlled studies, the ongoing Peaceful Schools Project is believed to be the most ambitious privately-funded study of its kind.

In ongoing studies at The Menninger Clinic, researchers have concluded that bullying behavior, especially in schools, requires three participants: a bully, a victim and an observer or bystander. Take one role out of the mix and bullying can be stymied. Involve the whole school in a comprehensive antiviolence program and bullying may be virtually eliminated.

“There are literally hundreds of anti-violence and anti-bullying programs across the U.S.,” Dr. Twemlow said, “but the number that have been as thoroughly evaluated as this one has is very, very small.”

Some of the program’s learned lessons include:

* Without bystanders watching passively or being vocal from the sidelines, bullies lose power under a school-wide policy of zero tolerance for bullying behaviors;
* Unifying the school also means initially isolating, but not ostracizing, the bully; the program embraces the bully and offers alternate behaviors and rewards for non-violence;
* Martial arts physical education classes teach children ways to resolve conflict and problems without hitting.

Additionally, the study’s findings indicate that the Menninger approach effectively improves school atmosphere, raises academic scores, and perhaps more importantly, breaks “a natural underlying process of deterioration” in the behaviors of elementary school children, Dr. Fonagy said.

The program halts a natural inclination among children to gradually feel less and less responsible for intervening when other children are victimized.

“Children begin to share a different set of social customs about what is the right thing to do.’’ Dr. Twemlow said. “And when they do that, they feel better; they enjoy school more and they want to go to school. They learn more and classes are better and the whole thing sort of snowballs.”

The Peaceful Schools Project contrasted Menninger’s anti-violence program with two others, each in three sets of elementary schools in a Topeka, Kansas, district involving more than 3,000 students.

Changing behaviors in the early grades leaves behind a more peaceful sense of community that produces a more rewarding academic experience. And not only for students.

One classroom teacher who worked in the Peaceful Schools Program summed up her experience in five joyous words: “I can finally teach again,” she said.

Further research will test the results at sites in various demographic settings.

- The Menninger Clinic

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February 1, 2009 UK - Building Schools for The Future

A very good series of articles published by the guardian.co.uk titled "Building schools for the future." As it turns out England is investing £45bn to rebuild and revamp its secondary schools.

Introduction
Work in progress
(excerpt)
Billions of pounds of expenditure to rebuild or refurbish around 3,500 English state secondary schools and provide a bright new future for some three million pupils by 2020 ... the scale and ambition of the government's Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme is immense.
It's already started — back in 2005 — and for the next 10-15 years the programme will move, phase by phase, through English schools. By 2011 all local authorities should have had sufficient funding to tackle at least the most needy schools in their areas. How long the programme will actually take to complete beyond that can only be estimated.
In May 2006, the first new-build school — Solihull Centre for Inclusive learning — opened for business. Since then at least 10 new or refurbished schools have come on stream.
This supplement focuses on their experiences to help benefit the thousands of schools to follow — it shows how such a vast programme can only work if builder, architect, teacher, pupil, parent and governor are all consulted throughout every decision-making stage.

Forget bricks, think ideas
How do you build a school for the future? Who's involved and what influence can those within the education system exert?

Some related links
Partnerships for Schools
British Council for School Environments
Sorrell Foundation
Hugh Christie technology college
RM

Trailblazers offer their verdict
Transforming a school is a long and, at times, difficult process. Here we look at a new inner-city comprehensive and two schools that have undergone major refurbishments to check out their experiences

Haringey sixth-form centre, London
'Students have access to teaching and learning fit for the 21st century'
Oxclose, Sunderland
'Architects spent a lot of time consulting students and staff'
Oxclose Community School