Youth Violence and Genes

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This is very interesting research, in that we may be able to target the young individuals who may be genetically predisposed to violence and get them the help they need before they develop dysfunctional coping skills. Legislation to reduce youth violence - the Youth PROMISE act - is before Congress and would mesh well with these finding. Check out:
http://www.bobbyscott.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=art icle&id=291&Itemid=86

Research has determined that from the Moment of Commitment (the point when a student pulls their weapon) to the Moment of Completion (when the last round is fired) is only 5 seconds. If it is the intent of a school district to react to this violence, they will do so over the wounded and/or slain bodies of students, teachers and administrators.
Educational institutions clearly want safe and secure schools. Administrators are perennially queried by parents about the safety of their schools. The commonplace answers, intended to reassure anxious parents, focus on the school resource officers and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing school violence, nor do they make a school safe and secure.
Traditionally school districts have relied upon the mental health community or local police to keep schools safe, yet one of the key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves teachers, administrators, parents and students in the identification and communication process. Recently, colleges, universities and community colleges are forming Behavioral Intervention Teams with representatives from all these constituencies. Higher Education has changed their safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems, yet K-12 have yet to incorporate Behavioral Intervention Teams. K-12 schools continue spending excessive amounts of money to put in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, they are reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot, which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors. Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.
Some law enforcement agencies use profiling as a means to identify an aggressor. According to the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education’s report on Targeted Violence in Schools, there is a significant difference between “profiling” and identifying and measuring emerging aggression; “The use of profiles is not effective either for identifying students who may pose a risk for targeted violence at school or – once a student has been identified – for assessing the risk that a particular student may pose for school-based targeted vi

Please read the information regarding to a research about coexistence and violence school that will be presented in 6th May 2009, Brazil.

RITLA (Latin American Technological Information Network), in association with the Brazilian Federal District Board of Education/GDF, is implementing a plan of student coexistence in schools of the State Education Network. The project aims to encourage good coexistence processes and the prevention of violence in Primary and High School. Part of this process was a qualitative and quantitative research, representative of all students and teachers of the Federal District Education Network between the 5th grade of Primary Education and the 3rd year of High School. The research contemplated six schools for each Directory of Regional Education - DRE (Four Primary Schools –upper grades – and two High Schools). It focused on the achieving of a diagnosis about school coexistence, using the following methods: investigating the social relationships, the explicit and implicit conflicts in school environment; identifying the perceptions of students, teachers and of the Technical-Pedagogical Staff about these conflicts and violence; mapping the different types of incidents, as well as their frequency and severity.

From June to September of 2008, about 10.000 questionnaires were applied for students and 1300 for teachers in 84 schools. Besides, interviews and focal groups were realized with students and teachers. Brasilia has 620 schools, about 505.000 students and about 45.000 teachers (Brazilian Federal District Board of Education/GDF report from 2008 – http://www.se.df.gov.br).
The idea of developing a research about coexistence and violence in school, conducted by the Federal District Board of Education/GDF, as a way to support concrete actions, is a pioneering enterprise in Brazil. It represents a fundamental stage in understanding and portraying the reality as a decisive step in the attempt to stimulate a non-violent atmosphere in schools and create the habit of dialogue and conflict resolution, helping to improve the quality of teaching and learning and avoiding the most common everyday problems to increase and develop to severe outcomes.
The research was focused on the achieving of a diagnosis about school coexistence, using the following methods: investigating the social relationships, the explicit and implicit conflicts in school environment; identifying the perceptions of students, teachers and of the Technical-Pedagogical Staff about these conflicts and violence; mapping the different types of incidents, as well as their frequency and severity

The conclusive result of the research will be published in a book that will be presented in May 2009.

Using the same approach, seminars were promoted under the title of School Coexistence: discussing and thinking about alternative outcomes. They were based on the first results of the analysis that integrates the Plan of School Coexistence in Brazilian Federal District Education Network and took place between October and December 2008, with the aim to raise awareness and deepen the debate on violence and school coexistence. The return of the collected data to the various stakeholders in the field of education and in school life was a critical phase of work, both to disseminate and discuss the main features of the real picture of schools as to identify a series of topics that require the most attention. New seminars will be conducted from the final outcome of the investigation.
Among the activities planned for 2009 we can highlight the course “Youth, Diversity and Coexistence School” which begins in May. The course will be taught by specialists in each subject, and organized, coordinated and monitored by RITLA-SEEDF. This project aims to train a group of 640 teachers and coordinators for the upper grades of primary education by encouraging them to face the complex discussion of violence in schools and stimulating them to reflect deeply about the subject.
The following important questions will be discussed during the course: violence and society, youth, family and school, violence and discrimination in the school environment, gender and sexuality in school, school coexistence, mediation, drug trade and consumption in the school context, gangs, adolescents in conflict with the law, among others things. The conclusive result of the discussions will be used to produce a project of social intervention at purpose of helping to build a new kind of coexistence in school environment.

This course aims to providing a contribution to the construction of better relationships in the school environment, in order to make it a safe and protective place for all stakeholders to discuss and talk about everyday phenomena that occur in this context.

Rede de Informação Tecnológica Latino-Americana
Red de Información Latinoamericana
Latin American Technological Information Network

SHIS QI.09, Conj.15, Casa 15 - Lago Sul
Cep : 71625-150, Brasilia, DF
Tel/fax: (55) 61 3248-3805 e 3248-5607
www.ritla.net