Violence to the teenagers: a public health problem in Romania
By Florin Tudose.
1 Jul, 2007
Lately, in Romania, mass-media drew an emergency signal regarding the violence in which teenagers are involved, either as victims of the violence acts or as aggressors. Mass-media, the researches and the official statistics report a spectacular increase of the phenomenon in many countries of the world (USA, France, England) in the last three decades and, unfortunately, this list includes Romania, too.
The violence phenomenons pointed to or from teenagers appear against these psychosocial characteristics. Referring to the classification made by Johan Galtung (direct, structural and cultural violence), the most frequent type of violence met at teenagers is the direct one, but the cultural violence has an important role, too. Direct violence is the form of the violence that is the easiest to be observed because generally involves physical, visible and measurable manifestations. The forms of the direct violence are: beatings, verbal insults, emotional blackmail, and economic abuse by being deprived of the subsistence means, pupils abused by the teachers (regarding boys, physical violence is used and, as regards girls verbal and psychological violence is used).
Direct violence can be in the private environment (domestic violence) or in the public space (violence in the street, at school, white slavery, rape, prostitution).
The consequences of the direct violence are:
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Visible effects(traumatisms, écchymoses)
Long term consequences: lack of trust in one's own forces, the diminution of the concentration capacity, the reduction of the physical and mental health, sexual behavior with high risk, sexual transmission diseases, unwanted pregnancies , drug and alcohol abuse.
Domestic violence (in family) manifests in more forms:
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Ones are easy to be observed
Physical abuse ( beating, mutilation, homicide)
Sexual abuse
Liberty deprivation (isolating from friends, sequestration)
Others are less evident
Physiological and emotional violence(intimidation, threat, coercion)
Verbal violence (constant humiliation, nicknames usage)
The following favorable factors of the domestic violence have been identified:
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The existence of the family problems (violence, especially the physical one and alcoholism, low level of education);
The lack of information, training and education in exerting the role of the parent or educator leads to inadequate approaches of the child that might have serious repercussions upon his development;
The number of the children in a family is also a relevant indicator of the occurrence abuse risk (families with many children develop in a larger measure an abusive behavior, especially between brothers).
The consequences of the domestic violence upon the teenager are:
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Low social adaptability
Violent reactions to annoyance
Lack of trust in one's own forces
The presence of the some tics
Insomnias, nightmares, etc.
Violence in the public space:
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School violence
School violence is a problem to which notable advertising has been made lately. Numerous TV channels broadcast different violence scenes occurred in schools starting from the easiest forms of violence to the hottest blooded.
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Sexual harassment
Rape
White slavery
Prostitution
Besides direct violence, Galtung adverts to another form of violence, structural violence, which is not exerts by persons and is hidden behind some structures to a certain extent. Galtung uses the term of structural violence in a synonymic way with the term of "social injustice".
This is caused by the way in which the society is structured and it has the following consequences: discrimination, grinding down, poverty, human rights exploitation and encroaching upon. It is about the different allocation of the goods, resources, opportunities between various social groups. These aspects have the following characteristics for Romania:
In our Balkan space, education which is accomplished in schools encourages the conformism as regards the girls and trains the women for aspirations considered less prestigious and centered to traditional roles.
Girls are directed to "easy and clean" jobs/callings having well defined responsibilities which allow them to have a "normal" family life.
Boys are traditionally trained to support a family and directed to jobs/callings in technical or business field which have social prestige and are well remunerated, but now they are disorientated due to the changes from the transition society.
The preoccupation for the girls training directed to liberty and self affirmation is insignificant. Not being a subject of great interest in the educational system, pupils are not trained for their private life, partner relations between men and women to all levels. Cultural violence represents those aspects of culture- illustrated in fields like religion, ideology, language, art, science, and mass-media- which legitimate direct and structural violence.
Music
Music exists from the ancient times but now it is acknowledged as having more functions as it had in the past. For many of us music represents a veritable delectation which offers the freedom to do different things whiles one listens to it, too. For others it is the antidote for the daily stress. But, there are situations in which music has effects not known by many and who do not even admit them. It is about those types of music (hip-hop or heavy metal) which contain lyrics that encourage abuses and women sexual humiliation, violence, suicide, sexual sadism, hate for different races or social categories of population and even Satanism.
Films
Now a lot of film makings compete themselves in order to display morbidity, illness, abnormality. The theory according to which the fictional escapism in bad (by watching "hard", morbid scenes) will unburden us of some pulsations, protect and estrange us from committing the evil/bad is far from the truth.
Psychologists showed that defularea was not an antidote of the real commission of the facts. Contrariwise, watching the violence, horror, behavioral delinquency scenes inspires or predisposes us to repeat or "test" those scenes.
By presenting regularly the violence in films children can become used with the idea of violence and remain indifferent to others' sufferings. The bigger damage does not consist in showing violence scenes but in creating that mix between fiction and reality which leads to mental and moral confusion for children and in the difficulty to separate the fiction of reality.
Mass-media
In Romania, the news televisions broadcast 60 minutes of violence daily. But not all the real violence makes the law in television; this type shares its supremacy with the fictional violence presented in films, which is broadcasted more frequently. Surprisingly, the "leader" in this field is a musical channel. „Atomic TV" broadcasts drugs, tobacco and alcohol consumption as well as violent spots. It can be noticed the fact that children televisions contain three times more violence than the ones for adults. In these conditions, taking into account the Romanian average of the violence which exceeds the ones from USA, Canada or France, the negative consequences noticed/observed by the specialists are natural: imitation, violence assimilation as a solution to the current problems, getting faster from the intention stage to the action one, the consumer's desensitization.
Statistic evidences regarding the violence to the teenagers:
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According to the Health Reproduction Survey made in Romania in 1999, between 30% and 50% from the interviewee women mentioned the fact that they were physically molested by their parents in childhood and the average was of 41%. The women who were also witnesses to physical abuses between their parents and were themselves abused by them in childhood come mainly from gipsy families, they have a low level of education and socio-economic. The men's balance who were physically abused by their parents is higher (60%), having values between 56% and 73%. Similarly, the men who come from gipsy families were more abused by their parents than the ones who come from other families.
The interviewees' balance who stated the fact that they were abused by their parents in childhood was significantly higher among those who were witnesses to violence acts between their parents. In women's case, the balance of those who mentioned the fact that they were physically abused by their parents was twice higher for the ones who were witnesses to violence acts between their parents than the one for the women who were not witnesses to abuses (68% vs. 32%). As in the women's case, the men's balance that were physically abused by their parents in childhood was significantly higher for those who were also witnesses to physical abuses between their parents than for the ones who were not witnesses to such acts (81% vs. 52%).
In the Health Reproduction Survey from 2004, 20% from the women stated the fact that they were abused. The women's balance from town who stated that they were abused in their childhood was of 22% in comparison to 17% for the abused women from country (p=0,04). Significant differences can not been observed between the women with different levels of education or socio-economic and nor according to age. ). The abuse in the childhood seems to have higher values in the western region and in Bucharest.
Among men included in SSR 2004, 67% stated that there were physicaly abused by the parents, in the childhood. We see an increase reporting of abuse in the childhood among men comparative to 1999 (60%). The 2004 study shows that men with low social-economical level have a higher probability (71%) to be abuse in the childhood than men with high social-economical level (64%).
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A study made during 2004-2005, for the first time in Romania, by the Institute of Educational Sciences with the Crime Institute, as a request of UNICEF Romania, drew to the conclusion that in 75% of schools were recorded acts of violence. The percent of pupils with severe violence behaviours is estimated, according to the statements of educational units' directors, at 2.5%. The violence sources are considerated to be: communicational problems between pupils and teachers, irony, sanctions, marks and authoritative style, teachers' age and teaching experience, and overloaded school curriculum. Over 32% of pupils stated that they assisted to acts of violence in the schools were they are learning beetwen pupils and teachers or between pupils and pupils. According to the study, during 2004-2005 (the first 3 months) the total number of sexual offence victims was 2 348. During last year, 506 children suffered a form of abuse in family or in institutional environment, 68 cases being sexual abuse. (Newspaper "Adevarul" , June 3rd, 2005 - "Violence in 75% of Romanian Schools" by Adriana C. Nedelea).
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The study made by the Institute of Educational Sciences also specified that in romanian schools were identified different forms of violence, such as: violence between pupils, pupils violence towards teachers, teachers violence towards pupils, verbal violence or, in the most severe cases, physicaly violence. Some types of schools are more violent than other. Thus on a sample of 1 207 romanian pre-college educational units, with a number of 585 734 pupils, the high schools and art and industrial schools are more "revolted" than secondary schools; the urban pupils are more violent than their rural colleague; and the schools from suburbs are more predisposed to acts of violence.
In 73.3% of secondary schools and in 80.6% of high schools are recording different forms of violence, according to the Institute of Educational Sciences. The most common form of violence is, according to the statements of the 1 207 educational units' managers, the violence between pupils, this appear "often" or "very often" in 20% of schools and "rare" in over 71% of the units. Teachers violence towards pupils is recorded "rare" in over 40% of the schools and "often" and "very often" in 1.3% of the schools. The teachers' inadequate behaviour is on the last place, as type of violence, being recorded "rare" in 33% of the school units. No less than 14 751 pupils, from the total of the approximate 600 000 pupils studied, have severe violence behaviours: 6 683 have behaviours which bring prejudice to the teachers' statute, 3 661 are authors of acts of physical violence, 1 588 are stealing, 1 046 are members of hood gangs, 900 have commited acts of vandalism, 783 are drinking alcohol, 49 are consuming/ consumed drugs, 41 commited sexual aggressions. What worries is that "from the total number of pupils with severe actios of aberrant behaviour, almost half are orientating the "symbolic" (non-verbal aggression - gestures, looks; verbal aggression - insults, offences) or "effective" acts of violence towards teachers, causing severe prejudices to the their statute and authority". Thus, from the total of 6 700 pupils who made an attempt on the teachers' authority and prestige, 2 400 addressed them insults and offences, and 37 aggresed them physically. From the 1207 investigated schools, in 869 (72%) during the 2004-2005 school year were recorded severe acts of violence and in 586 (almost 50% from the total number of schools) the violent behaviours were orientated towards teachers.
Over 17 000 pupils were victims of the aggressions. Almost 3% of the pupils from the analysed schools were, during the last school year, victims of the violence. Some of them declared themselves as victims of their own colleagues, in school, and other were aggression victims of their colleagues or of other persons, in the school area. From the 17 046 pupils-victims of aggression, almost 5 000 have been aggressed in school, over 3 200 have been aggressed in the school area, 3 000 pupils were victims of robberies in schools, over 2 300 have been physicaly aggressed in school, almost 2 000 near school, 1 292 were robbed near schools, and 256 were sexually aggressed.
22% are verbal aggressed by the teachers.
Schools' counselors accuse teachers of inadequate behaviour towards pupils. Verbal aggression is the most frequent: from simple forms, as ironic attitudes, screams, to severe forms - insults, offences. 22% of pupils declared that in their schools frequently some teachers chaff pupils or insult them through inadequate expressions. 3.5% of them stated that there were humiliated and insulted by teachers, and 19% stated that they also were victims of those behaviours, but not often. There were mentioned and other types of violence as: unobjective evaluation, ignoring pupils messages, threatening gestures and looks, expulsion from classrooms, and physical punishment.
Girls are arguing.
Most of the investigated persons (directors, school counselors, pupils) said that boys are more violent than the girls. The research showed, that, not so the phenomenon frequence is varying with gender, as the forms of violence and the ways of manifestation. "So, to girls are attributed the "common", tolerated forms of violence, especially the verbal violence, and to boys are attributed the severe forms, including the physical violence. Or, if they have the same type of violent behaviour, that is manifesting different: to girls is verbal violence as argues, ironies, gossips, and to boys is "bad words, offences"", showed the IES study.
Absence - a form of disregard towards teachers
The most frequent forms of violence of the pupils towards teachers are, according to the IES study, absences, indiscipline in classrooms and in break, and ignoring the teachers requests. The second category of violent behaviours - the average intensity violence - is represented by the refusal of accomplishing the school duties, ironic or sarcastic attitudes towards teachers, noises during classes, entering or leaving the classrooms without teachers permission. The teachers received, also, aggressive behaviours from the pupils: threatening gestures and looks, insults, offences, verbal threatening, hittings or physical violence, acts of aggression on cars or on other things that belong to the teachers.
Why are the children violents?
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Family difficulties
Violence in school cannot be explained, prevented, reduced or controled without studing the family environment. Thus, the IES study showed obvious relations between children violent behaviour and a series of family factors, as: the socio-emotional climate (tensions relations between parents, violent attitudes of the parents towards children, environment without emotional security), family type (children from disorganised families), family's economical status (low incomes), family's dimension (lots of children), parents' low educational level. The research showed also a more recent factor: the lack of supervision for the children who have parents who are temporary working in foreign countries. These situations are recorded more frequent by teachers, by school counselors, as violence and school failure and abandon causes. "For some of these families, in pursuit for a better living, the children's education comes in second, and the persons who are taking care of the children (grandparents or other relatives) show, in many cases, reticent attitudes towards school and a reduced involvement in children's education in family and/or in school", from "Violence in schools" study.
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School issues
Overload school curriculum, as a fatigue and stress element for pupils. The unfavourable school curriculum (when the program ends late at night is more probable that children and teachers to be involved in violent situations near schools). The large number of pupils in every classroom not allow a good differentiation and communication. The lack of out-of-school activities. The difficulties in adapting the educational methods to the characteristics of some difficult pupils. The precarious school infrastructure which don't allow more attractive lessons for the pupils. The lack of specialists in counselling the pupils with difficult behaviours. Those are, in the opinion of the asked teachers, some of the causes of the violence, detectable and active in school environment. On the other hand, the school counselor are considering that the communication difficulties between teachers and pupils represents an important factor of the school violence. Other factors are: subjective marking, the bad influence of the problem-children, the inadequate psycho-pedagocical training of teachers, and also the competition climate from the schools. (Newspaper "Adevarul", January 10th, 2006 - "Anarchy is rising in schools", by Florentina Stoian).
Bibliography
"Peace journal - informing, awaring and social mobilisation journal", published by The Romanian Institute for Action, Education and Research in Peace Area, February 2006.
Gunther Gugel, Gewaltpravention Seminary, Institut fur Friedenspadagogik Tubingen, 2003
Newspaper "Adevarul"- archives
Virgiliu Gheorghe, "TV efects on human mind", Ed "Prodromos", 2006