LESSON 12 SCHOOL STRUCTURE AND SCHOOL VIOLENCE UNDER CONSTRUCTION Presented by THE NATURAL SYSTEMS INSTITUTE.

LESSON 12

SCHOOL STRUCTURE

AND SCHOOL VIOLENCE

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Presented by

THE NATURAL SYSTEMS INSTITUTE

FOR A MORE ELABORATED VERSION OF THIS TOPIC YOU MAY WANT TO GO TO THE HYPERLINK BELOW.Click here to see the Presentation of: SCHOOL VIOLENCE - ANALYSIS AND SOLUTIONS

SummaryUnderlying Structural Causes of School Violence:   presents a perspective on some principle, underlying structural causes of school violence such as the evolution of school size and organization, the way modern curriculum, lesson plans, extra curricular activities, student role systems, parental involvement, and various interlocking organizational systems, such the horizontal or architectural and the vertical systems are organized. This perspective includes the suggestion that each of these factors and their interactive influences should be examined for possible changes.

NAVIGATION INSTRUCTIONS FOR SCHOOL VIOLENCETo navigate through slides when the presentation begins:

1. If top and bottom status bars are visible, click the slide-show icon on the bottom [icon to the right of the series at the left on the top part of bottom status bar].2. Use a left mouse click for the next item on a slide and to move to the next slide.3. Use the right scroll bar to move between slides. A slide number may appear beside the cursor when you scroll up or down.4. If the top status bar is visible, use the Back and Forward arrows to move between the next and previous slides.5. If you are in Full Screen view [no status bar visible], a small triangle should appear, after a pause, in the bottom left corner of the screen. Click the triangle for navigation directions and select either Navigation or Go to to see lists of the titles of the slides.6. Full Screen view is best for viewing slide presentations. If the presentation does not come up in Full Screen view, go to the top status bar and click on View or Browser, then click on Full Screen. To return to the regular Windows view with status bars, move the cursor across icons at top until the words “Full Screen” appear and click that icon.7. The last slide has a Hyperlink at bottom in light purple color. Click this Hyperlink to return to the School Violence Home Page.

WHAT DO WE WANT TO ACCOMPLISH

WITH OUR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS?

LESSON 12

SCHOOL VIOLENCE AND EDUCATION REFORM

‘NO QUICK AND EASY FIXES’

USING THE NATURAL SYSTEMS’ APPROACH

TO STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

IN REDESIGNING SCHOOL PROGRAMS

WHAT ARE THE TOOLS OF STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS?

NAVIGATING THE SLIDE PRESENTATIONPlease take your time and consider each point carefully. If you

wish to use this format for staff and/or parental instruction, reserve sufficient time for each issue to be thoroughly discussed.

The slides are for the most part animated, but some items require a left mouse click or hitting the page keys to see the next item or go to the next slide.

To go back to a slide and study it without animation, simply hit the page up key once or twice or more to reach the desired slide and press page down to return. To move back and forth through several slides, you can use the scroll bar.

NATURAL SYSTEMS’ SCHEMA PERSPECTIVE I.

Encompassing Environments

Institution or Organization

Settings within Institution

Situations

Dyadic

Interaction

Informal Roles/RelationshipPhysical/Verbal Behavior

Cognition

Emotion/Feelings

PerceptionBackground Schemata & Schemes & Genetic Developmental Tendencies

INT

EN

TIO

NA

L P

RO

CE

SS

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Formal Roles

THE DUPLEX PYRAMIDS

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NATURAL SYSTEMS’ SCHEMA PERSPECTIVES II.

INT

EN

TIO

NA

L P

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CE

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Encompassing Environments

Settings within Institution

Situations

Dyadic

Interaction

Informal Roles/Relationship

Physical/Verbal Behavior

Cognition

Emotion/Feelings

PerceptionBackground Schemata & Schemes & Genetic Developmental Tendencies

Formal Roles

Institution’s Structure and Programs

We tend to focus primarily on these two factors when there are problems.

We could focus on these and be more productive in the long run. It is a matter of training your focus.

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TIME AND TRANSITIONS

NATURAL SYSTEMS’ SCHEMA PERSPECTIVES III.What is it about a particular factor or level of perspective that we should focus

on? What is the impact of different Encompassing

Environments and neighborhoods on a child or a family? What affect do relations with agencies have?

What is the impact of the institution’s structure and systems or its programs on the child’s personality and the way the child learns?

What is the impact of each setting within the institution on the child? Do certain settings bring out typical kinds of situations and behaviors?

How are types of situations handled? Are staff trained to handle situations or individuals?

What kinds of formal roles for staff and students are there in the institution and in settings? What is the distribution of formal roles? How does having or not having roles affect students?

How would you characterize the interaction between staff, between staff and students, between students? How would you characterize these relationships?

What are the global and long term and local and short term transitions for students and staff? What are the life transitions for students? When and how do various transitions interact?

How do each of the above factors affect the students: Informal roles and relationships; physical and verbal behavior; cognition and learning; emotions and feelings; perceptions of people and the world; self concept; conceptions of one’s background; genetic developmental tendencies?

INT

EN

TIO

NA

L P

RO

CE

SSE

S

Background Schemata & Schemes & Genetic Developmental Tendencies

Encompassing Environments

Institution’s Structure and Programs

Settings within Institution

Situations

Dyadic

Interaction

Informal Roles/Relationship

Physical/Verbal Behavior

Cognition

Emotion/Feelings

Perception

Formal Roles

TIME AND TRANSITIONSE

XT

ER

NA

L S

TR

UC

TU

RE

S

What Is It About a Particular Factor or Level of Perspective That We Should Focus on? What is the impact of different Encompassing Environments and neighborhoods on a

child or a family? What affect do relations with agencies have? What is the impact of the institution’s structure and systems or its programs on the

child’s personality and the way the child learns? What is the impact of each setting within the institution on the child? Do certain

settings bring out typical kinds of situations and behaviors? How are types of situations handled? Are staff trained to handle situations or

individuals? What kinds of formal roles for staff and students are there in the institution and in

settings? What is the distribution of formal roles? How does having or not having roles affect students?

How would you characterize the interaction between staff, between staff and students, between students? How would you characterize these relationships?

What are the global and long term and local and short term transitions for students and staff? What are the life transitions for students? When and how do various transitions interact?

How do each of the above factors affect the students: informal roles and relationships; physical and verbal behavior; cognition and learning; emotions and feelings; perceptions of people and the world; self concept; identification with school and society; goals; and chances for future success?

Factory Model for Schools

Assembly Line: Miracle of the Industrial Revolution

Unit 1 2

Structure Of American Curriculum“The Factory Model”

3All students regardless of mental capacity and regardless of individual mastery and real progress through assigned units, move steadily and relentlessly through the curriculum units as though on

an assembly line. If designed for the average, one third will be bored and one third will march steadily onward without learning a thing, just feeling more and more inferior and stupid, thus making learning more difficult.

1890

1950

Little red school house of last century: heterogeneous, individualized.

Late twentieth century mega-factory school: huge, highly centralized, distant from home, integration without preparation, depersonalized, maximum regimentation.

Accel

erat

ion o

f del

inquen

cy a

nd

in-s

chool v

iole

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How has the social culture inside the school changed over the last 150 years?

Centralized, personal, homogeneous, non-preferential treatment.

1999

FACTORY SCHOOL

What Does the Changing Social Structure Inside the Schools Have to Do With Current Social Problems?

Twenty-first century: 2010 Computers and individualized instruction?

School Structure and Its Effect on Self Esteem, Drop Outs, and Delinquency

• Aspects of the structure of the school that promote social alienation and personal pathology:– Grade Structure– Sports– Extracurricular– Attire

– Classroom Structure– Social Structure and

Discipline and Teen Metamorphosis

– Amoral Curriculum

•A-Admired

•B-Accepted

•C-Tolerated, Threat Lectures to Motivate

•D-Seen as Inferior and a Problem

•F-Failure, Impossible, Routed to Special Programs

DECREASINGSELF ESTEEM

INSIDER-OUTSIDER CULTURE LEADS TO ALIENATION, PREJUDICE,

REJECTION, LOW SELF ESTEEM, WITHDRAWAL, REBELLION

USE OF AUTHORITARIAN, IMPERSONAL PUNISHMENT

FOR CONTROL WITH TEENS IN PROCESS OF

EMANCIPATION GENERATES REBELLIONPREVENTS LEARNING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Structures Contain Systems The institution exists within a community with its own systems that include the civic, social, and

religious organizations, and businesses, and the geo-demographics of the parent city. The institution has a history and can be characterized as a whole or ‘Gestalt’. The institution has a vertical structure and system. Levels within the hierarchy interlock and

interact as a system. The institution has a horizontal structure and system. There is a spatial layout for departments,

classes, special functions, and routes to and from each. The horizontal system shapes other aspects of life within the institution. People and their functions within departments interact with one another as a system. Where people are physically located affects their relationships and their job performance and their feelings and emotional reactions.

The institution has performance systems that shape the goals, evaluation measures, and the manner and quality of performance of the administration, teachers, ancillary staff, students as well as parents and related outside agencies. Performance systems can be official and unofficial. In different schools one or the other may predominate.

The institution has communication systems that are shaped by the relations with the encompassing environment or city, the history and Gestalt of the institution, and its vertical, horizontal, and performance systems.

The institution has longitudinal systems that affect both feelings and performance. Longitudinal systems have a beginning, middle, and end. People tend to relate singularly to a beginning or end without regard to the other external and internal systems.

The institution has social systems that are shaped by the encompassing environment, history and Gestalt, vertical, horizontal, performance, communication, and longitudinal systems. Social systems, in turn, affect all other systems. When people within systems tend to explain why someone else within the system acts the way they do, they tend to say it is because of their personality.

Characteristics of personalities, character, and minds are more a function of structures and systems than something intrinsic to the person. When we change the structures and systems, people within them tend to change.

What Do We Want to Happen to This Child?

CHILD’S BRAIN

From Here

to Here?

Child

Grown up and Now a Parent

If you were emperor of the school,

what kind of structure would you create

in order to optimize students’ mental and personal growth?

A Warm up Exercise in Structural Analysis: Beginning With the Structure of the Institution, What Could Be Restructured So As to Bring Out the Best in the Students?

Entrance

Looking at Simplified, Hypothetical Vertical and Horizontal Systems, What Do You Think Could Be Restructured?

How Could These Two Systems Be Re-designed?

S u p p ort S ervice

S tu d en ts

Teach er C ou n se lo r

A d m in is tra to r

One aspect of the vertical system is control. There are types and degrees of control.

What is the relation of students to the vertical system?

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

Classroom

SupportServices

Counselors

Administration

Classroom

Two aspects of horizontal systems are departmental functions and and location.

•GUIDELINES FOR RE-DESIGNING

• Getting a mental grasp of the problem and working toward solutions.– Recall the kinds of problems that you have with these young students.– List them and then arrange them in order of how serious each problem is for

the students’ future.– Now try to imagine creative ways to rearrange structures so that it becomes

possible to capitalize on certain problems and turn them into opportunities for the students to really learn important lessons for life from them.

– Imagine ways to do this that do not turn the students off.• Now, let us assume that one major problem is their lack of awareness

of the consequences of their acts.