Looking at the causes of school violence from a family perspective

Updated date: 03/25/2024 10:28:47

DTO - We are living in a VUCA world (1) , containing many fluctuations and uncertainties. Life always has many potential risks, society is becoming less and less safe, but for the goal of sustainable development, let's keep the school environment healthy and safe, because from here, a new society is being formed.

Students visit and read books at Cao Lanh City Book Street (Photo: My Xuyen)

Vietnam is in the transitional period to socialism, operating the economy according to the socialist-oriented market mechanism. The dynamism of this economic model creates many material values for society, promotes economic growth, and improves people's lives. In addition, economic growth is also negatively affecting culture, especially the distortion of the national cultural value system. Some values are being misplaced, becoming pseudo-values. The selfish, profiteering, and pragmatic lifestyle, launched by the negative side of the market economy, has transformed the thinking and perception of people and society. The outward manifestation of the distorted value system is the phenomenon of moral degradation, lifestyle, human degeneration, differences in cultural life, and distortion of traditional values. Currently, under the development of the economy and society, the gap between rich and poor is increasingly deep and contains the potential risks of social instability, with the most vulnerable being the youth.

Industrial society is very dynamic but gradually loses the traditional values of agricultural culture containing village love, neighborliness, culture of sharing, supporting and helping each other in life. In industrial society, people become freer but more indifferent, the industrial machine takes up all the time and energy of workers so they gradually forget their existence in the community, busy with work and livelihood issues, parents mainly leave the task of educating their children to schools. This is a value gap whose consequences are violence, the trend of juvenile crime, the degradation of social morality, the indifferent, selfish and hedonistic lifestyle of young people.

School violence is a phenomenon that has emerged as a trend among the young generation in recent years. On November 7, 2023, answering questions at the National Assembly, Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son said that statistics from September 1, 2021 to early November 2023, there were 699 cases of school violence nationwide involving more than 2,000 students. On average, 1 case occurs in every 50 educational institutions, and society is placing responsibility on schools for the occurrence of school violence. There are many causes leading to school violence. Of which, there are 3 main groups of causes: family causes; social causes; and school causes. Schools play an important role in controlling and curbing school violence, but from the perspective of the family, it can be seen that the school environment is where violent incidents and events take place, so by inertia, society places the greatest responsibility on schools. To get to the bottom of the story of school violence, perhaps depending on different approaches, people will have different explanations. In this article, we look at the causes of school violence from the perspective of the family in the current context to explain.

Family is the first environment where people come into contact and form their personality. Parents are their children's first teachers, teaching them about morality, kindness, honesty and other good values. Family is a place that nurtures love, care and support to help children develop their intelligence. From this environment, children will learn, explore the world around them and develop the ability to think independently, forming necessary life skills such as: communication, cooperation, problem solving, time management and independence through housework, self-care and knowing how to behave in different situations.

During his lifetime, President Ho Chi Minh always paid attention to building family work. He said: "Many families together make up a society. Good families make a good society, good societies make even better families"; The Platform for National Construction in the Transitional Period to Socialism (supplemented and developed in 2011) emphasized: "Building a prosperous, progressive, happy family is truly a healthy cell of society, an important environment, directly educating lifestyle and forming personality". It can be seen that President Ho Chi Minh's thoughts and the Party's viewpoints both affirm the important role of the family in educating, nurturing and developing people.

We analyze the impact of current social factors on family education, thereby clarifying the group of causes of school violence from the family.

The strong trend of urbanization has distorted the traditional family structure. The exchange and sharing between rural families has gradually decreased, the fences and partitions have separated the sharing and support of each other in the village spirit, instead of the relative independence between families; the village culture is gradually disappearing and replaced by urban culture. Most families only have 1-2 children, the excessive care and indulgence of some parents, the brutal intervention in the education of the school, thereby creating a habit of dependence in children, children become selfish, exalting their own values, this is the root cause of conflicts between students, when interests and egos are affected, damaged, the animal side of them arises, they act instinctively and violence is inevitable.

Market mechanisms and economic pressure have put a huge burden on parents in the family, most of their time is spent on work, no time to raise children; some parents in rural areas have to leave their families to work in big cities, their children stay in their hometowns, couples have broken marriages, separated spouses... children live with grandparents so they become more free, lacking strict control; there are cases of bringing children to study at schools near the workplace, or children living with stepfathers, stepmothers, changes in living and studying environment, parents' busyness at work so they cannot take care of and care for their children properly, children easily fall into crisis. These things have strongly affected the development of children's personalities, they become irritable, aggressive, and tend to be violent in handling conflicts in relationships.

Foreign cultural flows are strongly influencing the awareness of young people, the introduction of fashion styles, music genres, movies and trends from developed countries into Vietnam has strongly influenced the lifestyle and needs of the majority of young people. More and more young people want to express themselves through learning foreign styles and trends without paying attention to traditional cultural values and specific living conditions. The trend of tattooing, dyeing hair, wearing heavy makeup when going to school and participating in educational activities is increasing, the lifestyle of enjoyment and self-expression is eroding the traditional cultural values of Vietnamese people, this is not a direct cause but it is also an indirect factor that creates conflicts in friendships at school, leading to the risk of violence.

Family life in the technology era becomes monotonous and boring, family members rarely interact with each other, everyone has their own world in virtual space, personal pages on Facebook, Zalo become the main space for family members. It is not difficult to see families in the evening where each member has a smart phone, sitting in a separate corner, surfing the phone, texting and laughing with their phone. The need to satisfy the ego is satisfied by social networks, so members forget that they have to interact and share with each other to build family culture. Online games are also a dangerous factor that negatively affects the quality of future generations, game addiction, playing violent games will incite young people to have violent tendencies and have the risk of resolving conflicts with violence. The virtual world is very difficult to control, behind the door of the children's room is a world full of risks and difficult to control, most school violence cases originate from conflicts in the online environment, an impolite comment, an unintentional mood line, a provocation via text message is the initial cause, the seed of conflict, if the school and family do not intervene promptly, violence will occur.

The above factors create a family that lacks connection, is fragmented and easily broken, and members lack sharing. Rice needs to be fertilized to grow well, but weeds grow on their own. Good things like rice need to be cared for and nurtured to grow, bad things like weeds, if not planted, will still grow wild, naturally infected. The role of the previous generation and in guiding the personality development of the next generation in the family is very important, it is a factor that helps maintain traditional values and correct deviations in the development process. Once parents no longer have time for their children, the development of their children's personalities is easily distorted and disoriented. The lack of attention from the family has pushed children into the world of bad people, bad friends, bad subjects, they join groups of friends with violent tendencies, rely on friends, so when conflicts arise, they often tend to use violence to resolve them. This is the initial cause and also the fundamental cause of school violence in recent times.

Family culture has a direct impact and plays an extremely important role in shaping the personality, behavioral tendencies and personality of children. Deviation in general and school violence in particular appear more and more among young people, the first cause is the family education factor. Therefore, parents must be aware of this in order to care, connect and educate their children better. Each good family will create a good community, a good society and a new good society in the future.

(1) VUCA stands for four basic concepts: Volatility; Uncertainty; Complexity; Ambiguity. This term refers to the chaos of today's world.

Huynh Van Men

Source