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Recent news about violence at one of our senior schools is worrisome. I'm convinced violent behaviour doesn't begin in high school. And it won't end there either.

Looking at the big picture, violence is on the increase on our streets, in schools at all grade levels and in families. By the time an adolescent reaches high school, patterns of violent behaviour including threats, bullying and actual physical violence have already been established. According to Kathy Noll, one of the hundreds of researchers who have studied child violence: "Children who use violence to resolve conflicts, grow up to be adults who use violence to resolve conflicts."

And while it may be fashionable or somehow comforting to point to a particular school population and disdainfully dismiss them as anti-social, this is not an issue that will go away via dismissal. In our small and dense community, violent tendencies, even by only a few, have an effect on all of us.

These tendencies play out in incidents of road rage, in violent crime, in decisions parents make about public versus private education, in decisions potential tourists make about visiting our Island.

They raise fears about physical and property security, and affect real property values. They elevate fears of 'no-go' areas and skew business potential based on location. Some people may feel they can shield themselves and their families from violence by living in gated communities and avoiding any dubious areas.

However, their fears when moving outside their 'safe' zones can approach paranoia and put a severe dent in their quality of life. There is no real escape. Few places on the planet are as peaceful and few peoples as peace loving as Bermuda and Bermudians used to be. What's my point? We're all in this together and we all need to pitch in toward fixing it.

What do we know? We know that violence is a learned behaviour, that children learn violent behaviours from their family and peers, as well as observe it in their neighbourhoods and in the community at large.

We know these behaviours are reinforced by what youth see on television, on the Internet, in video games, movies, music videos, and what they hear in their music.

We know that children learn from example and that the younger they are, the more impressionable. We know that the examples children are exposed to are now dominated by television, video games and movies, all of which engage young minds in the plotting and doing of violence for every reason from playing tricks, to resolving conflicts, to evening the score.

Evidence presented to a U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1999 pointed to the more than 1,000 studies done since the 1950's on the effects of violence in television and movies. The majority of these studies concluded that children who watch significant amounts of television and movie violence are more likely to exhibit aggressive behaviour, attitudes and values.

What can we do?

As parents, teachers, leaders in youth groups, we need to be alert to precursors of violent behaviour.

Our schools need to implement anti-bullying and peer mediation programmes as a priority. Our churches need to bring the principles of peace to the forefront of their thoughts, talk and action for families.

Our business and political leaders will need to identify and quell tendencies to engage in the policies and practices that mirror violence, justifying them as benign competition or normal 'thrust and parry'.

We are all in this together and none of us can afford the consequences of thinking it's someone else's problem.[[In-content Ad]]

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