The role of administrators in helping teens with problems is never easy. They need help and support from many members of the school community, including counselors, teachers, coaches, students, support staff, parents, and community health, law, and social service programs, in order to provide many open doors for help. They can't get this job done on their own. There are too many students with problems and needs to be met arriving at the schoolhouse door each day.
But even when the helping resources of both the school and community are giving 100 percent there are some societal-based problems that can present a great challenge for them. Problems that outside experts and school reformers say the secondary schools have but, in my opinion, not high-priority problems for our already overburdened schools. Here's an example of the complex problems school leaders are facing.
According to New York Times reporter Jenny Anderson (07/11/2011), a national study by the National Association of University Women found widespread sexual harassment of students in grades 7 to 12. Nearly half of 7th to 12th graders experienced sexual harassment in the last school year, with 87 percent of those who had been harassed reporting negative effects such as absenteeism, poor sleep and stomachaches. Catherine Hill, the director of research at the association said, "It's pervasive, and almost a normal part of the school day." Holly Kearl, an author of the study, said "Bullying is getting a lot of attention. We don't want schools to forget about sexual harassment and not talk about it."
What's missing from this and many reports about sexual harassment and bullying in our secondary schools is that these schools are turbulent, hostile, and highly sexualized institutions. Settings with large student populations, many housing over 3000 students. Not places designed to help students form close pesonal relationships, be affirmed, given recognition, and acceptance. Many of our secondary schools are survial courses for students and are tough places for teens who are not skilled to stand their ground. They are at-risk because they lack the skills to ward off bullies and harassers who can easily spot their vulnerabilities.
Teens who are unable to defend themselves then are raw meat in a hostile school culture. Yes, there are caring administrators, counselors, teachers, coaches and support staff who daily try to protect at-risk kids. However, in some schools the ongoing, daily, demands of student troubles and conflicts can overwhelm them, particularly in urban communities.
While the school public relations announcements may state their is zero tolerance for sexual harassment and bullying, this proclamation has no real chance of succeeding. Our large secondary schools are not peaceable kingdoms and never will be. Nor will every student be a peacemaker. Suggesting these schools can be reorganized to be peaceable kingdoms is a wish, a prayer, a hope, but a denial of what these schools are really like.
Many of these schools were built and organized in the 1950s for a far different world and student/parent population. In today's world schools are facing many more complex student problems, bullying and sexual harassment being one of many. The student culture in today's schools is highly confrontational.
When Ms Hill says "it's pervasive, and almost a normal part of school life" she is right. But she has a false perception of secondary schools if she believes this is a school culture that is completely out of control and demands fixing. Her comment misses the point that the student culture of secondary schools is about surviving the daily battles and conflicts between individual students and peer groups. And it's a culture in which a major focus of student life and communication is on sex. It is a time of sexual awakening and much of the conversations between students are sexualy laden, provocative, and filld with wanted or unwanted sexual advances with words such as "you're so hot."
It's a culure in which there is a fine line between "normal," sometimes hostile, sometimes sexual, verbal exhanges between students and exchanges that can be labeled as sexual harassment and bullying. We live in tough times and many teens come to school angry with their world and the growing lack of opportunity for themselves and family members. And we live in a world that is highly sexual and many teens come to school to explore their sexuality and that exploration often begins with trial and error. And what may be seen as inappropriate sexual advances are really flirtations and a "normal" part of this process. And for students, making inappropriate , irrevent, and colorful comments are at the core of this process. Most students are not weak, defenseless and are able to deal with these uncomfortable and hostile situations. Our concern should be with those students who arrive at school as tender creatures, unable to deal with these uncomfortable and hostile conversations.
It is, as Ms. Hill decried, "a normal part of the school day." In these verbal exchanges some students will use what seems to be negative verbal labels to spar with peers. For example, casually using words such as slut, dick, homo, whore, piece of ass, built for speed, gay, so hot, shithead, fuckhead, piece of shit, ugly, wel-built, etc. Words that may appear as sexual harassment or bullying, but are in reality of school life, a normal part, for them, of the eveyday language used by teens to connect or disconnect from each other.
For students, it's all about developing communication skills that help them to be adept at dealing with uncomfortable and hostile encounters because that's what secondary school life is all about. Yes, hostile and sexual communications but not exchanges that cross the line into sexual harassment or bullying.
In the school culture of who survives and who becomes a victim, negative labels and words are the centerpiece of school life. No, for many outsiders such as school reformers and sexual harassment bullying experts, it is not a fair, peaceful, kind, accepting, or gentle use of dialogue. They envision a school world in which students are quiet, civilized, helpful and kind to each other, never rude or hostile, and sexually laden conversations are absent.
However, for many students it's "their" language and way of communicating. Inappropriate comments are championed. It's the law of the jungle in the school culture. Be prepared to battle and defend oneself or be victimized.
As adults the behaviors we may want for students are often not the behaviors students want for themselves. However, there is great adult pressure to get school leaders to create a wholly unhostile and sexually absent environment. This is a no-win situation for administrators who must walk a fine line between hearing critics who are calling for zero tolernace for sexual harassment and bullying and standing up for a school culture in which "normal" vebal exchanges between students are part of their world and do not cross the line into sexual harassment and bullying. Administrators who have the responsiblity for making the "right" judgement call in sexual harassment and bullying cases are presented with a fine, gray, line to navigate through.
These administrators have enough on their hands without the pressure to make their school environment unhostile, peaceful, and without sexual overtones. Many of their schools are overcrowded with outdated facilities, serving diverse student groups who are often in conflict with each other, and staff working in an environment in which student problems are always on the increase. There is no respite for them and few rewards. They're in a war that seems to never end. Adding proposals to their to do list to make their schools peaceable kingdoms seems so removed from the reality they face each day as to border on the absurd.
Instead I argue that the response to the charge of critics that there is an increase of sexual harassment and bullying in our large secondary schools, begins at home. Children need to learn early on to face and handle conflct succesfully, not turn the other cheek, stand their ground, and do battle on the playground when they are called names, pushed around, and isolated. They need to learn how to compete in the world not just academically but socially as well, knowing their own strenghts and weaknesses, learning to deal with failure, and finding their own special niche.
Parents who raise their children to be nice, quiet, peace loving, safe, to avoid conflict and like everyone, finding some good in them as the saying goes, are doing them no favor. These children are being raised without the skills to face conflct when it comes their way and it will when they enter middle school, junior high, and high school. They are raw meat and no school interventon program, albeit with good intentions, will save and help them avoid the conflicts that are waiting for them.
I say: parents teach your children the skills they will need in" their" life, not the life you are planning for them, inadvertently making them a victim. Schools can do their best to offer support for students who are raised in families like this by providing many open doors for help –– support groups, teacher advisors, individual counseling, etc. But in the end what is needed is an increased effort by parents to raise resilient children who can stand on their own. I believe to think that school leaders can do or should do more to make their schools peaceable kingdoms and their students peacemakers is is an unrealalistic goal in today's complex school world with its many demands. Instead let's give them credit for the help they are offering many troubled teens and not ask them to take on solving problems that are societal-based and not a prioity in our schools.
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