VIOLENCE, CHILDREN, TEENAGERS AND YOUNG PEOPLE
Children, teenagers, and young people have to face how violence has become a «normal», «common», «usual» characteristic in the process of socialization and education that they experience every day. Above all, this acceptance of violence as part of our daily lives is promoted by mass media (television, cinema, Internet) but, as a cultural event, violence deals with almost all elements that are connected to children and, even more, with teenagers and young people, such as music, relationships, games, fashions, comics, and so forth.
Some of the elements which are related to violence in our global culture with significant repercussions on teenagers are:
– 1. Accepting violence as the usual way to solve problems. Then, they understand it as the way they can try to solve their problems, instead of searching for other alternatives or solutions that may be better techniques to overcome difficulties.
– 2. Accepting that the consequences of violence are inevitable. In other words, believing that destruction in all its forms (destruction of human lives, environment, and hope in a better future which are linked with wars, economic crisis, poverty, suffering…) is the more than likely circumstance they will have to deal with in future.
– 3. The presence of violence in our daily life produces fears, instability, insecurity, suffering, uncertainty, poverty, unhappiness, alienation of our real possibilities, destruction of a healthy surrounding, a distortion of reality. Violence is not the solution to violence, generally speaking, it produces more violence.
– 4. As a general attitude in our behavior or as a way to solve our personal or social problems, violence is, on the one hand, the consequence of social manipulation and, on the other, the result of an awful education and wrong individual selfperception of how to develop the best chances as human beings and citizens.
– 5. These days violence has become a general attitude that is offered by mass media as a commodity. Teenagers and young people consume violence by watching television, films, listening to music, reading comics, video games, listening or reading news and information on the Net, and so on. Violence is even used as an advertising technique, the same as sex.
-6. Violence erodes the human perception of humanity, dignity, ethical values and difference between human beings and the rest of animals. Violence is a form of alienation of human condition and human perception. It is used as a way to destroy human rights.
I invite you to think on the below questions and to answer them:
-1. Why do we collaborate with «violence»?
-2. Why don’t we use critical reasoning and, above all, critical attitude, critical behavior against violence?
-3. What can we do and what should we do to avoid using violence as a way to solve our problems?
-4. What should we do to transform our violent global culture into a peaceful global culture?
SOME OF THE MANY SUBJECTS THAT connect VIOLENCE WITH TEENAGERS’ EDUCATION IN THE PROCESS OF SOCIALIZATION THAT DESIGNS OUR GLOBAL CULTURE ARE:
SUBJECTS :
- VIOLENCE AT SCHOOL
- VIOLENCE AT HOME
- VIOLENCE ON TV / CINEMA
- VIOLENCE ON THE NET
- VIOLENCE IN GAMES
- GENDER VIOLENCE
- VIOLENCE AND MUSIC
- RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, ETHNOCENTRISM (POLITICAL OR TRADITIONAL MINDSET).
- VIOLENCE IN MY CITY (VIOLENT GROUPS, DRUGS, AND LEISURE ACTIVITIES)
- OTHER FORMS OF DEALING WITH THE VIOLENCE THAT MAY BE RELATED TO TEENAGERS ARE: CHILD SOLDIERS, DISPLACED YOUNG PEOPLE, YOUNG SLAVES, YOUNG AND DRUGS VIOLENCE AND SEX VIOLENCE.
Two interesting websites that may be interesting so as to study this issue are:
1. Helping Children and Adolescents Cope with Violence and Disasters: What Parents Can Do. By Mental Institute of Mental Health.
(It offers the option to read it in Spanish too).
2. Youth Violence: Prevalence, Consequences & Risk factors Joseph Murray Senior Research Associate, Department of Psychiatry
Haz clic para acceder a murray_youth_violence.pdf
Two books that study the relationship between teenagers and violence are:
- The Structural Violence of Globalization
Author(s): Jessica Srikantia (School of Policy, Government and International Affairs, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia, USA).
This study shows how severe, violent and irreparable destruction of formerly thriving and sustainable cultures and communities around the globe is an inherent component of globalization; current notions of “development” and “poverty” provide ideological cover for such destruction; a wide range of mainstream institutions and organizations (including governments, trade, and financial institutions and national and multinational corporations) benefit from the destruction and collude in these dynamics, while a passive majority participates through its silence and consumptive lifestyle; and to arrest these dynamics requires awareness of the structural violence of development and globalization, and that those of us living in currently unsustainable societies commit both to re-localize our effects to our own communities and to change the operating rules of the global system.
2. Globalization and Violence: The Challenge to Ethics
Authors: Edward Demenchonok , Richard Peterson
It studies that despite its many benefits, globalization has proven to harbor a good deal of violence. This is not only a matter of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction inaugurated by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima but includes many forms of indirect or “structural violence” resulting from the routine of economic and political institutions on the global scale. In this essay, the multifaceted phenomena of violence are approached from the standpoint of ethics. The prevailing political thinking associated with “realism” fails to address the problems of militarism and of hegemonic unilateralism. In contrast, many philosophers are critically rethinking the problem of global violence from different ethical perspectives. Despite sharing similar concerns, philosophers nevertheless differ over the role of philosophical reflection and the potentials of reason. These differences appear in two contrasting approaches associated with postmodern philosophy and discourse ethics. In the analysis of discourse ethics, attention is paid to Karl‐Otto Apel’s attempt of philosophically grounding macro ethics of planetary co‐responsibility. At the heart of the essay is the analysis of the problem of violence, including terrorism, by Jürgen Habermas, who explains the phenomenon of violence in terms of the theory of communicative action as the breakdown of communication. Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of the notion of “terrorism” also is analyzed. According to the principle of discourse ethics, all conflicts between human beings ought to be settled in a way free of violence, through discourses and negotiations. These philosophers conclude that the reliance on force does not solve social and global problems, including those that are the source of violence. The only viable alternative is the “dialogical” multilateral relations of peaceful coexistence and cooperation among the nations for solving social and global problems. They emphasize the necessity of strengthening the international rule of law and institutions, such as a reformed United Nations.
I collected some videos from YouTube so as to be used as teaching resources to study the connection between youngsters and the violent culture we are developing at present.
Students may make some notes.
- They have to write down the area of study,
- The title of the video,
- The main ideas or teachings that we can learn by watching it
- The question which may be helpful so as to lead the attention on the most interesting things that the video can offer according to an ethical point of view.
- The teacher will give the required time so as to do this activity in groups. Later, he may ask students so as to compare what the different groups have written. We can organize a small debate on the video and write the main conclusions.
VIOLENCE AND YOUTH
crespocabornero 