Where can one go and what does a person–especially a child–have to do to feel safe and secure, relatively free from the threat of physical or emotional abuse?

In a recent UCLA study, Department of Education postdoctoral fellow Adrienne Nishina and professor Jaana Juvonen surveyed middle school children and found that, in a two-week period, almost half reported incidents of harassment by their peers. While some of the harassment involved verbal abuse, such as public insults, acts of physical aggression, such as kicking and shoving, were also common.

Schools have known about this all along, though the present study underscores the extent of the problem. Among Nishina and Juvonen’s findings was that students expressed greater concern for peers who were verbally abused. Peer victimization, they found, was correlated with lack of engagement and overall negative experiences with school.

Reflecting on recent news of violence in our nation’s schools, I took special note of the study’s finding that victims in their study reported increased humiliation and anger, while those who witnessed these acts of aggression reported increased anxiety. The researchers also observed that some of the more “experienced” victims—those who both witnessed and were also victims—tended to develop some resistance to humiliation and anger.

Schools need to address this problem, as we all know. School administrators will tell us that they already are—they will say that there’s “zero tolerance” for such behavior, and so on. The sad fact remains that the majority of these acts of verbal and physical violence go unnoticed and—unless someone personally takes them aside and asks them—no one but the victims and the bullies will ever know or be in a position to offer help.

Commenting on her findings, Nishina noted that violence intervention efforts should be targeted to all students and against “all forms of bullying, not just physical aggression and certain forms of verbal harassment.”

Just across the UCLA campus from Nishina and Juvonen’s offices is Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School. UES parents and children are clued into the school’s nonviolence philosophy from the outset.

One teacher there, Ava de la Sota, has a special job—she is the Safe School Specialist. De la Sota’s mission is to help students learn principles of nonviolent interaction, conflict resolution, and anger management through a program of face-saving and life-saving skills for resolving conflict called “COOL TOOLS.” Students learn how to deflect verbal slights and redirect conversation in more productive ways. They learn how to create and assert zones of personal safety, and they learn a variety of methods for channeling their own negative energies.

“If kids don’t have a repertoire of ways to cool themselves down and don’t have ‘cool ways’ to exit a situation that’s escalating or inflating, they will often stay present in a risky situation rather than lose face,” de la Sota told me. One of her methods is to help students develop exit strategies for such situations. “Get gone, whistle, pretend you need to be somewhere else, use a one-liner,” she advises, “and the trick is that you actually take your power with you, because you’re not buying into their perception of the situation.”

At the beginning of each year, students (and their parents) are asked to sign a Safe School Contract, in which they agree to behave respectfully toward one another. In addition, de la Sota frequently makes presentations to groups of students and parents to reinforce the Safe School message. Parents learn the tools too, so they are on the same page as the school and so they can be the models their children need in our aggressive, violent society.

Although schools have born the brunt of our criticisms so far—and, as yet, have received all too little support in their efforts to quell peer-to-peer harassment—the responsibility is ours to learn how to quell our own angered hearts and to practice and teach peace and tolerance in all our relationships.

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Copyright © 2011 Allan J. Comeau, Ph.D.