Position Paper 3

“Violence in the school is a result of differences outside school. We as counselors can’t do anything about it.” Discuss.

by: Norfakhrini binti Abdul Razab
(0728856)

Last two years, one of the newspapers reported about the case involved by a student who was killing his senior at school. He brought a knife to school because he was not patient more after often being bullied by his senior. Bring the knife to school is wrong and it can lead to the punishment, but, if that student was really not strong to be bullying so, we need to think deeply and not just looking for his wrong action. The questions are what’s the factor he can’t stand anymore? Is violence become wider? Is there any program for solving this problem? Is there any prevention program? The school gives fully attention and efforts in order to solve the violence since the Ministry of Education stress on this problem but, how it has been implemented. All of this really significant and relate to the counselor. For the definition, the meaning of violence from the Oxford Dictionary is cruel and harmful behavior or actions, while the definition from Wikipedia, violence is the expression of physical or verbal force against self or other, compelling action against one’s will on pain of being hurt. For the victims, the feeling of frightening, hurting and injuring not only been felt while the violence is happen but it also can be feel when they have been treated to be bullying for the next time. Violence may cause many problems in terms of psychology, value of personality and the relationship with other people. The point here is violence in the school is a result of differences outside school. We as counselors can’t do anything about it. Is that true? Counselor is one of a professional job which assists people in solving the problems by implementing the basic elements of counseling which is confidentiality, meet the person’s needs and empower the client to take control and to make vital decisions. These elements show us that counselor able to solve and prevent the violence particularly in school.

All people respond to stimuli and situations by either changing themselves or the environment and by combining these two operations in various proportions. Counselors have the skills in order to face the problems like violence because historically, the implicit goal of counseling and psychotherapy has been to bring about a greater degree of conformity to the norms of the dominant majority group. The contemporary cross-cultural counselor or therapist faces a choice. He/she can prepare the client for changing obstacles in the environment, or he/she can equip the client for a greater degree of accommodation to the social structure in its current state. The increase in the individual's options also involves choices on the extent and nature of one's relationships, reference groups, and identity, especially in relation to one's ethnic or cultural group. For instance, there have schools in our country who selecting only form four and form five students, such as technique school. While the chosen student comes to new school, he will face the problem because the culture in technique school is different to the previous school. If he can’t make himself follow the culture in that school and bring his pervious school culture, he may be bully or raging by the seniors at that school. With the skills or the goals of counseling that I have mentioned above, it show that counselor able to prevent the violence at this school. If it still happened, counselor can investigate and find the root of the problems by meeting students’ family, face to face with the students or make a motivation program such as a program “Anti Violence Day” or other interesting program that effective to the students. According to Doherty, 1987, some cultural/ethnic groups place more value and receive more support from an extended family and/or community structure than others. It is incumbent on the visiting counselor to have an understanding of the roles of these groups in order to provide more adequate and appropriate interventions for families and family members within the context of their own cultures.

However, some people say that counselor can’t do anything if there violence in the school is a result of differences outside school. They say that teachers also can control violence especially the discipline teacher. Anyone who involved in violence is compulsory to face discipline teacher who automatically give the punishment to the students either positive or negative punishment. Where is counselor? Sometimes, students more scare to the discipline teachers because the punishment that given to them gives a big impact to them rather than get the guidance from the counselor. However, in any situations, counselor should have together with the teachers in preventing and solving the problem of violence because counselor is more expert in exploring the causes of violence happen among the students. There had a case where the discipline teacher slapped one of his girl students because this student was hugging her old friend who also girl and she is a new student at that school. The teacher assumed that her student was a lesbian while for both students, it just the common hug that implement in their culture outside the school and because of the teacher had judge the student without ask them first, thus it lead to the risk for that teacher. Therefore, counselor is needed and can do anything in solving this matter because a counselor has been trained to have skills and characteristic such as can’t judge the book by it’s cover, unconditional positive regards, empathizing, questioning, evaluating and other professional skills.

In conclusion, counselor can do anything about violence in the school that result of differences outside school. Counselor can implement new strategies in preventing violence like the school ‘court’, exist crowd for the victims, increase self-awareness to parents about the violence and develop the sense of empathy into the naughty students towards their victims. A final point is that while it is necessary for the culturally-skilled counselor to have a working knowledge of the client’s culture, it may be as important that the counselor bring an attitude and belief system to the session that the client perceives to be trustworthy particularly in violence cases. It is in the fundamental areas of communication with self and others trust in self and in others, and the basic hope and faith that there can be a reasonably happy future that healing may begin.