position paper 3

NAME: NUR ATIFAH BT AWANG
MATRIC NO: 0813250

POSITION PAPER 3
“Violence in the School is a Result of Differences outside School. We as Counselors Cannot Do Anything about It”.

Violence is great roughness and force, which is causing destruction injury or damage. School violence is widely held to have become a serious problem in recent decades in many countries, especially where weapons such as guns or knives are involved. It includes violence between school students as well as physical attacks by students on school staff. Violent behaviors such as punching and kicking are often learned from observing others. Just as externalizing behaviors are observed outside of school, such behaviors also observed in schools. Nowadays, violence in the school is not only happening among students in the same races or same cultural background, but it also occurs among diverse and various cultural backgrounds students.
Some people claim that the cases of violence sometimes caused by differences outside the school which is diverse, or various cultural background neighborhoods and communities as such they can provide the context for school violence among students from different races. They may create violence to each other due to sensitive and controversial issues such as religions, races, ethnicity and many more. Sometimes, they bring the outside issues and problems even a trivial issue in the school, whereby they will argue each other as if they want to defend their own opinion about particular community. As a result, all those arguments lead to the violent behaviors among them such as act of physical violence with intent to cause harm, verbal threat of harm to each other and so on. Besides that, the influence of racial prejudice can be seen in the attitudes and beliefs of the system in which the multicultural students live.


In addition, some unknown researches shown that violence in the school are not only a result of differences outside school, but home environment also one of the risk factors that contribute to violence among diverse cultural background students. To illustrate, some people believe that the exposure to gun violence, parental alcoholism, domestic violence , physical abuse of the child, and child sexual abuse teaches children that criminal and violent activities are acceptable. Harsh parental discipline is associated with higher levels of aggressiveness in youth as well as exposure to parental corporal punishment increases the risk of aggressive conduct in youth. While some people may agree, it is firmly believe that violence in the school is a result of differences outside school and the counselors could have do something about it such as making some prevention and intervention workshops focus on society-level strategies, conducting multicultural based programs and so on and so forth.
Nothing can be denied that the counselors cannot stop school violence from occurring on hundred percentages, but at least they can try to reduce the level of percentage of school violence and to prevent violent behaviors among different cultural background students. Violence in the school is a result of differences outside school and the counselors can do something about it. Thus, the trained counselors can make some prevention and intervention workshops including seminar focus on society-level strategies such as multicultural educational workshop, diversity and cross-cultural differences seminar, multicultural communication skill workshop and may more. These programs are aim to change social and cultural conditions as well as socio-emotional development in order to reduce violence among students regardless of their diverse and various cultural backgrounds. In these programs, the multiracial students may have insight regarding conflict resolution and team problem-solving even though they all are come from multicultural background. Moreover, the programs are planned to help students develop skills for working with other students from different religion and cultural background. They can try to get the conflicting groups to attain an agreement as well as they may have appropriate decisions and solutions of conflict. So, the violence among different racial students can be prevented and can be reduced.
Then, multicultural competence counselors also can conduct some multicultural based programs such as Culture Day, Multicultural Students Week and so on. For example, Culture Day is a component of the prevention programs designed to help students imagine the experience of being a cross-cultural individual. Hence, Culture Day also schedules to help students to gain greater competence with or understanding of people from the culture they had portrayed including to assist them to move beyond general knowledge about different cultural groups toward a deeper integration of cultural awareness, understanding, and skills relevant to them. As a result, the multiracial students will know about all different cultures without being prejudice to each other. So, the violence in the school which may be happen among different racial students can be decreased as they may know how to make a deal among them even when some sensitive issues or conflicts occur. It is because they already known and understood about the other students who are from different cultural backgrounds as well as they can appreciate the diversity among them.
However, some people may say that violence in the school is a result of differences outside school and the counselors cannot do something about it because they may not have good multicultural competency skills. Besides that, they believe that the counselors may have no specific knowledge about other different racial and cultural background students.
In the nutshell, the violence among diverse cultural background students in the school can be prevented and can be reduced if people are not only depending on counselors. It is better to prevent all cases of multiracial violence among students if there are some full cooperation and commitment from students themselves, parents, administrators, multicultural communities, staffs and so on. Perhaps, all kind of programs may not be success due to lack of caring cooperation from all parties regardless of their cultural differences as such only counselors take the responsibility to stop and prevent the violence in the school. In addition, all students should learn and understand about other cultures in order to help them to appreciate the diversity of cultures, to develop multicultural awareness skills and so on. So, they can be friend to other students from other multiracial and different cultural background. According to Islamic perspective, Allah has said in the Holy Qur’an which means, “O mankind, lo! We have created you of a male and a female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another”, (Al- Hujurat: 13). There is nothing wrong to make friends from different religions, races, ethnicity, colors, and gender and so on as long as we are not going to the wrong ways.