Verbal Put Downs

In my last post I talked about unkind words at school. How frustration leads to anger causing verbal outbursts which raise stress levels. I believe that stress is one of the primary problems in our schools today.

Verbal put downs are a part of our youth culture. Young people, adolescent boys in particular, are constantly putting each other down. This is different than outbursts of frustrations. It is probably caused by the stress of competition in our schools. Young people have not yet learned the power of words and do not understand the devastating effects of verbal harassment and put downs. The see it as an accepted part of the culture. After all trash talk in sports is all about winning!

"We need to get away from the idea that bullying is always physical. Bullying can also include verbal harassment, which can be just as damaging and detrimental to student learning," said Christy Lleras, a U of I assistant professor of human and community development.

Her study used data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study and included 10,060 African American, Latino, and white tenth graders in 659 U.S. high schools. "In looking at whether students felt safe at school, students' fear for their physical safety was actually pretty low. But 70 percent of the students said they were bothered by disruptions in their classroom, and one in five students said that they were often put down by their peers in school," she said.

One of the primary human needs is for safety. This study points out that put downs and verbal harassment at school probably cause stress levels to rise in students causing a climate of fear to exist in our classrooms. Ms. Lleeras speculates that verbal put-downs in schools may be a coping strategy that students use when they don't have the skills to do the work and have little hope of acquiring them in their academic environment.

I believe that as long as competition is at the heart of our educational system, these problems will persist.

You can access the full article at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090901105142.htm

Kindness

School has always been a place that gathers frustrated people whose unkind words are often heard on the playground, library, classrooms and the office! John Medina, in his book Brain Rules, has as his 8th rule "stressed brains don't learn the same way."

When frustration is released with unkind words, stress is one of the side-effects and learning is the casualty. The Red Robin Foundation is doing something about this problem by providing grants of up to $15,000 with their U-Act program.

The goal of the Red Robin Foundation U-ACT Program is to encourage kindness among students and help create a sense of neighborliness inside and outside of school settings. U-ACT which stands for Unbridled Acts, or random acts of kindness, is a character-building initiative specifically for middle and junior high schools with grades six through eight, which aims to inspire and energize students about the value of being kind to others.

You can find out more at http://www.redrobin.com/rrfoundation/uactprogram.aspx
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