Breaking Ranks -- Views and Remedies from a Radical Pragmatist

Bob Woodson Blog

How to Ban Bullying in Boston

02/05/2010 04:16 PM

 

The Boston Herald reports rampant bullying in the Boston school system and surrounding communities with kids being harassed, beaten, forced to drink toilet water, and pummeled on the bus. Equally disturbing, many of these outrageous actions are being recorded for public view on Facebook.

The constant refrain from angry parents and terrified kids is that nobody in the school system listens. A Boston Latin School parent said that bullying was so bad that her son had to leave the elite school. A teacher on the South Shore said she was sickened to find that special needs girls were photographed in the bathroom, and then again to learn that the photos were posted on Facebook. A 15-year-old girl in South Hadley apparently took her life after being bullied and 30 kids are being questioned.

Conventional deterrent methods to prevent youth violence are obviously failing to protect our children. Approaches that utilize cops and video cameras on buses and hallways have proven to be useless. How can such methods be a deterrent when the kids videotape their misbehavior themselves and broadcast it for all to see?

These schools are not inner-city minority schools in low-income, gang-infested neighborhoods which one normally associates with such behavior. But many of the approaches being successfully employed by the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in its Violence-Free Zone program have demonstrated dramatic reductions in youth violence in even the most violent neighborhoods. Evaluations of these programs and their outcomes have been well documented for all to see

What is unique about the CNE approach is that it recruits young adults from within the communities suffering the problem who are trained to work directly in the schools with school administrators and school security as an intermediary force between the kids and the school. Because these "youth advisors" have the trust and confidence of the kids when threats are made, they are able to intervene directly and immediately and bring about a peaceful resolution. As one young man said, "It's like having a big brother or big sister protecting you in schools." The protection does not come from coercion but from inspiring kids who are predators to change their behavior. For more information, call the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise at 202-518-6500.

Boston Herald articles on bullying:

Baylor University study on success of CNE's Violence-Free Zone

http://www.isreligion.org/pdf/case_milwaukee.pdf

Information on CNE's Violence-Free Zone program

http://www.cneonline.org/pages/Violence-Free_Zone

 

Elections' Meaning Deeper than Triumphs, Travails of Democrats and Republicans

01/25/2010 01:03 PM

The election upsets in Massachusetts and Virginia have produced mass media and political hysteria with predictions of tidal shifts in political party loyalties. Some may conclude that the politics of “no” is a winning strategy for the future.

But I believe they reveal a deeper truth and that is that people are less ideological than the pundits believe. What voters want is leaders who are defined by the solutions they offer rather than their rhetoric. People are less concerned about labels; what they want is action.

These elections also demonstrated that voters respond to a leader who is not negative, not divisive, not vilifying his or her opponent, but pleasant, upbeat, uplifting, and offering something positive. They want someone who they believe will provide remedies that improve their quality of life. Virginia Governor Rob McDonnell, for instance, has offered a plan for 21 specific problems—leading a newspaper to say that he covered everything for relieving traffic congestion and tax relief to planting azaleas and flossing. But the point is, voters responded to a positive agenda.

At the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, our mission is to put forth creative remedies to address the challenges we face—like violence and social disorder. We are doing this with the Violence-Free Zone program, now in more than 30 public middle and high schools this year and measurably reducing violence, suspensions, and truancies. We provide training and technical assistance to nonprofit community-based organizations that are effectively helping transform the lives of addicts, the homeless, and prisoners reentering society. We celebrate these organizations so that others can learn about their solutions.

When we see that wrong policies are being applied, we do not hesitate to point it out, not in the spirit of attacking what is being done, but to emphasize the limitations of poor public policy. When a nation or community continues to support a wrong set of policies and programs and they fail to deliver as promised, there is the danger that we lose all hope that remedies exist. In trying to reduce youth violence, for instance, when you have a record of supporting failed approaches and are locked into them year after year, you lose faith and begin to blame the victims. Because the remedies that you supported didn’t work, you conclude that the situation is so intractable that the only alternative must be coercion. So you turn to repressive measures like curfews, more police, harsher laws, longer incarcerations, without producing better results.

The Center provides another alternative, one that is uplifting, positive, and effective, and whose outcomes are measurable. We describe our approach as radical pragmatism based on our country’s founding principles. Radical pragmatism means looking for solutions, not arguments.

In this space each week we will focus on solutions—solutions that don’t bear political or ideological labels. We’re looking for what works.

If you’d like to comment, please e-mail me at woodsonblog@cneonline.org.