A Recipe For Violence

It COULD happen anywhere!  Youthful violence, that is.

In reaction to the recent shooting spree in Littleton, CO, this is a warning from an engineer-turned-educator that such an incident could happen anywhere in the U.S., not because of the availability of guns but rather because of psychologically perverse public school policies and practices, emanating from the U.S. Department of Education or its various "laboratories," promulgated in varying degrees nationwide.  Examining them in combination, you will see that they comprise a "RECIPE FOR VIOLENCE!"

The problem is NOT GUNS, but deteriorating youth behaviors.  Trends of increased violence at younger ages are being deceptively touted as an excuse for "gun-grabbing" legislation; but the violence is surfacing in other ways.  And kids have always had access to guns, especially in the South and West.  I, and all my friends, carried pocket knives (no restrictions on blade size), and played games with them in the schoolyard.  With all the spats and squabbles, using one of those knives as a weapon was never an option.  In the next generation also, my son carried a pocket knife and recalls being beaten up by a bully in elementary school, and says today that it was not that using his knife defensively was consciously rejected, the THOUGHT NEVER EVEN OCCURRED!

The truth is that kids have changed — and a lot of it is ATTRIBUTABLE TO SCHOOL CURRICULUM!  In educators' frequent hand-wringing over rising violence, they like to blame all such on TV, society, etc., but avoid facing evidence that defective reading, language, and vocabulary programs have depressed communication skills thereby sabotaging skills needed to resolve conflicts.  If people who confront/conflict can't communicate, their interaction is more likely to turn physical.

Worse yet, studies at the U.S. Department of Justice in the 1980's by Michael Brunner, on educational factors affecting incarcerated juveniles, found direct linkages between illiteracy and violent behavior.  Sociological studies of background factors of violent felons showed the strongest statistical link to be FAILURE TO LEARN TO READ — stronger than poverty, drugs, broken homes, etc!  Said statistical link, in the light of Pavlov's experiments on animals and humans under sustained frustration, Brunner believes to be causal.  Brunner's work resulted in a book, Retarding America - The Imprisonment of Potential (Halcyon House, 1993).

In Suffolk County (NY), we have a "ticking time-bomb" example of the "recipe:"  Suffolk has:

Most of the above relate directly to the systemic literacy problem.  I have started a literacy program for youth on Probation or Community Service because we found virtually all to be either special-ed cases or identified low achievers.  We have 14 - 18 -year-olds with reading levels from ZERO to fifth grade, sometimes getting NO reading instruction in school.  We train volunteer tutors in Orton-Gillingham multisensory phonics, match them up with desperate kids – who DO progress in reading.  All this is not to denigrate the work of dedicated local teachers, but to point out the futility of their efforts in a flawed system in which they, themselves, are also victims.  The crucial issue is what is happening to the children.

Other ingredients of the "recipe" are psychologically tainted curriculum "strands," each of which gives children a nudge toward violent or irresponsible behaviors.

"Attitudes and Feelings" Focus vs Brain Development

Aside from moral and cultural questions of what attitudes should be taught, curriculum practices emphasizing feelings instead of logical thinking train the brain inappropriately:  Neurobiologist Dr. David Goodman states (Learning From Lobotomy, HUMAN BEHAVIOR, January, 1978) that rather than studying the brain in terms of left and right hemispheres, it is more enlightening to analyze it as being divided crosswise into fore- and aft-brain functional regions.

The aft-brain includes the regions of senses and feelings, whereas the fore-brain frontal lobes provide control functions:  long-term planning, logical reasoning, inhibiting of impulses, self-control, tolerance for delayed gratification, etc., the functions we associate with maturation.  So, as brain areas develop in rough proportion to their usage, students taught to pay more attention to their feelings than to rational thinking and self-control will have under-developed frontal lobes, making impulsive and violent behaviors more likely.

Values Clarification, Decision-Making, & "Critical" Thinking

The majority of these kinds of activity are based on the "non-directive" therapies of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, who admitted to problems with their use on children.  Children are encouraged to adopt "values" for themselves — even if different from those of their parents — and to try making their own decisions on matters of life and death — that there are no "right" or "wrong" decisions, just "different" ones — with inadequate knowledge of consequences.

Studies have shown that children undergoing the above types of courses under the rubric of drug- or sex-education tended to be MORE experimental than students who received no training at all.  Dr. William Coulson, a colleague of Maslow & Rogers, has been criss-crossing the nation apologizing to the American people for that period of psychological work, and explaining why it is harmful to children:

"Decision-Making":  Some of the procedures lead children to believe they can use a 5-step "decision-making" process to make their own decisions on matters of life and death, e.g., whether or not to "experiment."  (Or maybe whether or not to shoot at schoolmates, or abandon an unwanted fetus.)  Step 1 is, "State the problem."  Step two is,  Examine the alternatives."  "For the child who has been taught abstention," Dr. Coulson says, "the word 'alternatives' leaps off the page like a flaming sword!  What's the alternative to abstention?"

The Magic Circle:  When the chairs are placed in a circle and the teacher steps outside, students are encouraged to exchange innermost thoughts about sex, drugs, lying, cheating, masturbation, etc.  In such situations the extremes of peer personalities begin to interact:  At one end of the scale is the naive, dutiful, obedient child; at the other, the aggressive, assertive, experimental child.  Coulson rhetorically asks, "In such settings, which child is the more likely to influence the other?  The system is psychologically designed to bring down the dutiful, obedient child."

The Cheapening of Human Life

In the midst of exhortations to save whales, seals, snail-darters, etc. are death and suicide education (kids visit cemeteries, write their own epitaphs, discuss suicide), lifeboat problems (Who would you throw out?), environmental studies which paint humans as "the problem," books such as The Giver (about one who executes unwanted babies), and the euphemization of abortion as "choice" (Does the fetus have a choice?).  All of these cheapen the sanctity of human life.  Is it any wonder that teen-agers can shoot at other persons, or abandon a new-born and return to the prom, and later admit only that "Mistakes were made?"

The Self-Esteem Scam

Though we are told that raising kids' self-esteem enhances learning, experiments to prove it have been UNsuccessful.  In my own experience, I saw many improved behaviors and attitudes and self-confidence as a RESULT of successes in learning.  The psychotherapeutic value of a successful learning experience is grossly under-estimated by educators who should know better.  They have the cart before the horse.  Artificially inflating an non-achieving kid's ego, without giving him an inner means to nourish it, is more likely to produce arrogance and complacency than studiousness.  A little humility helps.

Cooperative or Group Learning

Aside from the fact that any teacher worth his/her salt can teach new concepts better and quicker than kids can teach each other, consider the effect on respect for teachers vs catering to peer pressure.  Remember the teachers YOU respected the most were the ones who TAUGHT you something.  Now replace that by kids getting 10 years of group learning by high school, and the respect has diverted away from teachers and toward the peer-group.  Could these spawn gangs?  Do teachers complain, "I don't get no respect?"  Re-examine group learning.

Social Promotions Deceive

When reading programs started to go non-phonetic (circa 70 years ago!) the increase in failures posed a problem.  The system "solved" the problem by promoting children who cannot read, touting the theory that "holding them back would damage their psyches!"  By graduating kids who can't read their diplomas, we condition them that performance does not matter.  By "protecting" them from failure, we have guaranteed it.  When the workplace rejects them, rosy illusions become anger and alienation.

A RECIPE for VIOLENCE

Combine a tad of TV titillation, plus defective communication skills, plus overstimulated feeling centers and under-developed regulatory lobes, plus ignorance, plus arrogance — the illusion of power to choose one's own values, un-fettered by worries of bad or wrong decisions — plus the perception that human life is expendable:  mix them all together with the frustration of drowning in a sea of print while unable to read it, and you have A RECIPE FOR VIOLENCE!

Revisiting the reading problem, high-tech companies complain of difficulty in finding technically-qualified employees.  That is consistent with the findings of the American Institute of Physics in their 1989 report, Who Takes Science? which showed clearly that the students who enroll in physics and chemistry are the good READERS!

The public probably believes that if children spent more time in school they would have less inclination to be violent.  But, in a 1980 PARADE article (copy available), a Florida sheriff blames the schools for most of the violence, and a Department of Justice official notes that incidents of violence go DOWN in the summer — and back up in September!  Also consider that all the shooting sprees have been in schools.  If kids just wanted to kill, they could go to a shopping center or a church!

To round out the perspective, consider also the Department of Justice data showing our prison population is at an all-time high of about 1.7 million inmates — MOSTLY ILLITERATE — and growing slightly faster than 7 percent per year.  At that rate, it will double about every ten years!  In 1995, it was 1 million; so by 2005 we'll have two million, by 2015 four million, etc.  Can we afford to build prisons fast enough to keep up?  Should we?  Is this any way to run a country?  Is this "a kinder, gentler, (smarter?) nation?"

Can we get some caring citizens interested in REAL violence prevention?

Charles M. Richardson, B.S., M.S., P.E.

Charles Richardson has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from WPI and an M.S. in Education from C.W. Post College.  He has also taken several workshops in reading and neuroscience in education.  He is a licensed Professional Engineer in NY and has permanent NY teaching certificates in Elementary, Special-Education, and Secondary Mathematics, Physics, and General Science.  For 15 years, he was owner-director of a private learning center teaching English, mathematics, & reading at all levels, K - adult.  During those years, he tested, prescribed and supervised individualized instruction for over 2700 students.  Mr Richardson has served as an Adjunct Professor of Special Education & Reading at C.W. Post College, given testimony in Congress on educational topics, and served as an expert witness in court and educational hearings.  He has initiated a literacy program for youth on probation in Suffolk County, after finding that virtually all such are either special-ed cases or identified low achievers and exhibit a particular kind of reading disability brought on by whole-word teaching.  He calls his present consulting practice "Educational Engineering."  Previous to going into education work, he had 31 years' experience in radar systems at Raytheon and Unisys (Sperry) Corporation.  Mr Richardson resides in New York state.

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