Violence at school: a symptom of our social malaise

While the shock of the incident at a school in Şanlıurfa, in which many students were injured, had not yet subsided, the graver news from Kahramanmaraş took my memory back years: to the young women's suicides in Batman... In those days too, many common variables such as age, economic situation, family structure and level of education were sought to explain the incidents that followed one after another. The common point I found most noteworthy, however, was something else: each incident was influenced by the one before, and the one before triggered the next.

This phenomenon, which later found its counterpart in the world literature, is known today in social psychology as the "imitation effect" or "contagion effect." Just as the way suicide news is reported can encourage new cases, violence too can enter circulation in the same way. For it is not only disease that is contagious; behavior is contagious too. Goodness is contagious, courtesy is contagious, compassion is contagious... But evil is contagious as well, coarseness is contagious, violence is contagious, and unfortunately the contagiousness of evil is faster than that of goodness. The fact that the highest number of suicides in US history was recorded in the month in which Marilyn Monroe committed suicide has been the most important reference for the sociological findings on this subject.

That is why, frankly, at that time I argued that if we wanted to prevent these suicides, suicide news really should be subjected to censorship. Today too, do we know what kinds of crimes each of the third-page news items triggers, who knows where else? Do we still not see what kind of degeneration is being caused in society by the midday television programs in particular, which present every kind of perverse behavior with an appetite for shocking news, polish it, thrust it into people's eyes and are entertained by it?

Perhaps the incidents in Şanlıurfa and Kahramanmaraş should be read within this framework. These are not just two isolated incidents that took place in two cities; they are striking indicators of what kind of climate we are producing as a society. Precisely at the ages when human beings learn by taking others' behavior as a model, every kind of bad example is coarsely displayed before children's eyes. In traffic, on the street, in the market, in the apartment building, on social media, on television screens... People do not talk to one another, they attack one another. They do not debate, they insult. They do not object, they threaten. And all of this is happening before the children's eyes.

Children learn behavior before, and more than, they learn advice. In the mind of a child who sees anger rather than patience at home, rudeness rather than respect on the street, lynching rather than courtesy on screen, the line between power and violence blurs. Then we are surprised: Where did these children learn this?

Yet the school is, as much as it is the most important institution a society leaves to the future, the most visible mirror of its present state of mind. The violence that emerges in the classroom, in the corridor, in the schoolyard is not merely an individual outburst of anger. It is the expression of a multilayered process extending from the family to the street, from the media to the economy, from politics to the cultural climate.

What is more, our first reflex is to immediately reduce the matter to a security heading. More cameras, stricter searches, harsher disciplinary penalties, a heavier police presence... Of course no student and no teacher should have to study under threat. Security is important. But to approach the problem only along the security axis is to suppress the symptom and ignore the disease. Turning the school into a semi-open prison, coding the student as a potential criminal and building the pedagogical relationship on fear will not produce a solution in the long run. Fear can produce obedience; but it does not produce education. Education produces trust, belonging and meaning.

The data of the last 25 years in the US show that school attacks are no longer exceptional but have become a structural matter. The 145 similar incidents recorded in the 2020-2021 school year are also an indicator of this. Looking at this picture we can find consolation by saying "There are worse than us." But the more important question is this: Is the same virus infecting us too?

Partly yes. Because the crises of the modern world no longer recognize borders. Loneliness, competitive pressure, psychological fragility, the weakening of social bonds and identity tensions have become global. But Turkey also has its own particular problems. The cases in America are mostly explained by ease of access to weapons, severe individual isolation and psychiatric problems. In our case, what comes to the fore is more the legitimization of everyday violence, a lack of anger control, communication disorders within the family, economic pressures, the weakness of guidance systems and the unlimited influence of digital culture.

The point that truly sounds the alarm is that our education system is increasingly turning into a machine that produces only academic performance. We teach children to solve tests but we do not teach anger management. We measure mathematics success but we do not measure empathy skills. We follow exam results but we often do not notice the student's state of mind. Yet it is not only grade averages but a society's capacity to live together that determines its future. I try to follow the measures that Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin, who I believe is sufficiently aware of this problem, has been trying to take recently. He is doing very good things. He is subject to a paradigm that takes into account that education does not consist merely of raising exam machines, that children carry a spirit and a personality. But we also watch with astonishment how every step he takes is being made into a racket by precisely the bigoted minds that brought us to this point. He must of course not back away from his determination in this matter.

On the family front too there is a similar rupture. While the traditional family is dissolving, a healthy modern parenting culture has not been put in its place. One of the most noteworthy changes in recent years is the loss of balance in child discipline. On one side there are families who mistake pressure for discipline; on the other, those who mistake setting limits for lack of love. Those who excuse every behavior of the child, who brush off his bullying by saying "he's just a kid"... Yet the child needs both love and limits. When the balance between compassion and authority is disturbed, either fragility or aggression grows.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? First of all, school violence should be treated not as a law-and-order file but as a social matter. Strong psychological counseling and guidance mechanisms should be established in every school. The teacher's authority in the classroom should first be re-established, recognized and strengthened not through fear but through respectability and the capacity for relationship. Parenting support should be given to families. The effect of the digital world on children should be taken seriously; social media, content oversight and digital literacy should now be seen as subjects that can no longer be postponed. The digital law on the agenda in this direction should be developed and passed without bowing to the racket of the opposition.

But before all this we need a more fundamental confrontation. For the matter is not only to fix the children. The violence we see in children is, most of the time, a miniaturized reflection of the adult world. Neglect at home, coarseness on the street, aggression on screen and soullessness in education finally confront us in the classroom.

The anger rising in school corridors today heralds tomorrow's society. If we want to save the children, we must first fix ourselves.