Debate on violence after Erfurt

Teachers Must be Allowed to Educate Again

Violence in the media should no longer be tolerated

by Dr. Annemarie Buchholz, Dr. Eva-Maria Föllmer, Dr. Eliane Gautschi, Georg Koch, Maria Koch, Karl Müller

After Erfurt people have shown great concern over the state of today’s youth. Justifiably so. Many parents are worried and have begun to observe their children more closely: What games are they playing on the computer, what kind of videos are they watching? According to a study by Werner Glogauer on students between the ages of 10 and 16 years old, more than two-thirds have come into contact with rated or confiscated computer and video games. Parents are rightly worried about the impact these media have on their sons and daughters, or are concerned about making mistakes that may have tragic consequences for their children. Erfurt has greatly upset young people, too, and has led to intense discussion of the issues involved. The question asked here is whether society’s institutions, most importantly schools, are fulfilling their responsibility to support parents in their task to educate their children. Today, children and youths are confronted by an increasingly problematic environment, one that is heavily influenced by drugs, nihilism, violence and perversion, to name just a few. Many parents feel they have been left alone in this situation.

Most fathers and mothers endeavor to bring up their children to become happy, mature personalities, capable of coping with life and mastering their lives as adults, whether it be in marriage, as parents, in their chosen employment or as members of society. No one can claim that they will manage to do so entirely trouble-free, without complications or set-backs.

Mistakes in upbringing not the cause of violent outbursts

It is true that difficulties exist, for instance due to marriage conflicts, divorce, or when one parent must bring up the children alone. In most cases, though, parents spare no effort and act responsibly. Many single parents make efforts to enable the children to grow up well.

Many single mothers, for instance, worry about the lack of a male role model for their sons. A single mother is relieved when a male teacher looks after her son and supports her in her task of parenting. In addition, single mothers and fathers often face a much harder challenge and are therefore particularly dependent upon public education institutions shouldering their part of the responsibility of education.

Families have always been challenged by difficulties, and today those challenges are no greater than they were in the past. On the contrary, many parents have become more conscious of their importance for their children. There have always been youths whose feelings for some reason or other have been hurt or who were in conflict with their parents, school or friends. Mistakes in parenting have always been made; divorces and broken families have always existed. However, there have never been such excesses of violence like those in Littleton, Bad Reichenhall and most recently Erfurt, which are just the tip of the iceberg.

Definite correlation between media consumption and violence

What, then, causes such excessive violence? What is so different today that children and youths are responding to difficulties in life with such horrific crimes? One thing is clear: in every one of these cases it was confirmed that the perpetrators had all played violent computer games, watched violent videos, and listened to music glorifying violence.

A plethora of scientific research has shown for decades that there a definite correlation exists between media consumption and aggressive behavior(1). The claim often made that there is no consensus among researchers on this issue is ‘a myth’ according to L. Rowell Huesman, a professor of Psychology and Communication Studies and former president of the International Society for Research on Aggression, in a U.S. Senate hearing in May of this year(2). Professor Dave Grossman, ex-officer and former military psychologist at Westpoint has also demonstrated that violent images on TV desensitize, brutalize and condition children in the same way as military training programs which teach soldiers to overcome their natural inhibition to kill. During the Second World War, according to a study cited by Grossman undertaken by an Army Brigadier General, ‘only 15-20% of the riflemen could bring themselves to fire at an exposed enemy soldier.’(3) As a consequence, American military psychologists developed methods of conditioning, desensitization and role-playing that would reduce soldiers’ inhibition to kill. ‘Those who train soldiers—young people—to kill know that the key lies in simulation. We have to teach our young people to kill through simulators, similar to flight simulators that teach pilots to fly. And now we come to the violent video games that are made available to children. Many of these video games are nothing other than killing simulators.’(4) Grossman concludes that our children are being subjected to the same mechanisms that condition soldiers to kill. The difference is that these mechanisms have a far more devastating impact on children because they have not fully developed physically, mentally and emotionally. Children and youths adapt their behavior according to role models, even the kind provided by computer games and films. They like to identify themselves with those who win and are successful. The tragedy is that the media is providing children with violent role models. Years ago, Albert Bandura examined the issue of ‘learning from role models’ and found out, for instance, that children mimic violent scenes. Yet adults can be very effective in reducing the influence that violent role models have by being very firm in their rejection of violence.

Professor Werner Glogauer, media researcher at the University of Augsburg, reported on the ‘Mortal Combat Study’ published in America in 1999. According to this study, brutal video games lead to aggressive behavior and produce feelings of enmity. Because there is strong competition in the market for computer and video games, the games have become even more violent . At the computer, the players’ continuously repeated actions are accompanied by negative emotions such as annoyance, anger, hate and revenge, and these are expressed in aggressive language.(5)

Media violence harmful to all children

Such phenomena come as no surprise when one realizes what happens to children or adolescents that are exposed to such influences every single day. Such a child gradually withdraws from the people around it, into an inner world, where it becomes virtually incapable of responding to parents, brothers and sisters, and significant others. Media consumption has the effect that a child increasing­ly lacks mental and emotional sustenance. It is possible to say that the child enters a form of ‘solitary confinement’ in front of the computer screen. Violent fantasies, fears, depressions, a dreadful feeling of inner isolation and even autistic behavior patterns are the results.

By repeated exposure to excessive violence adolescents’ feelings for others are destroyed, they become insensitive, their emotional lives brutalized, they become accustomed to perverted and sadistic feelings. Many children and adolescents train themselves to endure increasingly brutal scenes to make themselves less sensitive and vulnerable in order to win their colleagues’ admiration. They are progressively unable to perceive anything positive in other people. They start seeing enemies everywhere and behave accordingly: They always feel attacked and often react with aggressive fighting behavior that is completely inappropriate to the occasion.(6)

Even children who would not normally resort to aggressiveness adopt aggressive behavior from role models observed in the media. Obviously you do not need to be emotionally disturbed or hyper-aggressive yourself to adopt aggressive devices one has observed. Gentle children learn as much from aggressive models as aggressive children.(7) Adolescents who have withdrawn into a fantasy world often memorize the behavior that they have trained while playing computer and video games; they try out these situations in their minds before one day finally putting them into practice. This finding was made by Werner Glogauer after questioning adolescents on trial for murder. The trained aggressiveness is not necessarily directly evident in the person’s behavior. However, in certain situations the media consumer will employ this trained aggressiveness. Aggressive behavior is always preceded by aggressive notions that are rooted in aggressive patterns of thought. Such aggressive patterns of thought result from exposure to media violence.(8)

Parents in despair

No mother and no father would wish such a thing upon their child. Many parents have, for instance, bought their child a computer because they have been made to believe that it will improve their children’s learning. The media industries have shamelessly exploited this desire of such parents with the result that many children’s rooms look like pigsties: no space for an exercise book, or books, or handicraft work. The computer, computer games, related posters and plastic junk litter the place. Parents, and all families are exposed to the same influences, feel powerless and helpless. There is no island where you could safeguard your children from all this. And in this situation families receive only little help.

Normally, families would contact the school, as it is, and always has been the school’s job to educate the child outside the family, a task which is also explicitly laid down in the constitutions of the German Lands and also follows from article 1, paragraph 1 of the German constitution.

Educational task withdrawn from schools

It is a fact that parents today more and more rarely find help from schools. This is no accident. Although most teachers take up the profession in the desire to devote themselves to children and to help them, schools have found themselves increasingly denied the task of educating children in recent years. During training and at in-service training courses the idea is conveyed to teachers that they are not allowed to be role models or educate. Instead they should merely play the role of an animator, moderator or assistant. This has meant depriving teachers of their natural impulse to effectively try to help a child or educate it at all.

Until a short while ago ideologically based school reforms stipulated an anti-authoritarian, laissez-faire type of education. Now, from another side, there is a harsh demand for efficiency which means educational aims are oriented solely on the needs of a globalized economy. The result is that a young person in his entirety as a human being, as a social being, as an individual personality with all the aspects of human existence becomes irrelevant. Teachers, on the other hand, are pressured by the demand that they should squeeze supreme performances out of an elite of pupils without, however, being allowed to educate them in every respect as a person. In addition, they are supposed to achieve these goals in a situation in which the education of young people has been considerably aggravated by various rigorous economy measures: huge classes, in which even the most difficult children no longer receive extra help with special programmes and counselling by school psychologists. Further, there has been an acute lack of constructive leisure activities for young people for years, the effect of which has been to virtually drive them into subculture.

When one looks close enough one notices that young people are alarmingly uniform in their typical American-way-of-life attitudes displayed in their clothing, their paraphernalia, their music. This sameness even extends to the well-trained, dull, poker-faced expressions on their baby-doll faces. Under these circumstances it becomes virtually impossible for teachers to encourage students in an individual and holistic manner. The pressure on teachers comes from various places and in addition they face abuse from the general public, above all from politicians. Thus, it is hardly surprising that students nowadays have little respect and low regard for their teachers. For years teachers have had to swallow their students’ impertinent behavior without being allowed to really do anything much about it. Now they are even being threatened. Since the Erfurt incident many teachers now feel afraid of standing in front of their classes. School councilors daily hear of new incidents involving students, for instance, with bad test results uttering the threat: ‘You still dare to give students poor marks after what happened in Erfurt?’

In addition, teachers in their training courses are deterred from developing empathy and concern for their students. Instead, in self-discovery exercises, they are encouraged to busy themselves with their own feelings and pushed to solely concentrate on their own supposed self-realization. This makes it impossible for them to find real fulfillment in their work. If the teacher is unable to devote himself to his students, or help them in their whole personality, he will no longer find reward in his work. The constantly mentioned burn-out syndrome will then really become a reality.

The result of all this is that teachers then just do their job, concentrate on getting through the material prescribed in the curriculum. They lack proper motivation and just work to rule. When a student ‘causes problems’ they resort to taking ‘measures’ such as sending them home for several lessons, reducing their timetable until they are finally expelled from school. Such students are left to their own devices, and the problem is left to the parents to solve. If they seek advice from the school, many teachers are hardly capable of genuine dialogue. They are reduced to enumerating the student’s misdemeanors and expect the parents to get their children to function again. When in doubt the narcotic drug Ritalin is recommended (cf. Zeit-Fragen Nr. 17, April 22). In fact it is increasingly so that such children are left with little alternative because otherwise they are faced with the threat of being expelled from school. Teachers no longer learn how to help children overcome their difficulties and are thus also incapable of counseling parents. But if the adults are no longer able to help the children with their problems, any contact with them will be lost and this can set a dangerous process in motion.

Taking education as a mission seriously again

We must not abandon our youth to the media’s devastating influence. We can and must do something to stop it. All societal institutions must shoulder their responsibility to support the family in carrying out its demanding task of upbringing. Schools have the foremost duty and have excellent opportunities to do so. It is their responsibility and humane duty.

Instead of burdening teachers with increasingly bigger classes, instead of cutting down funding for special classes, counseling and other remedial measures, it is high time that schools took their educational mission seriously again. Teachers have to be trained appropriately and their profession must meet with the appreciation in society that their very demanding task deserves. The aims and means of school-work—teaching and educating—should once again be guided by a personalist concept of man and by insights and research findings from pedagogical practice and developmental psychology. This means that teachers once again must learn to see each of their pupils not only in the light of their intellectual achievements, the problems they cause or whether they function well or not. Teachers must also learn to see each of their pupils as social beings with their whole personality and individuality; they must learn to understand their students’ behavior as the expression of how each of them feels at school, in their families and among their peers.

Teachers must also learn to find answers that are in tune with the needs of each pupil’s personality and with the kind of problems he or she is having in life—and this must be done in dialogue with the pupil as well as with his or her parents. In the case, for example, of a youth who regularly consumes media with violent content, it is not of great help to simply forbid him to do so. A youth can no longer be treated as a child and such a measure may make such a person oppositional and even more difficult to reach. The youth must to be won over to genuinely reject this kind of degrading media content, to be able to make a conscious decision against it. Anything else is not of lasting value.

A genuine, responsive dialogue with our youth

In each individual case the question arises as to the way in which a young person can be reached, on an intellectual as well as emotional level, so that the person feels truly meant, emotionally moved, able to form trust and open up. These are the conditions under which a genuine dialogue can develop, where a young person becomes receptive to new ideas and capable of deciding in favor of a constructive positive path in life. It is a question of how a young person acquires the inner strength to resist what the media offers and build up an inner defense. This is an issue for teachers and parents alike.

Parents across the country are concerned and have begun to observe their children more closely, trying to give them firmer guidance. Children are aware that their parents are worried and perhaps criticize them more. It is of course right to give children guidance, and to correct them when they go astray. However, it is also necessary that we adults have the strength of conviction that the adolescent will gladly choose a positive path; and it is important not to forget to affirm, strengthen and promote a young person’s strong and constructive sides. If we fail to do so our efforts may well have the opposite effect and the adolescent goes into opposition, turns his back on his educators and in his inner isolation possibly turn more vehemently towards the destructive world of media violence. A young person must at all times feel that the adult, whether parent or teacher, wishes him well, does not break off the relationship. He must realize that his father, mother or teacher is concerned for him, for his well-being.

Indispensable common values

Families and schools urgently necessitate support for their efforts in the form of a societal consensus to ban violence in all its forms. Parents play an exceptionally important role in the preservation of democracy and any family policy of the future needs to recognize this fact and lend mothers and fathers the support they require. There must be a move to accord education in the family and at school its proper value again, to consider it as a fulfilling and wonderful task.

We need a value consensus that is actively and fully supported by all institutions and forces in society. If a teacher addresses a student on account of something destructive or beneath human dignity in connection with his language, manner, behavior or clothing, he must be sure of the support of his colleagues and superiors, politicians and society in general. Today, teachers reprimand pupils in secret—if at all—in order not to be accused of restricting them or interfering with their freedom.

Parents must be sure that the school will support them in bringing up their child to be a socially competent, upright and caring individual, with the courage of his convictions. They must be aware that when faced with difficulties in learning, what their child needs is encouragement and guidance to solve his problems peaceably. It should no longer be the case that a young person can simply cut himself off emotionally for days, weeks, months, even years, and that no adult has any real access to him, no real contact to him, does not know what is troubling him or how things stand.

Ultimately, expelling a problematic child from school is no solution unless some sort of prospect is given him at the same time. Nothing is resolved by the expulsion alone. On the contrary. After suffering such a defeat a young person may put up with two or three more failures: a botched apprenticeship, or a failed love. Each new failure may lead to his losing all hope—and then eventually he may put his years of computer training into action. At worst he might conclude: ‘If I go down, at least I won’t go down alone, I’ll take that person, and that one, and that one with me!’

We have no other alternative but to pick up the threads to our youths again. We have to set values, and a genuine, responsive dialogue with them must take place. We must not abandon them to their subculture. We must win them over to thinking about how a more humane world can be brought about. We must succeed in educating them to become responsible, active and pro-social human beings. All of us must agree on basic humane values so that a foundation can be established on which they can support themselves.

What we need is an open dialogue between all of us as equal partners. We must not leave the debate and the decisions up to our political and media ‘representatives’. It must not be allowed to happen again that so much public debate is heard but nothing comes of it except declarations of intent.

1 cf. Schulte-Holtey, Kathrin. ‘Wie Gewalt in den Medien von unseren Kindern Besitz ergreift’, in: Zeit-Fragen, No. 19, May 5, 2002

2 Huesman, L. Rowell. Testimony before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding ‘Marketing Violence to Children’, May 4, 1999.

3 Grossman, Dave. Testimony before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding ‘Marketing Violence to Children.’, May 4, 1999

4 Grossman, Dave. Interview with Welt am Sonntag, May 5, 2002. (translation by CC)

5 Glogauer, Werner. ‘Gewalt in den Medien macht Kinder und Jugendliche zu Tätern.’ In Zeit-Fragen No. 19, May 6, 2002

6 cf. Lefkowitz, M./Eron, L.D./Walder, L.O./Huesman, L.R. Growing up to be violent. A Longitudinal Study of the Development of Aggression. New York/Frankfurt/M. 1977, p. 113

7 Bandura, Albert. Aggression—eine sozial-lerntheoretische Analyse. Stuttgart 1979, S. 296

8 Kleiter, E.F. Film und Aggression—Aggressions­psychologie. Weinheim 1997, S. 111