SCHOOL VIOLENCE AND THE LIMITS OF LEARNING

The particular violence directed against gay teens in our schools raises the question as to the nature, prevalence and consequences of other forms of violence in shool culture. Teasing, harrassment and death threats map the range of violence that gay teens face in our school systems. Other forms of violence may well be similar to, yet also vary from, these all too familar hostilities. It is important to draw attention to these other forms and manifestations given that it's likely that such behavior has a deeper and more wide-ranging effect upon the experience of learning in the schools.
This is certainly not to say that the more overt and specific violence directed especially at gay teens does not have a deep and wide-ranging effect upon the teens immediately targeted. Obviously it does. The point is that any form of violence in a learning community will suppress the freedom of expression and inquiry that is a necessary condition of learning for all students.
In the case of Michael Mangus, the gay teen attending the North Tonawanda High School in North Tonawanda, N.Y., violence took the form of harrassment regarding his manner of dress and his mannerisms of personal self-expression. It also took the heinous form of overt threats to his life. Over a period of two years, such violence against Michael took a toll far beyond the fact of having to withdraw from school in order to feel safe. Non-attendance clearly affected his opportunity to learn. However even when in attendance, what is so blantantly overlooked is the toll taken by suppression of any subsequent attempts to express himself in the learning process once his very being is subjected to vilification and excommunication. If a student knows that his very self is deemed unacceptable how willing can he possibly be to enter into the vulnerable space of inquiry, doubt and dependency in order to seek knowledge and experience? Surely he would not be very willing to risk providing more opportunity for bullies to further snipe at his manner of being. Additionally however, when the bully, that is, the abrasive, aggessive and belligerent student, is given carte blanch to vent his anger, how many other students may hold back being fully self-expressed as individuals in fear that some distinguishing characteristics of their own person will draw fire and create suspicion that there may be something a little too "different" about them also. Moreover the violence that can prevent even information-gathering must surely put a strangle hold on the possbilities of inspiration, curiosity and interactive inquiry regarding feelings, values and issues of culture and society. Additionally is it not inevitable that exploration of real issues in terms of the experiences of the individuals whose lives embody those issues will inevitably be ruled out of bounds?
In my own teaching of philosophy at the college level, I have often wondered about the source and genesis of the reticence and self-censorship of innumerable students most of which have just completed high school. The fear, self-doubt, inhibition, lack of apparent curiosity, excuses for lack of participation, and rationalization of passivity, may all well be the sypmptoms of a variegated history of shool violence. It is the potential for such violence that has taught them that it is not safe nor even right to explore and inquire beyond the boundaries of conformity wherein noone is offended, made to feel uncomfortable, provocatively challenged or confronted.
Those who are blinded to the constant threat of violence and threatening, prejudicial attitudes may even think that, on the whole, the occurrence of considerable learning as it does occur by the "normal" within the usual "normal" bounds, is a domain that is free of violence. It may be thought that such a domain testifies to the "good job" our schools are doing. However I would like to suggest that such normal, standardized, conflict-free zones have themselves achieved their apparent placidity and eduational effectivity through not unrelated forms of violence. Intimidation need not only do its work through physical threat and social intimidation, it may also occur in the the censorship of questions that may even intimate an experience or discussion that offends the comfort zones of the status quo of conditioned compliance. The provocative question or expression that discloses our discomfort regarding a new realm of possible freedom points to the unfreedom upon which much of contemporary education is based.
We might ask ourselves what hidden authority structures and mechanisms of social control are being condoned by exonerating the bully from guilt or punishment? What fears and insecurities, doubts and dilemmas are being suppressed by student identification with cliques, gangs or other one-sided, one-dimensional identities? Isn't the school a play-ground of experimentation as opposed to a training ground for intellectual and social retreat and resignation? When the school cannot retain or revive the curiosity of the innocent child, then it becomes the apologist for the interests of a community that thrives on the repression and marginalization of those not benefiting from the present ethos and ethic of our so very troubled, divided yet homogenized society. We are in a particularly stifling sort of cultural cul de sac when conformity appears as belonging, herd behavior substitutes for individual identity and not-being-condemned serves as the measure of being on the approved path of productive purposefulness and creative self-fulfillment.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE HALLS OF LEARNING

The case of Michael Mangus, the gay North Tonawanda, N.Y. high school student whose life was threatened at school, is both alarming and edifying. It is an alarm sounded many times in America. Like any alarm, however, which is neither acknowledged nor acted upon, one simply no longer hears it. But why is it we don’t hear this alarm which might awaken us to an awareness that the first condition of learning is being blatantly violated in the very institution charged with protecting it? What is that condition? It is freedom from violence, intimidation and threat. And why do we not hear it? Could it be that such freedom is infinitely more terrifying than the manifold of quotidian terrors that now shackle and shadow our freedom? Possibly all this is not the least surprising if we consider the bigger picture of the normalization of violence in many forms in our daily life. A society numbed and indifferent to societal self-abuse could hardly be alarmed let alone edified by the tribulations of one teenager suffering the supposedly “normal” stress of teenage culture. If another ‘alarm’ didn’t just go off in your head when you heard the word ‘normal’, that is also not surprising. Why? Because American culture, if we can call it a culture, is capable of normalizing anything no matter how deleterious to health and well-being: e.g., death by drunk drivers, guns, drugs, obesity, suicide, reckless medical care, irrational wars, rape, hate-crimes, gangs, child neglect, etc. etc. etc. Yet rather than proposing and acting upon constructive solutions given all these symptoms of decadence and real deviance, all too many of us choose rather to blame the victim or scapegoat the innocent and vulnerable. Compared to the lethality of ordinary everyday existence, the “deviation” of Michael Magnus from the predominant social norms, should have been seen as a slight ripple on the waters of the ocean during a typhoon. But it wasn’t. Instead his expressiveness and apparent “difference” unleashed hatred and threat. Possibly more heinous than this were the denial and inaction on the part of a school which implicitly condoned such harassment. But what is it that is so threatening about someone like Michael, a young gay teen stumbling and struggling to create and express the secrets of his own being? Could it not be that Michael reminds us of a softer and gentler side that contrasts so starkly with the horror of the violence to which we have grown accustomed if not addicted. Could it not be that Michael’s very way of being might remind us of our own possibilities for sensitivity, idiosyncrasy, compassion and self-expression which we might actually have to begin to “feel” in ways that can be more threatening for some of us than even death itself. Some people, if not most, would probably rather die than feel compassion for and try to understand those who differ significantly from ourselves. We might have to become something new and better. Seemingly the homosexual “coming out” in America has so provoked the fanatical wing of the Christian community that it has conveniently forgotten Jesus’ fundamental imperative of “judging not lest you yourself be judged.” Obviously, like the church on Meadow Drive in North Tonawanda, N.Y. that recently displayed mean-spirited, anti-gay signage, it denies the very gospel of love for which Jesus died. Instead it finds it more righteous to moralistically hate and condemn “the least of them.” It is such ineluctable hypocrisy that led the great German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, to say that surely “God is dead.” That is, God is surely dead in the lives and hearts of those who in blind self-righteousness fail to practice the most obvious requests that Jesus made. Although the institutions of education are not required to fulfill upon Christian values, it would seem however that the schools should at least meet the minimum requirement of learning. But they do not. Whereas the public institution of the school is created to guarantee inclusion and satisfy designated needs of the people, too many have degenerated into mechanisms of exclusion, censorship and conformism. They suffer not only from “dumbing down” but also from moral and human “numbing down.” The schools and its professionals should be nurturing “identification upward” toward transformative knowledge, higher modes of existence and nobler values. But it seems they “normally” function to feed the mind- and soul-numbing status quo of adaptation and mere survival. The school is a place for imagination and inspiration not inquisition and intimidation. To tolerate such abuse as Michael suffered, and to fail to address its conditions and causes especially in the school curriculum itself, is to fail as an educational institution. It is not merely a matter of stopping toxic behavior but of promoting optimal conditions of openness, inquiry, new experience and relentless questioning and grade-appropriate life-related research. It is the task of the school to translate adolescent aggression and “attitude” into analysis and creativity. The schools should lead the community and not succumb to the lowest common denominator of its fears and fallacies. It was my great privilege to have known Michael Mangus as a child. He was a sweet, gentle, creative child with a vibrant sparkle and spontaneity. That energy is still there. Yet it would be one more American tragedy to see a reactive, insensitive school and indifferent community allow such vibrant energy to be bullied into survival paranoia and a life reduced to apology for an existence as God-given as yours or mine. Michael’s struggle is the greatest of learning opportunities for the school, the church and the community. Or it can be another round of selfish circling of the wagons for the sake of self-justification, defensiveness and a return to the safety of “normality.” This struggle can be a time for shining a new and brighter light on our humanness or a return to the dark insidiousness of smug, self-righteous complacency. Let’s not once again let fear win and fail Michael Mangus a second time.