Big desires, small capacities

Od schools a lot is expected today. At the same time, it needs to raise empathic young people, to produce "democratic citizens", to adapt to the development needs of everyone of a child, preserving standards in the regular curriculum, to reduce violence in classrooms, but also on the Internet.

But the more tasks that are set before the school, the weaker it performs each of those tasks individually. Because the increase in expectations is almost never accompanied by an adequate increase in human resources, but only by new administrative rituals, an increase in the number of regulations, specialized teams, various meetings and trainings. The result is a drop in morale among employees (teachers but also employees in the pedagogical-psychological service), who have less and less time to do their basic work, for which they were educated and for which they chose their vocation.

School psychologists are expected to carefully monitor each individual student in order to prevent a new "Ribnikar". But even if it were possible, psychologists don't spend enough time with students to make that kind of observation. School psychologists often cover the work tasks of other professions in the school - pedagogues, special education teachers and social workers, so the results of the Ministry of Education's research conducted by a team of researchers from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade are not surprising. The results say that school psychologists spend on average only 26 percent of their time working with students. While that alone is the biggest item, the rest of the work they perform - cooperation with teachers, department heads and the director, planning and organization of educational work, monitoring and evaluating the school, preparing for work and maintaining work documentation, etc. – it takes them much more time. Psychologists are obliged to attend meetings of a large number of teams, write a huge number of plans and reports for each of them, participate in the development of individual basic plans for students who need special support.

The results of the recently published research of the Institute of Social Sciences (coordinator Željka Buturović, team members Suzana Ignjatović, Bojan Todosijević and Nena Vasojević) confirm the acuteness of this problem from the perspective of teachers.

When we asked the teachers in our sample what changes in the system they consider important, in addition to the increase in salaries (84 percent support this change and it is extremely important to them), the reduction of administrative duties of teachers (82 percent) and greater autonomy of teachers in teaching and educational work (80 percent) were singled out as the most important. In addition, teachers want changes in educational measures and teacher safety: 70 percent think that the teacher should be allowed to remove from the class a student who disrupts the lesson, 65 percent think that violent students should be transferred to institutions for youth with behavioral problems, and more than half think that teachers should be given the status of an official person. 53 percent of teachers support and consider the change of the curriculum in terms of reducing the workload of students as extremely important, and the same number of them believe that optional optional subjects and activities should be abolished.

We offered teachers a range of views on schooling and education and asked them to express their degree of agreement. The positions in which there is the greatest consensus among teachers are: that people who have never held a single class interfere too much in education (93 percent fully or partially agree with this position), that the way in which inclusion is implemented is such that it is better not to include it (83 percent), that working with students fills them with satisfaction (82 percent), that most parents do not have a realistic picture of their children's behavior at school (81 percent) and that the vast majority of problems they encounter during classes are the result of behavior a very small number of students (75 percent). More than 70 percent of teachers do not agree with the view that the Ministry's guidelines help them in their teaching work. The consensus of teachers that the lack of resources for inclusion is so drastic that it is better to have no inclusion, painfully underlines the fact that an educational policy that does not take into account the reality on the ground creates more harm than good.

EVERYTHING IS VIOLENCE

Simultaneously with the increase in the number of tasks that we set before the school, the moral vocabulary that we use to describe phenomena at school has become very impoverished. This is best seen in the concept of violence, which has been spreading rapidly in recent years. We call an increasing number of phenomena violence because it seems to us that this way we will solve the problem more easily. Therefore, the notion of violence becomes like what Tocqueville described as abstractions that look like a box with a double bottom: you can put in and take out whatever ideas you want without anyone noticing.

Education regulations are increasingly linking violence in schools to other problems, especially safety. "Regulations on the Protocol of actions in the institution in response to violence, abuse and neglect" (2024) regulates the school's reaction to phenomena such as: violent extremism, human trafficking, exploitation.

The changes in the rule book in the wake of the moral panic that occurred after the mass murder in "Ribnikar" put "safety" in the foreground, so the more benign forms of violence in the school framework are viewed through the enlarged lens. In the Rulebook, the types of violence overlap or are vaguely defined. Although four types of violence are listed: physical, psychological (emotional), social and digital violence, then sexual violence is ranked by levels, including "seduction of students by an employee", even incest, while child pornography is listed as a form of digital violence. The question arises whether so much attention should be paid to digital violence, which is just a way of carrying out other types of violence (psychological, social). Bearing in mind that many schools prohibit the use of mobile phones, that a large part of these phenomena in a digital format take place outside of school time and space, the question arises whether digital violence is really a true example of school violence. Even if social interactions from school are inevitably mirrored in the digital world, solving these problems exceeds the capacities of the school. It is not appropriate to put digital violence in focus when considering "violence in schools". The burden should be shifted to parents, centers for social work and institutions dealing with mental health.

According to the Rulebook, the Team for protection against discrimination, violence, abuse and neglect, which is formed in the school, has a key role. However, formal participation has its limitations in solving the problem of violence. Research by the Ministry of Education shows that most parents do not know that the Team for protection against discrimination, violence, abuse and neglect at school exists or what it is for. Our respondents also show little confidence in the effectiveness of this body. Parents whose children were victims of violence say that problems are best solved on the front line, i.e. when the class teacher has the authority and capacity to resolve the situation, independently or collaborating with other professionals if necessary. After all, the highest percentage of violence among students occurs in the school department, so it is natural that this should be the place where the problem is solved.

The Rulebook provides a "litigation" determination of the intensity of peer violence, distinguishing three levels, in order to standardize the procedure and sanctions. It is clear that the rulebook must have a certain level of precision for sanctioning violations, but is it necessary to use the rulebook to solve cursing, throwing and similar phenomena that fall under the "first level of violence"? It is not enough to formally mark the form of behavior, but its meaning should be understood. Especially for peer violence, we need to overcome the apparent level that the regulatory framework gives us, because not only the form and intensity, but also the genesis of the violence are important. In cases of violence against high-achieving students, scheming, spreading lies, and gossiping have a different function than when they are directed at someone lower in the microsocial hierarchy of a department (the most common case), class, or school. For example, in our research it was shown that there is an increase in peer violence against "nerds". How to explain it? The former meritocratic model of socialism has been replaced by a model in which everyone rushes to compete for their child to be the "best". In that race, pressures and even naked violence against teachers to improve their grades are increasing (as evidenced by the marked inflation of good grades), but also the behavior of students who do not shy away from peer violence against good students in order to position themselves better is changing.

photo: siniša kopunović / tanjug

It is equally important that concern about violence in schools does not become another reason for raising moral panic, because this almost always results in an increase in the administrative burden of employees, which, as we have seen, is a leading problem in our education system. Our and other research data show that those who are closer to the situation on the ground (teachers) often see the situation as less alarming and more realistic than the general public. Thus, the mentioned research of the Ministry of Education revealed that "almost half of the employees believe that the problem of violence today is the same (29 percent) and less (16 percent) than in the past few years, while a quarter (26 percent) think that the situation has worsened." On the other hand, more than half of parents (57 percent) think that violence is a bigger problem today than a few years ago.

The excessive expansion of the concept of violence creates a paradox: the wider the definition, the smaller the school's real capacity to act. The school is treated as a mental health center, a security service and a social institution at once, even though it has neither the people nor the resources to do so. In doing so, an entire segment of behavior that the school can respond to is being ignored, which is related to decency and discipline. Our research shows the consensus of parents, teachers and the public about norms of behavior that do not represent violence, and are important for the functioning of the school.

NEW MORAL CONSENSUUS

In schools, almost all actors participate in morally problematic behavior, i.e. there is a considerable amount of dishonesty and "shortcuts". This applies to the administration (43 percent of teachers agree that "at their school, teachers are mostly hired through relationships"), students (38 percent of 5-8 grade teachers believe that the use of illegal means, such as copying, bugs, and guns, is at least somewhat widespread among their students), teachers (35 percent of teachers say that at the teacher's council in almost every class, some concluded grade is corrected for a student who did not deserve it with his results). Our data show that the public (even slightly more than the teachers themselves) think that "many parents put pressure on teachers to give their children grades" and that students do not respect teachers enough.

On the other hand, indiscipline in classes is also a problem - only 43 percent of secondary school teachers conduct classes smoothly. There is an incredible consensus among the public about the norms of student behavior at school. So, for example, 87 percent of respondents believe that "it is important for children to persevere with adults", 71 percent believe that "when a teacher or another adult enters the classroom, students should stand up as a sign of respect", and even 85 percent believe that it is wrong for "primary school students to come to class wearing make-up". Although students have long stopped standing up to teachers at the beginning of class, while make-up in class is not a rare phenomenon in schools, these findings give us some kind of guide to the rules of behavior that could change the climate in schools.