At the roots of violence” “

They broke his arm and then photographed him. It happened in Great Britain, at the Wetherby High School in West Yorkshire, where a group of ten or so fifteen-year-olds surrounded and attacked an eleven-year-old boy and, after breaking his arm, photographed the scene with a mobile phone and then emailed the image to their friends. News of this sickening incident has been carried on the front pages of the British press in recent days. It was one more episode of the bullying that is a real scourge among youngsters in Britain today. For a comment on the phenomenon we asked Jim Richards director of the Catholic Children’s Society, a Catholic association dedicated to the problems of childhood. “There exists far more bullying in schools than in the past, and the problem is becoming ever more serious every day”, explains Richards, “Many young people today drive at excessive speed; there’s a high rate of girl mothers; and a new problem is the self-mutilation of the very young. They are different situations, but closely linked with the problem of bullying, which is more serious in the UK and in the USA than in the rest of the world”. What in your view are the causes of this phenomenon? “The UK has the highest divorce rate in Europe and the highest number of single parents who bring up a family alone. It also has one of the heaviest working weeks in Europe. If we link all these factors, we cannot help asking ourselves how much contact there really is between parents and children and how much chance the latter have of being really loved. Here in Britain children often watch television alone. And on the small screen there is a very high rate of violence that according to the experts may be directly linked to the violence committed by the young themselves. Schools too have changed. Today greater importance is attached to exams; there’s a strong pressure on teachers to improve standards in schools. The young, deprived of love in their family, subjected to continual stress at school, and conditioned by violence on television, react by not going to school, by withdrawing into themselves or by beating up their classmates”. Are there any solutions to this problem? “There is no simple way out. It’s important, for example, that the government should stop publishing “league tables” of schools, in which pupils are awarded points based on various parameters; that the number of classroom tests and exams be reduced; and that the working hours of parents also be reduced so that they have more time to spend with their children. It’s also important that pressure be put on television and on the producers of videogames to prevent children being exposed to excessive levels of violence. The Catholic Children’s Society, which I head, has worked a lot with children in schools, also by providing psychological support to the victims of bullying. We also work with couples that have divorced and have children”. And do you obtain positive results? “If there aren’t radical changes in the government’s policies and in society’s way of treating children, the efforts of associations like mine will be in vain. I am rather pessimistic about this; I see no sign of the necessary changes being made. I have to say, though, that the situation is not so tragic in Catholic schools, which work by a different logic than state schools: they place pupils at the centre, and consider them as persons and not just as exam fodder”. Bullying in Great Britain: some data The picture painted by Jim Richards is reflected in the latest statistics published by the Department for Education and Skills on bullying at schools. They furnish figures that are a cause for serious concern. In the summer of 2003 approximately ten pupils per day in the UK were expelled for having assaulted an adult or another pupil. Altogether 288 pupils were expelled for having committed violence against an adult, 336 for having attacked a classmate; 4000 children, for the most part teenagers, were sent home for having assaulted an adult, and 12,800 for committing violence against other pupils. During the summer of 2003 alone there were 2400 permanent expulsions from schools and 800 short-term expulsions.