On Creating a Climate of Classroom Civility

Abstract

Mr. Kauffman and Mr. Burbach help teachers understand some of the most common trigger mechanisms in youth violence and present guidelines for inducing a higher level of civility in the classroom. growing recognition of youth violence in schools is creating corresponding waves of intervention strategies to deal with the problem. Administrators' first responses to escalating violence typically include such initiatives as installing metal detectors, implementing zero-tolerance programs, and increasing the number of security guards. A second set of initiatives involves teachers in implementing schoolwide programs such as instruction in conflict resolution and anger management or in using what Craig Sautter calls off-the-shelf curriculum packages that deal with violent behavior.(1) Although initiatives of both types may be essential to any comprehensive violence prevention program, we see the need for a third level of intervention to provide the kind of long-term reduction in violent behavior that we all hope for. We believe that one of the most effective actions teachers can undertake - and the one with the most enduring results - is to create a climate of civility in their classrooms. In the mid-1990s civility has become a topic of enormous concern not only to educators but to elected officials and the general public. One definition of civility has to do with civic responsibility - to be developed through training in the humanities that nourishes the exercise of citizenship. More pertinent to our discussion, however, is the definition of civility as politeness or courtesy. Concern for the disappearance of civility in this sense prompted U.S. News & World Report to feature an article titled The American Uncivil Wars: How Crude, Rude, and Obnoxious Behavior Has Replaced Good Manners and Why That Hurts Our Politics and Culture.(2) A survey revealed that 89% of Americans think incivility is a serious problem, and 78% believe the problem has worsened in the past 10 years. Of those responding, 91% said they think the decline in civility contributes to violence, and 84% think that it is eroding values. We are all familiar by now with the problem of aggressive drivers and with the highway carnage caused by their lack of basic civility. As educators, we, too, perceive a decline in civility and see it as a serious threat to the well-being of students and teachers in schools. More specifically, we contend that a major source of violence in schools is an interpersonal dysfunction that may begin with an unintended social blunder (What're you looking at?) or an accidental bump (Don't you ever touch me, man!) and end in a violent confrontation. Although a knowledge of conflict resolution strategies can be used to defuse such situations, a code of classroom civility might well prevent them from occurring in the first place. Our purpose is to help teachers understand some of the most common trigger mechanisms in youth violence and to present guidelines for inducing a higher level of civility in the classroom. Social Ecology Of Classroom Aggression For all that is being written on the subject of violence, many of us fail to see that we won't solve the problem of violence unless we address the social ecology that supports and nurtures it. Of interest here are certain response dispositions that all of us are now familiar with and that provide fertile ground for aggressive behavior. We discuss four of these, which we label as ESP, GOP, STD, and HIV. You're no doubt familiar with these abbreviations, but we give them some new meanings. first of these dispositions, ESP, refers to Exquisite Sensitivity to the Personal, particularly anything that can possibly be construed as personal attack, challenge, insult, or disrespect. ESP we are referring to is a quickness to bristle, almost an anticipation of offense. It's a tendency to have hurt feelings with no evidence of malicious intent on the part of someone else, a quickness to anger, a lack of generosity of spirit. …