Light On Violence | Urgent Need To Reduce Youth Violence

[waves]

Reducing youth violence is more complex than suppressing it. At present, most countries with high homicide rates understand perfectly how to suppress violence, and security forces get overwhelming support from governments to do so in time for the next general election.

Since the year 2000, the three most violent countries in the Caribbean (Jamaica, Belize, and Trinidad) have actively focused their efforts on suppressing violence. Their governments have reacted each time the murders soar with special squads, states of emergency, prolonged curfews, community invasions, and other forms of aggression. The results have been dips and spikes, but the pattern is an increase in deaths within a five-year cycle.

Light On Violence | Urgent Need To Reduce Youth Violence



*** The following are ideas that can hopefully help to reduce youth violence



(1) Make community service mandatory from first form onward. Therefore the same year students enter high school they have to do community service, needing to earn a specific amount of credits each year until they leave high school.

If their community service credits are within a certain range they can graduate, if not they have to stay an extra year to build back their credit.

When they do community service a report needs to be written explaining how they performed while doing community service.



(2) When students need to be punished, consider punishing them in a variety of ways such as

(a) Making extra classes and summer school mandatory
(b) Having to participate in etiquette workshops specifically for teens
(c) Having to attend anger management class and conflict resolution with their parents
(e) Helping the school whenever there will be having parent teachers meetings
(f) Having to do extra community service
(g) Not being allowed on school trips



(3) From first form students should learn everything about careers including how to create cover letters, resumes, and how to do great at job interviews.


Each students should receive career and academic counselling from 1st form onwards.


(4) In the second year of high school and every year after, every student should be given the chance to do internship and earn internship credits. Therefore every high school students need to have adequate work experience credits before leaving high school.


(5) From first form, students should be allowed to work during the summer holidays.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Light On Violence | Urgent Need To Reduce Youth Violence



*** The following are ideas that can hopefully help to reduce youth violence



(1) Make community service mandatory from first form onward. Therefore the same year students enter high school they have to do community service, needing to earn a specific amount of credits each year until they leave high school.

If their community service credits are within a certain range they can graduate, if not they have to stay an extra year to build back their credit.

When they do community service a report needs to be written explaining how they performed while doing community service.



(2) When students need to be punished, consider punishing them in a variety of ways such as

(a) Making extra classes and summer school mandatory
(b) Having to participate in etiquette workshops specifically for teens
(c) Having to attend anger management class and conflict resolution with their parents
(e) Helping the school whenever there will be having parent teachers meetings
(f) Having to do extra community service
(g) Not being allowed on school trips



(3) From first form students should learn everything about careers including how to create cover letters, resumes, and how to do great at job interviews.


Each students should receive career and academic counselling from 1st form onwards.


(4) In the second year of high school and every year after, every student should be given the chance to do internship and earn internship credits. Therefore every high school students need to have adequate work experience credits before leaving high school.


(5) From first form, students should be allowed to work during the summer holidays.

I think the military school structure would eliminate most of the current problems. Adding special programs in an attempt to patch up a faulty system isn't very efficient.

Consider this example. When the English arrived in America they had depleted the forests in England and thus constructed their houses from planked (sawn) lumber, to economize what they perceived to be a 'dwindling' resource. Of course this required huge amounts of wood to heat these uninsulated structures, which of course made a cruel mockery of the whole idea.

Enter the Scandanavians and other 'northmen' who built their houses from whole logs whose thick walls provided great insulation from the cold and the heat. And although the initial investment in timber was considerable the long term effect was very conservative as few trees were needed for heat.

Now apply this lesson to todays educational system. If we did it right in the first place we wouldn't have all these problems in the second place.