Lucien Lombard

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SOC/CRJS 403W

Violence in the World of Children

"Today's children are tomorrow's adults. Support and nurture children today and tomorrow will be a better time. Destroy children today, you destroy tomorrow." (Lucien Lombardo, 2002)

This course meets the following requirements:

(1) Sociology or Criminal Justice Elective and Writing Intensive Course for majors

(2) An elective in the UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD OF CHILDREN CLUSTER.

(3) To complete the CLUSTER to meet upper level general education requirement, you must complete three course from the following: CRJS / SOC 403W Violence in the World of Children, ESSE 476: Practical Applications in the World of Children, SOC 402: Child Welfare; ENGL 405W: Children and Literature; COMM 427 Children and Communication or PSYC 351 Child Psychology. Majors in any of the disciplines of any of the Cluster courses may use the course from their discipline as part of the major AND as part of the Cluster.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Cynthia Crosson-Tower, FROM THE EYE OF THE STORM: THE EXPERIENCES OF A CHILD WELFARE WORKER. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003. http://www.ablongman.com/catalog/academic/product/0,1144,0205323154,00.html

James Garbarino, RAISING CHILDREN IN A SOCIALLY TOXIC ENVIRONMENT. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787950424,descCd-reviews.html

James Garbarino and Ellen Delara, AND WORDS CAN HURT FOREVER: How to protect adolescents from Bullying, Harassment and Emotional Violence. NY: Simon and Schuster, 2003. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2WH4CATC3E&isbn=0743228995&itm=1#REV

Jennifer Armstrong (ED) SHATTERED: STORIES OF CHILDREN AND WAR. NY: Dell Laurel-Leaf, 2000. http://www.bluejeanonline.com/departments/departments_live/book_review_shattered040703.htm

Heather T. Forbes and B. Bryan Post, BEYOND CONSEQUENCES, LOGIC AND CONTROL: A LOVE Based Approach to Helping Attachment Challenged Children with Severe Behaviors. Redington Shores, FL: 2006.

Other Readings will be available through BLACKBOARD. Please check Weekly Schedule of Specific Assignments in ASSIGNMENTS folder in BLACKBOARD.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Violence in the World of Children

The world we live in as we move into the twenty-first century is a world we as adults create for our children. To the extent that the world contains violence and this violence is either directed at or affects children, it is we, today's adults, who are responsible for what today's children will bring to the world of tomorrow. In a sense this class is about what some call "the cycle of violence". This is the idea that violence seems to continue generation after generation after generation, as children become adults who have children who become adults.

The world's appetite for violence seems to grow every day and along with it, children's involvement in violence. In recent years events in Paducah, KY, Jonesboro, AK, Edinboro, PA, Columbine High School, and the killing of Kayla Rolland by a six year-old classmate have made children's connection to violence all to real. Examples such as these occur all too frequently.

While these highly visible events capture our attention, they should not divert our gaze from the violence that happens in children's lives everyday. Bullying, suicide, abuse and neglect, belittling, sexual abuse and incest, gang violence, exposure to violence in the media (TV, films, music, the news) and in families (spouse abuse) fill the lives of many children. Thus we can see that violence in the world of children (whether against or by children) takes place in many contexts: in families, schools, in peer-groups, in communities and between communities (wars). In addition, 'harm' comes to children in the forms of neglect, in adequate supports such as health care and education, and lack of opportunities for full development.

Only recently have we started to understand the power and impact of emotional violence in the lives of children. (Garbarino and deLara's book AND WORDS CAN HURT FOREVER will help us understand many of these issues) Each of these contexts has its unique characteristics that generate violence or neglect. Yet each takes place in a culture where mass media, tradition and social norms often support violence directed at society's most vulnerable. Each of these contexts and their cultural contexts will be explored in this class.

We believe that one way to begin to break the cycle is to understand the forces that shape the relationship between violence and children and the variety of impacts violence has on children.

In addition, violence directed against and committed by children has been responded to in a variety of ways in the political arena. For example, in 1996 then First Lady and now Senator Hillary Clinton wrote a book entitled IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2WH4CATC3E&isbn=0684825457&itm=6#PUB after an old African proverb. In 1996 Bob Dole in accepting the Republican nomination for President in 1996 said, "I am here to tell you it does not take a village to raise a child." Clearly the politics of children has been and will be an important part of shaping children's (future adults) world of tomorrow. By politics, I mean how adults use their power to shape the worlds within which children live. Thus it is important for us to understand this world and its impacts especially as we seek to improve the conditions of children. Here, James Garbarino's RAISING CHILDREN IN A SOCIALLY TOXIC ENVIRONMENT will be a key text.

While most of what we will study this semester concerns what is happening in the United States, there is much happening and much we can learn from what is happening in children's lives around the world. In May of 2002, the United Nations held a three-day special session devoted to children and the importance and impact of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). http://www.unicef.org/specialsession/index.html.

Many of the CRC's principles concern violence and the idea that children's human dignity should be supported and not violated. We will learn about the convention and discuss its importance in our communities and around the world. Internationally, issues such as child labor, child sexual abuse and involvement in the sex business, children as soldiers and children in the drug trade have drawn much concern. In1989 the passage and near unanimous support for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child http://www.unicef.org/crc/crc.htm committed most of the world values that are supportive of treating children with respect and care. In spite of this international commitment to children, fourteen years later these problems are still with us and in some cases getting worse. Here we will read SHATTERED: STORIES OF CHILDREN AND WAR THE IMPACT OF ARMED CONFLICT ON CHILDREN. http://www.unicef.org/graca/ . Today's events in Iraq, Israel and Lebanon, Afghanistan and Somalia, Sudan and in many parts of the world affect children's lives in the present and how they will see the future.

As we explore violence in the world of children we will come up against differences between our values and our practice with regard to children in our families and communities. We will explore our individual and collective responsibilities for children's well being. Thus, our (adult) and their (children's) personal futures make the subject of this class extremely vital.

Many scholars wonder why adults fail to face the reality that it is adults who create the world within which children experience and perpetrate violence. They wonder why we don't emphasize preventing the conditions that breed violence in the first place. They wonder why we in the United States continue to advocate and use corporal punishment when the rest of the world seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Internationally, human rights conventions and national legislation have moved to uphold the rights of children and improve their conditions. In the United States we have seen legislation move to protect parents and teachers from charges of physically harming children in their care.

In the middle of this political debate is the Child Protective Services worker, whose job it is to apply law to specific cases that come to their attention. This very difficult job will also be examined, hopefully in the context of the specific communities in which you live as well as in the book FROM THE EYE OF THE STORM. Having students in many parts of the country should help us see how different jurisdictions approach child protective services.

Dr. Karen Polonko (University Professor of Sociology at ODU) and I developed this class a number of years ago as a team effort. To prepare for this class, we read much material, and we came to the same conclusion. We felt that if we are ever going to reduce the amount of violence in the world, it is critically important, indeed, essential, that we come to terms with the violence done to children, and the long-term impact this violence has on individuals and communities. Finally we felt that we need to consider and learn to communicate about ways of reducing violence in children's lives if we are to break the cycle of violence. If we want to reduce all types of violence in the future, and not just violence against and by children, we must start with understanding what we are doing to today's children. For, it is these children who will become the future's adults.

Exploring Our Lives as Children to Develop a Child Centered Perspective:

One very critical perspective, which I hope you will learn, is seeing the world's violence through the eyes of the children who are affected by it as targets, observers or participants. Remember, "a child's perspective" was a perspective we had (or at least, you had) not that many years ago. Now, for us as adults, this is a very unique perspective. Being "child-centric" we should try to remember and see how children make meaning of the world around them. The fact that we adults were all "children first" means that we all have a wealth of experience (our own childhood experiences) with the problems being considered in this course. Becoming "child-centric", if we can do it, demands that we give credibility and legitimacy to children's perspectives and concerns (and to our own perspectives and concerns as children).

Doing so empowers children in relation to us as adults. Doing so also empowers us (as adults) and changes the way we look at and value our childhood experiences and at our adult behaviors and attitudes as we relate to children. For a new way to look at children and child / adult interactions see this link to the perspectives of Dr. B. Bryan Post who has recently presented his ideas to audiences at ODU in the past year. http://www.postinstitute.com/freedownloads.htm. In order to gain some practical insight into an alternative approaches to dealing with children's 'problem' behaviors we will read and discuss one of his books: BEYOND CONSEQUENCES, LOGIC AND CONTROL. This book will bring together for us, many of the perspectives and much of the information we will be learning in this class.

I hope you will struggle along with me throughout the semester sharing your experiences, observations and insights gained from your childhood and adult experiences. I hope that you will learn not only through the readings and studying the available research but also through your heart. Always remember, as Penelope Leach says, "We were all children first."

A WRITING INTENSIVE CLASS:

One of the Old Dominion University requirements is the completion of a Writing Intensive class in your major. This means you will be required to complete three of the writing assignments. It also means that your instructor has the responsibility for identifying and assisting you in developing your writing skills.

In this class writing assignments have been designed to help you focus on integrating your own experiences with the academic study of violence in the world of children (the subject of the course). In addition, we will focus on the expression of analysis how well you are able to utilize concepts and information you study in class to help you understand your own experiences. We will also be concerned with use of references and proper documentation formats in the presentation of your formal written work. Finally, we will try to correct any specific grammar / usage problems you might have.

Paying attention to all of this across all of the various assignments you will complete will be an extremely labor intensive process in a Distance Learning class with over 125 students. So for you, getting assignments in on time will be a must. Graduate assistant and I will work to try to make this aspect of the course a good learning experience, but we can only do so it you do assignments promptly.

For writing assignments the following link should prove helpful: http://web.odu.edu/al/wts/wts.htm

Communication:

All students must activate their ODU e-mail address. This is the only e-mail address your professor will use to contact you with information related to the class. Class Materials and various announcements will be posted on Blackboard. Other e-mail addresses (e.g. hot-mail, AOL, etc, will not be used. The best way to communicate with me will be through FSCS link for this class. This will be available soon and will be posted on class announcements via BLACKBOARD.

SOME WEB SITES:

1. National Clearing House for Child Abuse and Neglect Information

http://www.childwelfare.gov/

2. Children Now (a Directory of Web Resources: lots of links)

http://www.childrennow.org/

3. American Academy of Pediatrics

http://www.aap.org/

4. Child Welfare League of America

http://www.cwla.org/

5. The ABA Center on Children and the Law

http://www.abanet.org/child/home2.html

6. National Center for the Study of Corporal Punishment and Alternatives