Violence and victimization among age-mates

Abstract

The problem of violence among students is becoming more serious and it grips teachers, pedagogues and psychologists all over the world. The prevalence of violence is increasing every day and it assumes even greater negative effects. Violent behavior can cause many consequences such as: loneliness, depressive quality, sadness, fear, insecurity, low self-confidence and even sickness that stays for life. Twenty-year-old boys and girls who have been the victims of violent behavior turned out to be more depressed than their age-mates who have not suffered such victimization. Consequently, it is very important to globally pay attention to this problem rather than at the level of individual schools and classes. Schools have to make a decision regarding the issue of increasing the activities of suppressing violence among age-mates. This decision has to be made in cooperation with parents. Schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina currently do not pay enough attention to this problem unlike our neighbors Croatia and Serbia whose experts have been engaged by this very problem. Possible approaches to recognizing and preventing this problem are systematic (at school level), classroom-level and individual. For each approach it is important to inform the public what violence is and how it affects an individual, and only then by merging the capacities of parents, teachers and students try and find possible solutions. It is necessary for students as well as teachers and parents to first explain the problem and only then to define punishments for violent behavior and to provide help for victims as well as for abuser. The results of this project show that it is possible to decrease violence even to eradicate it by long and permanent work with both sides i.e. abusers and victims as well as with parents and teachers. It has already been mentioned that the main problem is treating those issues individually, in this case locally, instead of globally spreading similar activities to all schools. The problem is serious enough and it has quite serious consequences that it should be paid a lot of attention to.