Aggression Among Schoolchildren in Colombia as an Indicator of Chronic Anomie

Aggression Among Schoolchildren in Colombia as an Indicator of Chronic Anomie. Aggression, bullying, intimidation, harassment and similar practices in Colombian educational institutions are a problem that is increasingly seen as having profound implications for society. This article’s primary thesis is that various manifestations suggest a process of chronic anomie. Various studies reported in the mass media have demonstrated this anomie. The aim is to describe a well-founded thesis that presents some conclusions aimed at revising behaviors that express chronic anomie and therefore conflict with the nature of educational institutions.

This article’s objectives are to revive the investigative tradition in Colombia and to obtain solutions that stop or prevent violence in schools, in the case that it has not yet been established in the institutional space. The presentation sequence begins with a literature review of formal investigations. Next, the frequency and the impacts on children and adolescents are discussed. Suggestions that could be implemented by the education community are discussed in the conclusion. The methodology employed is hypothetical-deductive: a hypothesis is formulated, and empirical evidence is sought through indicators in the research conducted on the subject in Colombia during the last 10 years. The exploration of the literature found 48 research products represented by articles published in journals, theses and research reports. The selection strategy consisted of two approaches: the first phase included publications that were consulted directly; and the second phase involved the use of those publications’ references to find other documents (for example, on the Web and in Scielo, Publindex and Redalyc) using keywords that related to aggression, intimidation, bullying and school harassment in Colombia.

The main hypothesis states that aggression among schoolchildren, with its various denominations, has reached a stage of chronic anomie. Anomie is a dependent variable in the national context that has developed and supports the longest-lasting armed conflict in the world. With respect to violence among schoolchildren, one researcher stated, “Studies have shown how a great number of boys and girls who present violent behaviors, or live in violent contexts, reproduced those behaviors in their interpersonal relations” [1]. The Colombian conflict has contaminated both state and society, pervading educational institutions; it has generated distortions in the justice and law-creation processes, in public control and in the response to the urgent needs of the citizens who have given power to the State. In this respect, the Colombian State is characterized as having reached a state of chronic anomie [2-7], which provides a space to study the relationship between the macrosocial context and harassment situations in the school context as micro-social phenomena. It should be considered that eradicating, stopping or containing either of these conflicts is more difficult when they have reached a chronic stage of anomie compared to the initial stages; thus, institutional efforts are higher for educational communities that include students, parents, teachers and school management. The reason is that these practices have been anchored in the institutional culture in such a way that they are allowed or tolerated because they are part of that culture. When containment is attempted, eradication is not achieved because the conditions for its continuity are established, legitimizing the asymmetry in the relationship between perpetrators and their victims with the individual, group and institutional implications of the deterioration of the organizational climate. Studies in Colombia have characterized the phenomenon, have made suggestions, have developed action plans, and have incorporated remedial practices, but these behaviors go beyond the restrictive power of coexistence manuals and institutional authorities’ short-term decisions [8-10]. The Ministry of Education has recently issued two regulations that seek to ensure that the phenomenon is countered from the national level to the regional level to the educational institutions. The 1620/2013 Law (15 March) seeks to create “a national system of school life and training for the exercise of human rights, education on sexuality and the prevention and mitigation of school violence.” Its 1965/2013 Regulatory Decree (11 September), “regulates Law 1620/2013.” Containment of the bullying phenomenon has not been effective in the short term and requires interventions with more compelling procedures and results.

The research tradition in Colombia on facts regarding school violence, aggression, intimidation, bullying and similar proceedings is recent. It comes from universities and research centers that find that those facts make it difficult to fulfill educational objectives. The general notion of aggression used in this article refers to at least two connotations that are important to emphasize. First, aggression involves a relationship between people, one of whom exercises power over the other, inflicting verbal, emotional, psychological or physical violence that significantly affects his or her student, social and family life; Second, aggression involves an intent to harm others who are also students (either children or adolescents), peers in an institution who are there to complete their educations. The aggressor and the assaulted are on the scene either alone or in groups. Around them, as observers or witnesses, are other students with active, permissive or passive attitudes and behaviors, who in any case participate in a privileged manner in violent encounters against one or more students [11].

These students are actors in the aggression that occurs outside official legitimacy but that, because it is anchored in everyday life, has achieved recognition to vent conflicts among children and adolescents. While researching the implications of aggression for students and educational institutions, the research tradition in Colombia becomes of great relevance, particularly if one considers that “growing up in a violent environment, whether it involves political or everyday violence, can promote the development of aggressive behavior in children” [1]. The results displayed below come from a review of the literature in the “relatively recent field of school violence studies” [12]. The first section concentrates on the research findings, and the second chapter concentrates on the thesis regarding the development of chronic anomie, not only explaining the occurrence of aggression but also demonstrating the forcefulness of its effects.

Studies have covered a wide range of topics and solutions that include not only the narration of events, actors, and time/ place/manner circumstances but also the role of institutions, the consequences of actions and the impact on students and the organizational climate. The pioneering 1979 study by Rodrigo Parra Sandoval and Juan Carlos Tedesco, “School and urban marginality,” examines the middle and upper classes’ stereotypes of marginalized communities, those that “global society attaches to marginality: violence, unemployment, crime, family disruption, prostitution” [13]. The dominant trend studies violence from the outside to the inside, considering schools as a scenario-product that received environmental influences. Nevertheless, it refers to the individualized violence incarnated in some subjects whose control pertains to teacher responsibility [13].

This finding was corroborated by Chaux, who finds that “the cycle of violence begins in the family, school and community context in which children grow up” [1]. Moreover, García SBY, Guerrero BJ [12] find connectors between global or post-industrial capitalism and its effects on the population, particularly regarding violent relations in interpersonal relationships within families, communities and neighborhoods in the poorest sectors. Since the early 1990s, two modalities of school violence have been considered: traditional violence and new violence. Traditional violence involves physical and verbal violence in teacher-student relationships; violent pedagogy (usually denied by teachers) that consists of taking a dominant stand in the decision about what, how and why to study; an emphasis on the distribution of knowledge and the concealment of the creation of knowledge because “the result of thought processes rather than the thinking itself, the product and not the process have been privileged, leading teachers to be authoritarian, memorizers and dull, thus giving great importance to control, discipline and punishment in the school culture” [14].

Institutions and researchers have designed containment and improvement proposals that are reflected in numerous studies [1,15-25]. The purpose of this article is not to present the totality of the studies or the whole of the diagnostics; appealing to them enables this article to illustrate the problem and formulate solutions. In this article, five aspects are analyzed in detail: frequency, academic performance, emotional stability, organizational climate, coexistence and training in democracy in a globalized context of modernity.

Frequency

The frequency of confrontations among students involves victims and victimizers engaged in a violence cycle of reactive and instrumental forms of aggression. Latin America is the world region with the highest average number of bullying cases. Studies show that 70 percent of children are directly or indirectly affected by bullying or harassment in school, i.e., children who have been harassed or have witnessed harassment [26]. Colombia presents manifestations of this phenomenon that are higher than those of developed countries [1,16-18]. There is a high frequency of aggression in Colombia because, aggressive manifestations in children are the product of a world of complex relationships taking place in their surroundings. These relationships build an aggressive personality that through socialization spreads little by little and expands in a minimum amount of time throughout human space. It is a whole social identity: the aggressive identity [27].

This investigation suggested the hypotheses to be verified in the Ataco and Planadas schools in the department of Tolima and used the accounts of students, parents and other educational agents such as educational mass media. Aggression is part of the culture of tradition that is taught from one generation to another, ultimately reaching the schools. Therefore, “on many occasions, in their personal relationships with classmates, force and verbal aggression is used to defend themselves or to provoke others because that is the usual style in which daily relationships take place” [27]. In 2006, Cambio magazine shed light on the fact that studies had barely begun in Colombia. That notwithstanding, they presented some figures. The topic was studied using the ICFES Saber test, which was applied to nearly one million public- and private-school students in the 5th and 9th grades. Twenty-eight percent of 5th-grade students claimed to have been victims of bullying in the months prior to the test, 21% stated that they had bullied their classmates, and 51% stated that had witnessed bullying. In the 9th grade, 14% were victims, 19% were victimizers, and 56% were eyewitnesses [28]. A study in all of the departments in Colombia found that “29% of students in fifth grade and 15% in ninth grade had been bullied in the past two months by classmates” [29]. In Cali, other researchers found that “24% of students in sixth, seventh and eighth grade had suffered several attacks in a month” [23]. In the same study, it was observed that “46% of the students surveyed referred to having assaulted someone and 43% reported having been victims of aggressions” [23,30]. Similarly, DANE conducted a study in schools in Bogota, through the survey of school life and circumstances that affect it (ECECA). These studies present highly frequent events in which students are involved in various aggressive acts [17,31].

To most students, good grades and good relations with both teachers and other students is an appealing ideal. The school’s mission is to provide the means to ensure that its educational objectives are fully met. Violent acts are an obstacle to achieve those objectives because such acts mediate between the desired behaviors related to academic performance and the aggressive actions that affect all of the individuals involved in them, especially the victims, who present performance deterioration, school absenteeism, dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which they did not present before the attacks, at least not to the same degree [30]. Their motivation to study decreases, and this lack of motivation negatively affects the results obtained in the TIMSS (International Study of Trends in Mathematics and Science) international tests and in Colombia’s Saber11 test [18], as shown by the evidence. Low academic performance must be considered as an indicator of aggression among students, especially when they are victims. Prior and subsequent factors must always be considered in the sequence of school violence.

Research shows that aggression has many effects: school phobia, stress, return-to-school syndrome, depression, adaptation difficulties, manic-depressive traits or cyclothymia, frequent changes in personality, neurosis, generalized anxiety disorders, panic attacks, low self-esteem, social skills deficits and suicides [18,32-35]. Victims change their behavior: they become aloof, sad, insecure and have low self-esteem. In the midst of this scenario, some researchers have concluded that “what is worrying is that the phenomenon is starting too soon, as the psychologist and lawyer Claudia Rey de Varón states. In the first grades of primary school, we have already detected bullies and victims” [28]. In extreme cases, there have been instances in which victims have reacted with extreme vengeance against their bullies; in less extreme events, suffering and anxiety accompany the victims for a long time. Longitudinal studies have shown that at least 60% of victimizers in school had a criminal record before the age of 24. Furthermore, bullies’ own children are affected, as [18] documents.

If aggression appears early in an individual’s school life, its consequences will continue to affect that individual for as long as he or she remains there. In addition to the effects mentioned, “behavior disturbances including crying, tantrums, or staying in bed without wanting to go to school... Somatization, including vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and muscle are also among its symptoms. At the cognitive level, irrational fear to being exposed at school begins to show. Another related pathology is depression, which consists of a sad mood, irritability, difficulty in enjoying what used to be enjoyable, easy crying, social withdrawal, feelings of rejection, changes in sleep and food patterns, motor activity alterations by excess or deficit, and suicidal ideation. Other pathologies that can affect victims are Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), attempted suicide or suicide itself” [30]. These manifestations, which alter both academic performance and emotional stability, are neither temporary nor transient. Academic performance and emotional stability go together: although their separate enumeration responds to presentation, in victims’ everyday life, they are combined [36].

The initial process of becoming a victim has been established in different research studies. For example, it has been shown that children and teenagers who feel lonely and sad and have learning difficulties are on the threshold of victimization risk because potential victimizers discover their vulnerability. Therefore, they need urgent help before being victimized [33]. Other traits such as being obese or effeminate; having a physical, mental or sensory deficiency; being shy and anxious; having difficulties making friends; having low self-esteem and underestimating oneself; and being weak and introverted are other features that contribute to the voracious search of those who enjoy showing off their superiority through aggression.

Other potential or trained victimizers satisfy their urge to discriminate when they encounter classmates from a different level of their ethnic group, who belong to an ethnic group or race with little representation in the institution or who are newcomers [33]. It is clear from the foregoing that the victims are targeted by their physical, social, cultural or psychological condition. Because these features are not directly under their control, overcoming them is not an easy task; they require in-depth support by school management and their own classmates, usually through coexistence agreements [37].

Similarly, studies have identified the profile of those with a tendency to become victimizers and exercise their asymmetric power over the weakest by features such as a tendency to engage in violence and dominate peers by force, uncontrollable impulsivity, poor social skills, low tolerance for frustration, an interior need to break the rules, resorting to cheating and cunning to achieve their purposes and hostile relations with others, whether they are teachers or other students [33,38,39]. The assault process shows that negative stigmas associated with the manifestations described are structured and consolidated in both victims and victimizers.

Stigma, understood as the situation of a person who cannot attain full social acceptance, is linked to preconceived ideas regarding victims, viewing them as weak, lazy, fragile, unintelligent and unable to make their own decisions. This stigma is closely related to a social identity based on stereotypes and translated into a language of relationships [40]. It is presumed that victimizers tend to interact aggressively and to react negatively because they experience a neutralization of social skills, including coexistence. Growing research evidence of the deterioration of mental health has contributed to highlighting the studied phenomenon within educational institutions [41]. The mere recognition of these effects is a significant step forward that drives substantive decisions to overcome the urgent problems addressed by these investigations.

Schools should be the most adequate environment for students with similar interests to meet because they belong to the same generation and seek to prepare for life challenges during their personal and social development. The skills associated with education, as described in the school’s regulations and mission, require an environment consistent with those skills. However, aggressions displace that expectation of Eunomia and transform schools into hostile, undesirable spaces that muddy the organizational climate and may even transform it into “a genuine school of torture” [33]. The high frequency and depth of the impacts presented in this paper show that the school does not appear to be an appropriate place to respond to the dictum of rules, the statements of rulers and the expectations of families when they send their children to an institution to find recognition spaces and solid training. Obviously, this work does not intend to generalize about all schools or students; instead, it analyzes the negative actions caused by aggression that impair coexistence between peers [36].

A school’s mission is to create spaces for children and adolescents to learn to live and coexist with other human beings, including peers who share their age and interests, teachers, administrative staff and school management, along with parents, siblings and other people who constitute their social core. When discussing the issue of coexistence, people tend to refer to the tradition in which children are not considered because this topic is considered to concern only adults, who are trained and experienced in life. Above all, because children cannot raise their voices and express their existential anguish [42], they are in a state of social subordination. However, if the space of childhood and adolescence has been socially constructed, it can be reconstructed in the same way, becoming a new scenario in current modernity in which they occupy a preferential space [43]. School is a privileged place for children and adolescents to learn to live with others. At this historical moment, democracy is a consensual system with social, cultural, economic and political spaces in which people can fulfill themselves as participants in a community of interests and create a future.

Research findings reveal the profound impact of aggression in fundamental dimensions of children’s personalities, not only as victims but also as perpetrators and witnesses. This evidence constitutes the basis on which alternatives to action are built based on the recognition of a chronic level of anomie. The research findings referenced are enough to illustrate the central thesis, which states that schools undergo a violent phenomenon that transforms them into places of risk for tranquility, recreation, learning and even life itself. Some become counter examples of Eunomia, which are large spaces in which one can realize initiatives, be creative, control emotions, channel potentials and, ultimately, learn to live in society. Children and adolescents yearn to go there because they meet their friends and, together, they build their own identity, consolidating their individual and social selves. When encountering situations that are contrary to these ideals and especially when these events are closer to the opposite end of Eunomia, we find ourselves in a state of anomie associated with the previous demonstrations of aggression, intimidation, bullying and similar actions in educational institutions. Theoretically, anomie has become a “pan-explanatory notion” [44]. This concept allows us to explore, sometimes indistinctly, phenomena such as people’s inability to achieve socially valued goals, societal constraints on development, the imbalances found in big cities and the promotion of factors of structural and functional imbalances in social spaces. Emilio Durkheim’s thesis includes the concept of anomie, defined as “a moral problem related to the deterioration or breakdown of social ties and the decay of solidarity, also associated with the transformation of collective representations and with the issue regarding the regulation of expectations and desires” [41]. Similarly, anomie is “linked to integration and regulation issues in fractured societies”) [45]. Consequently, the construct anomie is polysemic and has acquired a range of meanings that have provided the concept with a “liquid” character, according to [46,47]. The original meaning conveyed by Durkheim has been transformed to find multiple applications [48-51].

Historically, Latin American countries have been formed during local or regional confrontations and therefore “never came to be more than second-class powers in the international context” [5]. They wasted their energy fighting for power instead of generating stability and welfare. If this happened in the region generally, it happened a fortiori in Colombia, in view of its longestlasting internal conflict, which had its greatest implications both for the country and for the region. Although this is not a negative position, experts on the phenomenon have concluded that “the crisis of authority and legitimacy of the state has been getting worse periodically, causing a genuine dissolution of the State” [3]. A French analyst came to a similar conclusion: Perhaps this will help us understand that “the recent war has resulted in preserving the social and political status quo, exacerbating both inequality and the absence of citizenship” [52]. The greatest impact of chronic anomie on the State lies in the fact that the greater the anomie, the lower the capacity to control and legitimize State actions against those who have delegated their power, i.e., citizens [4-6].

Both the facts submitted and the multiple impacts on children and adolescents show the crudeness of aggressiveness among schoolchildren and how chronic anomie has spread throughout educational institutions, not only reflecting the external environment but pervading everyday life. When a school supports or hides anomie indicators, anomie tends to spread in an infectious manner because the institution gives students room to externalize their repressed intimidation tendencies. Unfortunately, institutions have few tools to counter anomie, despite the State’s issuance of rules (Decree 1965 of 2013; Law 1620 of 2013). A destructive phenomenon has arrived and installed itself without asking permission. A patient and continued process of dissemination, socialization and subjectivation of rules is required to begin the process of legitimizing alternative forms of conduct among students [53,54]. The efforts made by some institutions are commendable. However, the State itself is undergoing a historic phase of deep, chronic anomie that cuts of the possibility of effective intervention. Linking public servants to criminal acts, using authority for private benefit, harnessing power for individual enrichment, and giving primacy to private interests at the expense of the public interest illustrate the weakness of a State in chronic anomie. The same is true in society, which is also experiencing a phase of chronic anomie. Examples of chronic anomie include the long, fierce armed conflict among factions of various origins, objectives and means, acts of aggression, fights between neighbors, domestic violence and public insecurity [2-6].

In the circumstances described, “the State does not have unlimited power to solve the problem of violence in schools. This is not a problem that can only be solved with better policies” [55]. The State’s weaknesses are manifested in the creation of acts that threaten coexistence and that may arise from the family, the social environment of the educational institution, the mass media, or any agent, even the action of the State itself because it does not have the means to reach managers and exercise its coercive power. Internal motivations, the creation of social representations to justify school attendance and the direction of accepted or rejected actions are not tied to the strength of the State. The State’s toolbox is confronted by reality: none of its regulations, laws, police forces, campaigns, exhortations, speeches, rewards, stimuli, bonuses or coercion can contain facts that are contrary to its coexistence.

When it tardily issues a regulation, as in the case of Colombia, it does so with the aim of “contributing to the formation of active citizens who contribute to the construction of a democratic, participatory, pluralist and intercultural society, in accordance with the constitutional mandate and the General Law of Education - Law 115/1994-,” as stated in Law 1620 of March 2013. The State emphasizes the development of citizen competencies, which are defined as “core competencies in the set of knowledge and cognitive, emotional and communicative skills that, articulated between each other make it possible for the citizen to act constructively in a democratic society” (Art.2). These general guidelines, the integration of national, district, departmental, municipal and school committees with their members and functions and the implementation of a “Path for integral attention to school life” (Ruta de Atención Integral para la Convivencia Escolar), including the intervention of “the family as part of the educational community” are at the core of the regulation.

Omission, failure or delay will be punished in accordance with the “General Code and Criminal Procedure, the Single Disciplinary Code and the Code of Childhood and Adolescence”; therefore, the Law adds nothing new. It also establishes penalties for private institutions, manager-teachers and official teachers and provides incentives to educational centers. This is the State’s framework of action that is expressed in the regulation. In short, this is where the State’s difficulty in ensuring coexistence and counteracting school violence is manifested. This finding is more worrisome when neoliberalism has displaced the State’s commitment to its citizens and when issues regarding the “minimum State” or worse, “failed States,” are raised. According to this line of thinking, expectations for successful State intervention are fragile or unclear.

Generally, educational institutions focus their concern on cognitive aspects of teachers and students while giving second place, when there is such a place, to the appropriation of “tools of autonomous thought” and positive relations with “others” as expressions of “social skills.” [56]. For these reasons, “strengthening social cohesion based on conscious acceptance of the “other,” the one who is different, (Tedesco, 2005, p. 35) as the main objective of the institutions responsible for the process of socialization, particularly of schools, is pending. Paulo Freire’s years-old proposal to transform the “educational school” into an “educating school” has not been implemented [56]. One of the reasons for this interruption relates not only to budget cuts and deficiencies in facilities and equipment but also, and above all, to shortcomings in the human talent that ensures quality and efficiency in educational transformation. The single generation unit was the family as the recipient institution that was constituted in the development environment and that promoted transformation to adult spaces of autonomy. Other institutions (especially education, given its specialized function) were complementary and supportive.

When the family lost its central role, primary links collapsed, and modernity widened the road to individualization; institutions weakened their links with the new generations. The vertical decrease in patriarchy, the diffusion of family authority, the absence of collective references and the constitution of mobile pivots for people in an unstable and chaotic atmosphere constitute the environment in which new generations are born and grow up. Moreover, the fragility of links with educational institutions contributes to darken the picture. The “generational position” assumptions implied by a shared sociohistorical sphere and a “generational connection” would produce solid links; historically, however, they deflated in such a way that real participation in a common destiny became a utopia to build rather than a real fact. Different ways of aggression constitute group dynamics and can only be improved if one works both in a group and with the group.

The most profound changes occur when those who are around the group “recognize that the situation is not good and decide to stop it,” explains Chaux, project leader of “Classrooms in Peace.” Chaux’s project works on this problematic in several of Colombia’s schools in three environments: the classroom; with the families of the bully and the victim; and in heterogeneous clubs in which students associated with a modern concept of democracy meet [18,57]. The loss of boundaries between the “I” and the “other I,” (my neighbor, my friend, my relative or a stranger) is increasingly evident because the sense of family, of friendship, of neighborhood, of being in and sharing a common space has been weakened. These subjects draw a dividing line within their identity between “them” and “us” [58].

“They” represents the field to which one does not want to or cannot belong, whereas “us” is the “natural habitat,” it is the group to which one belongs, where one understands what happens and knows how to act, and where one feels safe. It is neither a superficial and anecdotal distinction nor an abstract one, instead entailing two differentiating attitudes: the first field, the “them,” elicits antipathy, suspicion, fear, competence and eventual aggression and confrontation [59]; Vizcaíno, 2008 , 2010a,b) [60-62] the second field, the “us,” reflects emotional attachment, trust, security, collaboration and empathy (Bauman, 1994).

For the intra-group to recognize and consolidate its selfidentity, that which is foreign and external becomes a cohesive factor that provides it with internal solidarity and emotional security [58,63]. An experience such as “Classrooms in Peace” illustrates an alternative type of socialization renovated in the context of coexistence in democracy. The program was developed under the leadership of Professor Enrique Chaux of the University of the Andes for at least eight years at schools in various towns and municipalities in Colombia and Monterrey (Mexico). Partnerships with local organizations, the Ministry of National Education, the Corporation for Productive Coexistence (Corporación Convivencia Productiva), Manuelita S.A. and the Harold H. Eder Foundation, in addition to international organizations such as the OIM, UNICEF, and MSI, have supported the project, providing it with legitimacy and strength. The analyses conducted in the multiple studies described above will become input for experiences that should be collected and multiplied throughout Colombia.

A substantive problem

The first conclusion is that the problem of aggressive behavior among schoolchildren is complex because it does not originate in educational institutions but instead comes from the outside. Younger generations must overcome their elders’ tradition of solving conflicts through the use of force and the asymmetry of the power of some over others to adhere collectively to a democracy that shows respect for the “other,” with equal rights and in healthy environments for both individuals and the community.

Consequently, action does not exercise the necessary control to remedy its roots and the prime motivators around it: it can only influence effects and results as they occur within the facility. Furthermore, as argued above, aggression cannot be confronted in a partial and segmented way, primarily because it has multidimensional dimensions that cannot be addressed through a unidimensional approach such as the type provided by single institutions. Several perspectives with complementary strategies are required, as explained by Enrique Chaux when he stated, “A problem as complex as school violence requires a comprehensive view that encompasses the perspectives of the various actors involved” (2011). Although teachers can help promote coexistence, they cannot fight the huge burden entailed by their role alone; an integral perspective would include students, teachers, counselors and other professionals, school management and families. Only where there is agreement may a serious deceleration or eradication process begin.

Early detection

A second conclusion is that early detection of the problem is crucial to begin a continuous process of monitoring and control for timely containment, especially when the problem has remained hidden [15]. Otherwise, these events become fixed and harder to treat. Additionally, it is both urgent and necessary to apply collective therapeutic treatments that involve not only victims and victimizers but also witnesses and observers participating in a pact of silence or a conspiracy to silence and conceal. Bringing to light what happens in the organization’s darkness is a proactive measure to find effective solutions. The design of a measured, calculated, constant and persistent process must intensify training in schools and citizens’ coexistence to promote recognition and respect of the “other” as both a democratic peer and a fellow citizen. The forms and practices of a positive relationship between students and the mediation of integral management in the educational institution are also commitment elements that are irreplaceable and that shelter everyone. It is an educational and moral imperative to promote safe school communities that ensure healthy and calm environments in which it is possible to fulfill both the institutional mission and the expectations of children, adolescents and parents [32,64-67].

A collective dynamic

Schools can promote activities that highlight talent, cooperation, solidarity, and the collective results of dynamics between and within courses, for example, by providing incentives for both situations. In this sense, the friend-foe pair is transformed, not from a mundane and unproductive neutrality but from the possibility of personal and collective growth. In this context, educational institutions could develop what [68] have called “intermediate institutions” that are located between major institutions such as the state, politics, the economy, education, and the daily life of human beings. Clubs, groups and teams related to spheres such as study, theater, painting, music, areas of knowledge, and sports are spaces in which one learns to manage confrontations and contain impulses and channel energies toward the shaping of the individual. These are alternatives that can end the sequence of violent roles, i.e., that can create an ex-role, an escape and a passage to other roles legitimized by the school. One of the objectives of unlearning the processes of violent behavior is precisely to stop and interrupt the sequence of negative roles, replacing them with roles that are positive for the individual and his or her collective and self-rewarding with respect to his or her previous role as a violent subject [69,70].

Solutions must be constructed collectively, which means working to achieve consensus and implementing the principle of shared responsibility [14,64,71,72,74]. All State institutions, civilsociety organizations, the mass media, churches, families and educational institutions should be committed to these solutions together with school management, teachers and students and should include victims, perpetrators, eyewitnesses and people with no relation to violent acts. Nonetheless, they should not stand alone, isolated, each with his or her own initiative; instead, they should work within a productive and efficient system capable of selfassessment and self-control. If, contrario sensu, radical measures are not applied in all areas of society, we could experience a “silly anomie” in which the State, its institutions and its citizens could fail to observe its rules and even become a defeated society [43,75-78].

This warning is essential to draw attention to a problem with profound implications not only for direct actors but also for schools and for society in general and obviously, for the State. Investigations have been presented, and the problem has been addressed; the solution is in the hands of those who determine policy and those who manage the various levels of decision-making. One limitation of this article is that its conclusion is confined to educational institutions when aggression comes from the outside and on which there is no control from within the school. Accordingly, it is expected that when the violence in armed conflicts and in everyday life is reduced and transformed by a culture of coexistence, schools will experience the conditions necessary to favorably circumvent aggressiveness among students. Under these circumstances, the proposed solutions will find a favorable environment in which solutions can be implemented with visible results.

None.

No conflict of interest.

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