Hotel Continental Café this Tuesday (April 16th) hosted this year's first (and a total of twenty-third) panel discussion as part of the project “Opatija Coffeehouse Debates”, which they have been jointly organizing for five years now Association “Cultural Front”, Amadria Park Hotels i Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka. This time, the discussion focused on peer violence, with a special focus on cases of violence among children in schools and on social networks. Thirty interested participants You can learn more about this from a university professor. Jasminke Zloković the Opatija Elementary School Freddie Glavan.

Zlokovic: (For some) Violence is not a problem – violence is the solution to the problem.

Jasminka Zloković, a full professor at the Department of Pedagogy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka, began her presentations by noting that violence among children is not a normal phenomenon in puberty, but a serious social problem with worrying consequences, which occurs at an earlier age, so we become witnesses of reports of first-grade elementary school students who come to classes with knives and threaten other children, but also school staff. Although the victim is exposed to terrible trauma, Zlokovic believes that Special attention should also be paid to children who behave violently.. For them, violence is the solution to some of the problems they face and to which they are exposed. The big problem of the Croatian system is precisely the focus on punishing bullies (often using inefficient methods such as moving to another school) instead of primary prevention and solving the problems that bullies have and for which they behave aggressively towards others. This only increases the problems of violent students, so (instead of the originally planned behavioral change that led to some measure) they become even more violent and asocial.

Zloković points out that three important sets of factors affect the violent behavior of children: individual characteristics of each child, his family and school, but highlights as crucial the atmosphere in the family and the attitude of parents towards children. This relationship, research shows, is steadily declining (both in quantity and quality of time spent), so that parents today spend an average of 15 to 30 minutes a day with their children (the so-called ‘fast-food families’), which is often less time than is devoted to pets. He sees a part of the problem in general public opinion according to which the educational role of parents is almost completely non-existent, and a part in an education system that does not sufficiently address the training of parents to raise their children well. Violence, she points out, represents only one in a series of problems caused by poor educational practices, and it is accompanied by poor nutrition, alcohol and drug consumption, premature sexual activity, lack of interest in school and similar problems.

The level of trust that children feel towards their parents or teachers is also worrying: Research shows how only one in three victims of physical (peer violence) talk to their parents about the problem, until Only one in eight children trust teachers.who have been abused by their peers. Research shows that victims and perpetrators of violence among children are most often students of poor school performance and lower socio-economic status, and warn that the consequences for victims can be extremely strong, including the occurrence of depression and anxiety, and even suicide.

Glavan: Technology that incites or facilitates peer violence will be discarded

Fredi Glavan, the principal of Opatija's primary school, began his presentation by stating that in all Croatian schools, including Opatija, there is violence among children, but (if judged according to the number of issued educational measures) it does not increase over a number of years. The Opatija School, thanks to its excellent professional service, which includes a school pedagogue and psychologist, social pedagogue, speech therapist and (until recently) educational rehabilitator, is therefore in a far better position than many other Croatian schools when we talk about the prevention of peer violence.

Violence on the Internet and on social media, pointed out Glavan, It is very difficult to prevent whereas both schools and parents are losing control over what children do online (via ‘smartphones’ that are accessible to all children, and from which children do not separate). Through example Amande Todd, an American girl who committed suicide because of persistent abuse through social networks, pointed out that children are nowhere safe and that prevention options are very limited. He pointed out that schools are still engaged in education and prevention of violence, but due to the extremely rapid development of technology, they often lag behind new trends and fail to offer solutions to all cyberbullying problems. However, training on the rules of conduct when using the Internat can help to some extent, although it will not be able to completely prevent violent behavior.

He pointed out that he expects Reject technology that threatens the safety of people and children in particular. Technology that is beneficial to society will never be discarded, but the negative tools that cause rehearsals will sooner or later be discarded in favour of some safer technologies. It is natural for people to defend themselves against what threatens them, and sometimes even accept less legal technologies because they feel safer through them (e.g. ‘dark net’). He agreed with another panellist on the importance of the family for the upbringing of the child, but also warned of the problem “pedagogical inversions‘, when a child starts raising parents and making decisions for them, which can lead to seeming peace in the family, but cannot be an educational good for the child.

The entire panel discussion was recorded and can be viewed below:

The panellists' presentation was followed by a long discussion, in which, along with numerous quality questions and comments, arose and the idea of connecting numerous stakeholders in the wider Opatija area in order to respond to the problems of peer violence through the education of parents. Organizers from the Cultural Front Association, Amadria Park Hotel and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka announced the continuation of the project and the organization of new panel discussions on current socio-political and scientific topics.

*Report taken from official website of the “Coffeehouse Debates Abbey” project