AND only the latest, particularly serious case of a phenomenon that is growing every year. This morning at 8, in a professional institute in Varesea 17-year-old student stabbed a teacher with a switchblade. The episode comes while a bill that increases penalties and monitoring of school violence against teachers is being discussed in the Senate. And three days after another episode: a principalof a nursery school in Taranto (the “Europa-Alighieri” comprehensive institute) was beaten by the parents of a three-year-old pupil.
These are episodes that must lead us to a broader reflection on violence that is generally carried out, and with increasingly large numbers every day, against those who carry out a service. The professionals who take care of us, figures whose role, function, competence and responsibility are not recognized and appreciated. On the one hand the teachers, on the other the doctors and nurses (the recent case of a nurse punched by relative a Castellammare di Stabia). Is there a common denominator?
We talked about it with Maurizio Fiasco, sociologist.
Not just violence at school. From the teacher stabbed to the nurse punched
«The boy who attacked the teacher is a teenager who acts out a fantasy of violence: stops imagining and resolves to act. What happens in the emergency rooms instead has the character of one tribal, clan violence: the patient’s relatives feel offended because the family member is not given what, in their opinion, he deserves. And they take it out on the doctor, the nurse. The healthcare worker is seen as a mere provider of services: if he doesn’t fulfil, if he doesn’t perform the “miracle”, he should be punished because he deserves the worst.”
But the common points are different. «Both in violence against doctors and in violence against teachers, as well as in many other cases that we see happen every day, there is an overreaction to an alleged wrong suffered» explains Fiasco. A reaction that is unleashed without there being time to “elaborate the meaning”, that is, to cultivate the implications of the violent impulse and therefore to self-censor it.
Speed, abruptness and violence at school: this is how a part of society is regressing
This is the point: «a part of society is regressing, it no longer knows how to control aggressive emotions, and immediately passes from impulse to action. There is an ongoing decline from civil manners to brusque manners even in ordinary encounters between people. Note the rise of unpredictable intoleranceso frequently that it is now a true national emergency.”
Why does this happen? “Because our perceptual or thought experiences do not benefit from natural processing time.” The impulse that is not “cultivated” becomes action. Violent.
Our life is a succession of fast experiences, of continuous stimuli, in which the time necessary to be aware of what we feel in order to dissolve aggressive fantasies by censoring them is reduced to the bare minimum.
Civilization is based on the management of emotions
Meetings in everyday life, starting from occasional ones, should be regulated by codes of behavior learned in places of socialization. In the family, in the neighborhood, among work colleagues, at school, etc. Many micro rules that allow mediation while waiting for your turn, in line in front of a counter, when entering public transport, while waiting in a clinic, for example. Ways of behavior that dilute aggression. «As the great sociologist Norbert Elias wrote, the process of civilization is the history of the cooling of emotions thanks to the social learning of “good manners”. In short, thanks to the ritual that slows down the transition from impulse to reaction. It is not a useless superstructure, it is the maturation of the organization of social behavior, which moves from abrupt daily ways to learning and internalize a refined system of codes of conduct in interpersonal relationships».
It is that courtesy that, today, makes us give way to our neighbor in front of the elevator. And which, who knows why, fails at traffic lights, when the situation, the speed, the hyperstimulation of a busy intersection, make us lose our inhibitory brakes. A situation where social control does not exist, the pressure is not felt, and the impulse is released.
The use that a criminal makes of violence is instrumental, rational: this gives me a way to protect myself. Those who carry out this type of violence leave us disarmed. There is no prevention possible if not a profound restructuring of our codes of conduct, accompanied by a return to slower times in daily experiences.
The bill against violence against teachers
A concrete response to episodes of violence wants to be i Bill on the topic. That against violence against healthcare workers, and the law 14 August 2020, n. 113. Or “Provisions regarding safety for operators of health and social-healthcare professions in the exercise of their functions”. It provides for the institution of a National Observatory, aggravated penalties (for serious injuries, imprisonment from 4 to 10 years, and for very serious injuries, imprisonment from 8 to 16 years).
The one who deals with violence against teachers, already approved in the House, is instead on the home stretch to be approved by the Senate as well. And even in this case, they are expected more severe penalties (it goes from the current five years of imprisonment for assault to seven and a half years. And from three to four and a half years for contempt). A National Observatory and also the start of National day of education and prevention against violence against school staff. It will be celebrated on December 15th.
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