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Bullying, Dropping Out, Teen Pregnancies
R&R operates under the premise
that:
1. ALL of our SOCIAL problems, teen
pregnancy, school dropouts, school (and work) bullying, drunk driving,
street muggings, abuses of power and other criminal activities are failures
in respect or responsibility.
2. Drunk driving, school dropouts, street
muggings, bullying and other abuses of power and most crimes are all misguided, emotionally immature
attempts to fill a need or the warped result of a lifetime* of denied needs. We
all have the same human needs. (See Human Needs.)
3. We can teach students constructive ways to fill their
needs if we have the right information, the whole picture and the right tools.
The Picture:
 | The profile of the at-risk student is well known. (See The At-Risk Student.) The characteristics of students who fail in school,
fail to secure adequate job training or college, fail to marry before they start families
and fail to accept the legal constraints of society are well understood. Other studies
show that students who do well in school, get good job training or go to college, wait to
have children until they are settled in adult lives and become law abiding citizens, have
the opposite characteristics.
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| If we compare the characteristics of successful students to
the list of human needs, we see that people whose emotional needs are met in
healthful ways—receiving respect from others, developing confidence, finding
meaningful work, someone to listen to them, etc. are societies' successful people. They
are the ones getting job training, going to work, going to the voting booth, taking their
kids to the zoo, the park, paying their bills on time, etc. Students who fail have
not learned how to meet their emotional needs constructively.
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| If we start young with students, we can teach them to fill
their own emotional needs in constructive ways. It takes some doing. It takes a
change in mindset. It takes some new techniques. R&R offers lessons and techniques
designed to prevent the development of life failure.
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In the school setting the result is a more harmonious
classroom, more students helping students, more courtesy, assistance, kindness and better
grades. We not only socialize students, we create a learning climate.
| We teach or help develop |
Which helps the student develop these |
| Social skills |
Confidence, friendships |
| Assertiveness skills |
Power over her/his own life |
| Multiple talents—every student has many
talents |
Sense of self worth, new skills, self
confidence |
| Connect their talents to real possibilities |
Hope, the expectation that there are places
in the world of work where they can do well |
| Recognize and express emotions appropriately |
Ways to interact with others in a respectful
manner and develop self-control |
| Identify the feelings of others by their body
language and facial expressions |
A realistic and accurate appraisal of
non-hostility when there is none there |
| Empathy and acceptance of differences |
Tolerance |
Many of these characteristics connected to life
success can be supported--even created in the school setting. Parents, if they have the
depth of understanding, the skills and the emotional balance themselves, can have the
greatest impact on our young. But schools can pick up the slack, if staff is properly
trained, and work wonders with those who have started down the wrong path or who are
hearing negative messages away from school.
*Scientists believe there may be a percentage of
persons whose brains are "wired" such that they cannot see the wrongness of
certain acts, and others who, though they can see society punishes certain acts and
intellectually know a given act is "wrong," have no ability to feel remorse
(even if they had grown up in the ideal environment). Fetal alcohol syndrome may be one
such example of "mis-wiring." It is believed that students suffering from
"mis-wirings" are a very small minority of misbehaving students.
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