Understanding Aggression: Coping with Aggressive Behavior in the Classroom (P-12)

Catalog description

This course is about violence in America, about the aggression in our schools, classrooms, streets, homes and elsewhere. The course speaks to the hate, the fights, the anger, the crimes committed and the victims in our schools and society. It is a course about students, children, teenagers, adults and neighbors, all of us. The course will consider the many forms of aggression, both criminal and otherwise; its costs and motivation; its perpetrators and targets; its likely and unlikely locations; its impact on our schools, the children; and, most especially, its several causes and promising solutions. Topics of interest will include violence and the challenge of raising and working with children; aggression in our classrooms; American youth gangs and their influence; past and future sports violence; “hot spot” locations of frequent violence; and the aggression-promoting role of alcohol, temperature, driving, television and other features of modern life. The course also will answer questions such as: Is aggression always bad? How do aggressive thoughts lead to aggressive actions? Is aggression, at least for some people, an addiction? Does the victim contribute to being attacked? Is dating a dangerous proposition? How are the acts of aggression dealt with in other countries, and are there any lessons for America? The goal of this course is to help educators and adults in general better understand how aggression affects our lives and the lives of children. Hopefully such greater understanding and more skilled efforts at prevention will substantially reduce the aggression and violence that has become all too common in America’s schools.