specific needs of children and elderly left behind as a ... - IOM Moldova

CHAPTER I
of differentiation of educational methods, the weakening of the relation
between school and family represent negative dimensions of the modern
school that are being aggravated by the crisis and by the specific character
of the actual society: financial and social differences, poverty, abandonment,
neglecting child problems, unemployment, etc.
The stress the adolescent experience caused by school deviance regards:
- The conflict with school teachers: “I can fight with the teacher…”;
- Teachers’ physical violence towards their students: “… the teacher
will never be on a student side, but rather on another teacher’s side…”;
- Threats: “You can be punished and to move you in the back of the class,
but I tell Mrs. Eugenia “If you’ll ask me again to sit in the back of the
class, I’ll stop coming to school” and there’s nothing she can do and
she lets me stay at the desk in front of the class as I like it” ;
- Power abuse: “You see, she’s an ex-principal, but she still thinks she’s a
principal now…”;
- Unjustified punishment: “It happened only once, there is this guy who
likes to talk this way and then he says that he didn’t say anything and
that somebody else talked this way and he laughs, you see, he’s lying and
he’s laughing…”;
- Labelling, verbal abuse: “Well… they call me names sometimes…Well,
and ass and stupid…”
Elderly caregivers explain their grandchildren’s delinquency through the
violent educational environment. The conflicts with their teachers are conditioned
by verbal and emotional abuse produced by the children: “Not
only the teacher, but the whole class... But, you see, they are grown-up persons,
and the ones who are younger refuse to work with “them”, and there
were several conflicts” (III_E_8).
• Peers groups represent a relevant socialization source for minors. Delinquency
is learnt there. Groups and group relations allow them to express
and identify themselves, to learn plausible models and values. Still, minor
groups can become an environment for promoting asocial values,
virtue to the incompetence of its members as well as the infiltration in
these groups of some persons with intentions or even criminal past. The
collected data denotes that the deviance perceived in relation with their
peers is manifested through:
- Verbal violence: “My friends call me names”;
- Offensive and dangerous jokes: “Well, they have their own jokes and
it’s them who laugh at them… just like my cousins. I have bronchial
asthma and I cannot run a long distance and before I used to run a little
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