Maart 2013: jaargang 10, nommer 1 - LitNet

LitNet Akademies Jaargang 10 (1), Maart 2013
dimensionally reduced to demographic details. Although it is difficult to identify a typical
perpetrator or victim, much stereotyping appears in the corpus of texts. Victims are presented
as persons who are leaders and role models. By contrast, the guilty parties are labelled as
repulsive, marginalised children. A number of the reports break through the limiting
boundaries of stereotyping, evoke empathy with the villains and denounce outstanding
learners and victims. Learners attack not only their peers, but also their educators, members
of the community and education structures.
Theme 2: The role of parents in school violence. The microlevel of Bronfenbrenner’s model
represents, among others, the connection between family factors and behaviour.
Bronfenbrenner regards the interaction between the family and the learners as an important
proximal process. However, it transpires from the analysis of the data that parents’
involvement in school violence, with the exception of a single exposé, was never
foregrounded. Rapportmainly portrays parents as figures on the fringe. None of the reports
tried to determine to what degree inadequate parental involvement, or violent forms of
exerting authority in the parental home had contributed to school violence.
Theme 3: Educators neglecting their duty, in contrast to particularly brave educators. The
second level of Bronfenbrenner’s ecosystemic model focuses on organisational or
institutional factors that have an influence on the environment in which the individual finds
him-/herself and within which interpersonal relations take place.Rapport’s presentation of
educators as key role players in the school’s mesosystem evokes two conflicting images: at
the one side of the pendulum there are caring, loving educators who jeopardise their own
safety for the sake of the learners who are entrusted to them, but at the opposite side of the
pendulum one finds incompetent persons who fail to establish a safe teaching and learning
milieu and who would even assault learners.
Theme 4: The interaction between community factors and school violence. From the analysis
of the data it transpires that Rapport, in accordance with the theoretical framework
underpinning this study, recognises the interaction between schools and the community in
which the schools are situated. News reports point out that the culture of violence and high
levels of crime in certain suburbs/cities in South Africa, poverty, social decline, as well as a
so-called lack of community values are possible causes of school violence. Rapport’s
portrayal of the interaction between community factors and school violence places a question
mark over stereotyping. School violence occurs not only in poor suburbs where school
violence apparently is the order of the day, but also at prestigious schools and schools
situated in affluent suburbs. Furthermore, school violence is not limited to learners, parents
and educators. Strikers, gang members, robbers and mobsters attack parents, educators,
learners and administrative staff on and outside school premises.
Theme 5: School violence as an embodiment of racial violence. Institutionalised racial
segregation was declared illegal in 1994. The diamentral change in the education policy
brought about an inherent change in the composition of learners in South African schools.
From Rapport’s portrayal of racial conflict at schools it transpires that neither the community
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