Knives and children: Why metal detectors will not replace psychologists
Dmitry Kurkin
Two teenagers armed with knives, massacred in the Perm school number 127, as a result of which, according to updated data, fifteen people were injured, among them pupils of the fourth grade. The motives of the attackers have not yet been established: it is not even known whether they acted together or decided to clarify the relationship between themselves (eyewitness accounts on this score diverge). But regardless of the motives, the question "What could have been done to prevent this?" will be discussed anyway. Moreover, this is not the first time that adolescents decide to settle accounts with their peers, teachers or the outside world, in which they have not found proper understanding.
Which of the recent high-profile outbreaks of adolescent violence may be the focus will be on children who needed psychological help.
Hot on the heels of the governor of the Perm Territory Reshetnikov ordered to tighten the requirements for security companies, providing security in schools in the region. The reaction is exponential and generally understandable, but at the same time delayed and ineffective: mass checks of security guards, metal detectors and video surveillance systems can be arranged in schools, but they still will not give one hundred percent guarantee against failures (which, it seems, happened at school No. 127).
Formal measures to ensure not so much security as its visibility in general have become a sign of the new time. Sociologist Kirill Titaev, explaining why the chosen total control strategy is ineffective, cites as an example the same framework of metal detectors in the metro: according to him, in order for the frame to work, a person must carry about 8 kilograms of iron, and if it works in half, then, most likely, it is something innocuous, like an all-metal pen or laptop. “People who are engaged in testing understand that this is meaningless work. No one can be made to work well, 90% of whose work is meaningless. [The remaining 10% will be performed poorly,” says Titaev. A fresh example, in general, confirms its correctness.
It seems to be obvious that, for example, to prevent injuries with heavy blunt objects, tightening control over heavy blunt objects, the idea is not feasible. So, it would be worthwhile to analyze how it’s generally so that children take knives in their hands in order to deal with problems. "It doesn't matter what happens around, how they treat me, I wonder if I need here ... life is beautiful, friends, but sometimes death is better. And maybe it would be better if I were in place of Eric [Harris] and Dylan [ Klebold] (two American teenagers who slaughtered at Columbine School. -Note ed.), ”wrote a 15-year-old student of Ivanteevsk School No. 1, who later went there with a cleaver and a pneumatic weapon.“ I loved you, but you yourself did not notice how you destroyed my psyche and life, ”this is already one of the Pskov teenagers , who opened fire on the police in 2016. Which of the recent high-profile outbursts of adolescent violence or not, the focus will be on children with psychological problems. Those who, in an amicable way, should be engaged in school psychological service.
It could be an effective prevention against aggressive behavior (the problem of which, of course, is not limited to extreme manifestations like armed attacks on teachers and classmates). However, public opinion still prefers to work through a system of prohibitions. Pupil playing shooters? Let's ban shooters. Did you listen to industrial metal? Let's ban industrial metal. Interested in the history of the school "Columbine"? Prohibit any mention of the school. And at the same time the Internet. As if you can protect a person from any trigger that could trigger it.
One or two and a half thousand students per school psychologist in the country, and salaries are often lower than teachers
In Russia, it seems, still do not believe in the profession of a school psychologist. Either because, out of old habit, it is customary to shift the concern for the psychological state of students to humanities teachers - they must also be the Master of the Soul, a sort of collective Vyacheslav Tikhonov from the movie "Live to Monday". Whether because of the system of financing general education schools, which, to put it mildly, is in a deplorable state: according to various estimates (1, 2, 3), the average rate of a school psychologist in Russia today ranges from 5 to 15 thousand rubles a month, but in any case, less psychologists are not paid in any field.
In the 2000s, this led to the fact that teachers who did not have the proper qualifications began to take over the functions of school psychologists as an additional extra job. Chapters did not go unnoticed: in 2008, participants in the round table entitled "Psychology in schools - problems or solutions?" appealed to the State Duma with a request to limit the activities of school psychologists by law. As an example, they cited both real cases of abuse and the scandal in Yekaterinburg, where parents of students qualified sex questions from psychologists as propaganda of "homosexuality, pedophilia, group sex and drugs." And if by itself the requirement to adopt a law on school psychologists looked reasonable, the proposal to ban specialists from communicating with children without the written consent of their parents effectively nullified the initiative: a teenager who has problems in dealing with parents will not go to them for a written consent to discuss these problems with a psychologist.
One way or another, the pedagogical psychology in Russia turned out to be in the pen, and they remembered it already towards the end of 2016 - soon after the story with the Pskov schoolchildren. Only then did the Ministry of Education finally pay attention to the fact that one or two and a half thousand students per school psychologist in the country, and the salaries are often lower than teachers.
Then it turned out that the existing services systematically ignore a huge number of children who may need the help of a specialist. "The fact is that we mean well-off families, parents in whom they don’t drink and have a permanent job, but in fact psychologists still understand psychological ill-being as disadvantage - the absence of trusting relationships in the family, detachment, dysfunctional methods of education, various forms of domestic violence, "said Anna Portnova, head of the department of clinical psychiatry for children and adolescents at the Serbsky Center. Judging by the fresh headline "A teenager who attacked a school in Perm, grew up in a prosperous family," this substitution of concepts still prevails: the same news asserts that for the last few years a schoolboy had problems in relations with his parents.
Now, when many of the circumstances of yesterday’s incident are still unclear, the last thing I want to do is engage in speculation and play on the feelings of concerned parents and victims. But if you continue to ignore the problem of providing psychological assistance in Russian schools — and it has been systematically ignored for many years now — such incidents will almost certainly be repeated. If a teenager, to whom only a lazy person does not tell that he has "all his life ahead," takes up arms, this means that the arguments were unconvincing. Therapy is not a panacea for bursts of violence, but choosing between whether to spend money on the work of a school psychologist or build another three rows of frameworks, turning the school into a regime object, it seems you should still put it on the first.
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