Changing a Culture of Violence with Digital Writing

Last year, some of the teachers at my school spent a Saturday learning how to deal with intruders, and I returned to school on Monday to discover that the training had been very realistic. The high school science teacher thought he had a foolproof hiding place in the ceiling of my classroom, but the intruder flushed him out along with a few ceiling tiles. I thought I had "dodged the bullet" of training, but as a result of the Newtown shootings, intruder training may very well become mandatory along with gun safety classes for first graders.

I am a pacifist and should I be required to participate in such drills, I would hope to have at the ready some non-aggressive ways to deal with violence and a persuasive argument to get opted out of the training. I have wanted to craft a response to the numerous Second Amendment posts, but I have never felt sufficiently eloquent--or bold. I waited, hoping that someone would speak for me.

Poka Laenui, executive director of the Wai'anae Coast Community Mental Health Center, has said what I wanted to say.  The author of  "Violence, Guns, and Deep Cultures" says we choose to focus on what is different about the perpetrator of violence and we then go on to exclude that person or persons. Laenui blames our culture of "domination, individualism, and exclusion--or DIE" for tragic events like the shootings at Sandy Hook. Whereas others would counter violence with a focus on treatment for autism and other mental illness, Laenui says our focus should be much broader.

"The very deep culture of DIE itself must be replaced with...a culture of inclusion, loving, caring and sharing...We would find group and individual achievements and excellence praised, rather than superiority or domination. Tests would be taken by groups helping one another get to the correct answers, rather than separating children and ranking one higher or smarter than the other after the tests."

Laenui would certainly agree with Richardson who writes, "Learning has traditionally assumed a winner-take-all competitive form rather than a cooperative form...Networked learning, in contrast, is committed to a vision of the social that stresses cooperation, interactivity, mutual benefit, and social engagement. The power of ten working interactively will invariably outstrip the power of one looking to beat out the other nine" (133).

We watched the involvement of social networking in the Arab Spring uprising, and we know the power of digital writing to create change. Can we imagine our use of digital literacy as a factor in moving our own culture away from violence?

Laenui, Poka. "Violence, Guns, and Deep Cultures." Yes! Spring 2013: 11.

Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2010