Resources for Educators
Dr. Fitzgibbons and associates have given many conferences to teachers, students, school counselors, school administrators, and parents on understanding and resolving anger in children and adolescents. In 2004 he coauthored in The American School Board Journal an article, Learning to Forgive, for educators on diminishing anger in the classroom with Bob Enright, Professor of Educational Psychology at University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Tom O’Brien, Ed.D., Ph.D., a former superintendent of schools of the archdiocese of Philadelphia and now an Assistant Dean, College of Graduate Studies at Immaculata University.
Dr. Enright's pioneering work on forgiveness education with elementary school students is presented in the DVD, The Power of Forgiveness, available at www.amazon.com. His research in Belfast and central Milwaukee empirically demonstrates that teaching children to forgive in the classroom diminishes their excessive anger.
Selfishness and anger
Conferences are offered for teachers, school psychologists and counselors, school administrators, students and parents groups on understanding and reducing anger in students and in the classroom. In these seminars one of the major sources of anger in young people is presented which is selfishness. Selfish students can be highly disruptive and draining to educators. The chapter on the selfish-angry child on this website can be helpful in understanding the problem of narcissism in the students and their parents, its origins primarily in permissive parenting and in the narcissistic culture, the virtues which can diminish this severe personality conflict and parental interventions.
A major problem for educators today is the enabling of highly narcissistic behaviors in students by their parents. The pressure these parents put on school administrators and educators is so intense that in many school districts/school systems educators also become enablers. When this occurs the problem is not longer that of a severe character weakness in the child. The damaging pathology is denied and the teacher is identified as having the primary problem because he or she is unable to deal with the narcissistic, disruptive, disrespectful student.
These parents and administrators have no idea how much they are damaging these young people by failing to identify and thereby enabling selfish, angry behaviors. They are also harming gifted, commited teachers who are becoming profoundly discouraged by their inability to receive support from either parents or from school administrators in addressing this serious problem in many students. In a challening economy these students will have great difficulty being successful being team players in the workplace.
A Wall Street Journal article, Trophy Kids Go to Work, on this topic in the fall of 2008 related that a Boston-based consultant was coaching a group of college students for job interviews and she asked them how they believe employers view them. She gave them a clue, telling them that the word she was looking for begins with the letter "e." One young man shouted out, "excellent." Other students chimed in with "enthusiastic" and "energetic." Not even close. The correct answer, she said, is "entitled." "Huh?" the students responded, surprised and even hurt to think that managers are offended by their highfalutin opinions of themselves, www.online.wsj.com/article/SB122455219391652725.html.
Bullying
Our clinical experience from treating bully-victims for over two decades is that bullying has increased significantly in our schools and communities, in part because of the growing problem of narcissism in young people. Other important factors are the collapse of marriages, fatherless homes and permissive parenting. Teachers, regardless of length of service, report not being confident in their ability to deal with bullying and 87 per cent want more training (Boulton 1997). New programs need to be developed to protect children in our schools, to help victims learn how to resolve their strong anger with impulses for revenge, to encourage peers to understand bullies and to support victims, and to provide treatment protocols for the hostility and narcissism in bullies. These programs should be based primarily on growth in virtues and character development and not on politicallly correct agendas as is occurring in many schools today.
A recent suicide of a teenager in Massachusetts was the result of severe bullying
www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/03/holding_for_pho.html. Hopefully, this tragedy will lead to new programs for students, parents and educators on diminishing excessive anger in schools, in cyber bullying and text messaging.
The angry, defiant child who bullies other children in Catholic schools should be required to participate in ongoing treatment with a mental health professional who has expertise in the resolution of excessive anger. Principals and teachers should communicate with the treating professional to ascertain whether the child is willing to grow in the virtues that can decrease excessive anger such as forgiveness, respect, generosity, charity and kindness. Given the severe harm caused to children by excessive bullying, if the angry child is unwilling to change and children at the school are being harmed by his/her anger, then we recommend that the parents be informed that the child must be removed from the school.
This intervention can be effective not only in protecting innocent children, but also in helping the angry, defiant child to realize that there are strong negative consequences to bullying behaviors. Also, such a strong correction may be the prime motivating factor that finally leads an angry child to change abusive behaviors and to grow in virtues in the pursuit of a healthy personality.