Exploring Violence In School of Tharu, Magar And Muslim Communities of Nepal
Date
2021-11
Authors
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Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the phenomenon of school violence, its
multiple causes, and consequences and to explore the ways of its prevention. I have
applied concurrent embedded research mixed methods, in which I have given high
weightage to the qualitative exploration as compared to quantitative finding, since the
purpose of the research is focused on the value of humanism perspectives. Thus, I
have paid attention to more subjective and less objective reality while exploring the
knowledge in schools of Tharu, Magar and Muslim communities. The study is
founded on the philosophy of pragmatism with multi case studies of the communities’
schools. Parents, teachers, students, and the school management committee members
were key research participants of the communities. I also explored voices on school
violence of 834 respondents through opinion survey in which Tharu, Magar and
Muslim students of 6 schools including Madrasa participated. The data driven from
multiple cases were thematically analyzed and theoretically interpreted to support the
qualitative data findings.
The study showed that the school violence is a human-induced behavior. It
appeared in different forms either as corporal punishments or as bullying and sexual
abuses. Such forms of school violence have been nurtured by knowledge, attitude, and
behavior evolved through socio-cultural and religious practices. Power dynamics,
behavioral pedagogy, reaction of pain and desire of pleasure also promoted violence.
Following the cause-and-effect theory, I found that school violence existed as
a form of vicious cycle. Bullying, sexual abuse and corporal punishment are the
turning points of the cycle. The behavioral causes further supported the existence of
the vicious cycle of school violence in the schools of Tharu, Magar and Muslim
communities. However, the prevention methods were found different. I also found
that occurrence of corporal punishment, bullying and sexual abuse is somehow
contextual and depends on cultural, religious and community practices.
The findings mentioned above imply that the theory of self-awareness and
self-management can prevent the children from being the victims of violence,
whereas the external support mechanism (such as policies, legislations, reporting
mechanism, case management system etc.) can be instrumental to decrease school
violence.
Description
Keywords
Muslim Community, School Violence