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| Can SCm be applied to hooligans and
terrorists outside the school? We shall here discuss three variants of violent behaviour amongst young men outside the school in order to understand SCm better by demarcating boundaries to incidents that SCm cannot resolve. I would propose making a distinction between three kinds of violent behaviour – criminal perpetrators, hooligans and terrorists. The criminal perpetrators have some kind of profit motive, usually robbery. Their guilt is already stated; we cannot start conversations with them by "constructive ignorance". (The ignorance of the therapeutic mediator must be genuine.) Sometimes society arranges meetings between the perpetrator and his victim called "mediation". I find these actions plausible but it would be more adequate to call them reconciliation by forgiveness because society has already confirmed the status of the victim, who may forgive the culprit. This means that these meetings do not belong to the SCm-paradigm where the active aim is not obtaining forgiveness. Certainly, the therapeutic mediator accepts feelings and welcomes spontaneous excuses, but the normal approach of SCm is a quiet, friendly reasoning that leads to a shared solution. Hooligans are persons who commit violent acts for no other purpose than the causing of damage for its own sake. (Mr Hooligan was a ferocious Irishman who at the end of 19th century smashed street lanterns in London for his own pleasure. A name of a phenomenon was created.) A hooligan has no adversary except abstract Law and Order. As far as I can see, a SCm-dialogue cannot be applied; the appropriate reactions are excuses and forgiveness. Terrorists, however, are different because their goals are political or religious. They call themselves "freedom fighters", which means that their basic values can, to some extent, coincide with the goals of a democratic society. But if their guilt is confirmed, the relation to them is the same as with criminals: SCm cannot be applied. When starting a discussion about what has happened, the word "terrorist" is used reciprocally to designate the other side. (“You terrorists train suicidal bombers!” – "You who want to teach democracy to other nations by bombing them, are the real terrorists!" etc.) If there should exist a shared concern, it would be meaningful to try the SCm-paradigm. Climate deterioration on our common planet could be a point of departure. After having said the above about criminal perpetrators, hooligans and terrorists outside of school, we must remind ourselves that all those categories are former school pupils. Their frustrations, values and belongingness to deviant groups could not be managed by the societal institution, where during decisive years of their life, they have spent most of the hours of the day. The pedagogic that school and teacher education could provide them with was intensifying norms by verbalizing, possibly accompanied by some learning-by-doing exercises about values. SCm offers an operational approach that is expected to give pupils at the border-line experiences that "suggestions for a shared solution were considered". We can therefore predict transfer effects from SCm to life outside the school. See Three peace promoting paradigm |