there are other ways

There Are Other Ways

by Dahari Einat, Edo Levron, Yael Voshinsky, Keren Cohen, Grade 10
Amal Comprehensive School for Sciences and Arts, Hadera

Violence, unfortunately, is a common behaviour throughout the world. Every day we use violence without even knowing it. There are two main kinds of violence: physical violence and verbal violence. According to Even Shoshan Dictionary violence is "aggression and using power." The definition makes it hard to believe that violence is part of our lives.

We conducted a survey at our school and asked the pupils different questions regarding violence in our school. The results who that 65% of the pupils think there is some violence in school; 30% of the pupils were at some point involved in a violent incident, thought only 10% consider themselves violent people.

To the question of whether violence is a good way to achieve goals, most answered that it wasn't a way to achieve any goal.

Contrary to the common belief, most of the pupils don't think that watching violent programs on TV encourages violence.

So what is it that causes violence? Sima VArdi, a social worker, says that it depends on the environmnet where a child grows up, and especailly the family. If a person is exposed to violence during his childhood, he is more likely to become violent than a person who is not exposed to it as he is growing up.

So what can we do to prevent violence? Some ideas are: count to ten, breathe deeply and thnk about other ways to solve the problem. Our advice is just to relax and have fun in life. Violence can be avoided!

This poem previously appeared in The Student's Word, The Comprehensive High School for Sciences and Arts, Amal Hadera, May 1998.

Amal Hadera school site