Any program addressing the issue of violence in schools will be trying to put an end to that violence. Any attempt to end violence in schools will be seeking ways to change the behavior of the children in the schools who are violent. Any method or program that is designed to change a person's behavior will necessarily have to change a person's beliefs about what constitutes right and wrong behavior. Any method or program designed to change a person's beliefs about what is right and wrong behavior will in some way be trying to change that person's belief about what is right and wrong. Any method or program designed to change a person's belief about what is right and wrong is essentially brainwashing under a different name. The one saving grace is that the end is noble enough to justify the means.
Few people would dispute that a cessation of violence is a noble goal; that those few people are then a minority who not only don't get their way but are forced to change their way is what "society" is all about. Certainly if the "pursuit of happiness" were part of the U.S. Constitution its application by this minority would be tempered by the right to life possessed by the others their violence is inflicted on.
Before one can implement a program one must have a philosophy to guide development as well as implementation. There are two choices: reason and emotion. "A moral being must be able to keep his natural impulses in check, to control himself, to do what is required by the weightiest of moral reasons, even if this means thwarting the strongest present inclination... The moral man cannot... rely on any innate tendency, for he may be in circumstances in which he ought to resist rather than follow it" (Baier, cited in Zigler, 63). Or conversely, "Rationality is not a force to invoke against habit and impulse, it is the attainment of a working harmony among diverse desires" (Dewey, cited in Zigler, 63). While Baier says one must be ab...