When I first became a physical education teacher at Cambridge Montessori School a decade ago, my assumption was that any and all intimations of violence in our activities were to be avoided. Then I took a group of middle school students fencing. The fencing instructor was refreshingly brazen about the pretend violence involved. He explained that the students were in a safe space, and they were smart kids who knew the difference between real and pretend, and so within that context they could absolutely whack, stab and poke each other with the foam swords, lopping off limbs and disemboweling classmates. The kids immediately took a liking to this adult, who was honoring their intelligence without stifling their impulses. It probably didn’t hurt that he had a mohawk.
As a PE teacher, providing a safe space in which the students could engage with such themes made perfect sense. The gym games I was learning were already filled with inklings of combat and menace; there was Battleship, in which teams launched “torpedoes” at one another’s ships; Mafia, in which the villagers attempted to identify the wiseguys before they were all whacked; and Assassin, in which a killer lurked amongst the crowd, murdering people discreetly with special handshakes. I even turned "The Hunger Games" into a beloved PE activity for older students and delighted in dramatizing the event: “You may think this is an ordinary gym class. But in the end, only one of you will survive . . . ”
I never questioned whether or not this approach worked because I never needed to. The students pretty unanimously loved gym, and the families knew me as an easygoing and accommodating teacher who mixed in a healthy dose of cooperative and team building activities. As long as we were fostering a passion for movement, the goals of my PE class were being met. Until last year.
It was with some shock that a supervisor informed me that a family had expressed concern about the normalization of violence in my program. I responded to the family, via email, with a similar sentiment to the one I’d heard at the fencing lesson years before: “The world is pretty turbulent, and our goal is never to encourage violence. I often find that the kids relish The Hunger Games because they are so aware that real violence is wrong, and to have a safe space to use their imaginations and pool noodles and dodgeballs to "attack" each other can be a lot of fun.” Nonetheless, the family withdrew their daughter from my summer camp program, and I stewed. Did the parents really think that PE was ground zero for dealing with violence in the world? But once I cooled off, I realized that for all I knew, they were right. Where does violence come from anyhow?
Brad Bushman is a professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University. He studies the causes, consequences and solutions to violence and aggression, and was a member of President Obama’s committee on gun violence. I spoke with him to try and get a better sense of how children learn to be aggressive. We often hear about the profile of a violent offender, the specific set of circumstances and experiences that produce a delinquent, and I wanted to know if it was possible that PE was part of that equation. But the first thing Dr. Bushman pointed out was that I had the question backwards.
“The question is how can it be unlearned?” said Bushman. “Humans don’t have to learn to behave aggressively. The most aggressive humans on the planet are toddlers. It’s hard to suggest that toddlers have learned how to bite, hit, kick, trip, pull hair and push by observing others do that. In their homes, their parents don’t kick them and bite them and push them. Usually the goal is for parents and society and others to teach children to inhibit their aggressive behavior.”
This isn’t to say that circumstantial and experiential factors can be discounted. An American Psychological Association report on gun violence prediction, prevention and policy, outlines several factors that can be indicators, including neuropsychological deficits and family influences. “Particularly for early-onset aggressive youths raised in families that are under a high degree of environmental stress,” says the report, “aggressive child behavior and negative parenting practices interact to amplify early-onset aggression.”
However, in the absence of any circumstantial amplification, it can be somewhat disquieting to realize that aggression is part of our nature, something that must be teased out or inhibited rather than barred entry. Dewey Cornell, one of the authors of the report and the director of the University of Virginia Youth Violence Project, explains, “Our impulses toward violence are mostly held in check by empathy, morality and fear of consequences. When those restraints are abraded, violence is more likely.” The role of parents and teachers, then, is to provide these restraints and to encourage empathy.
I felt like I was accomplishing this goal in gym. Despite the occasionally sinister themes of certain games, all of our activities were intended to promote teamwork, strategy, critical thinking and the Montessori values of grace and courtesy. In my class you could lob a torpedo at another team’s boat, but if you accidentally hit someone in the head, you had to walk over and apologize.
Having a safe space in which to release aggression seemed not only harmless but beneficial. In psychology, this approach is known as catharsis theory: the idea that rage and anger can be vented, resulting in an improved disposition. To suppress our impulses and ignore the volatile nature of reality felt like a surefire way to raise a generation of snowflakes. If the issue came up again, I intended to stand my ground.
When the school year started last fall, I hoped that any tension with the family had dissipated over the summer. I quickly found out this wasn’t so. Sasha, the student whose parents had expressed concern over my teaching style, sat out several PE games, specifically the ones with combative themes. The parents once again expressed their concern, and I again roused my indignation about all the ways they were doing their daughter a disservice. My program director scheduled a meeting with Molly, Sasha’s mother, and I came in with my defenses ready, eager to explain why having a space for dynamic expression was healthy and essential.
The meeting did not go how I imagined it would. Molly began by expressing what a wonderful PE teacher I was and explained that thanks to my skills with the children and the trust they had in me, I was the perfect person to help them reframe these games and shape their values. I was taken aback, but feebly launched a counterattack, noting that it appeared there was no issue with the games themselves, just the narrative surrounding them and that the class was a safe space in which to explore these narratives.
“But it doesn’t feel safe for Sasha,” said Molly. “And my job is to advocate for her.”
It was hard to argue with this, and I agreed to sit down with Sasha and ask how she felt about it. It was an illuminating conversation, taking place on a sunny fall day at recess. I told her that I wanted to apologize for any discomfort she felt in gym and that it wasn’t my intention to make anyone want to sit out. I asked her if it was the games or the language that was making her uncomfortable. Sasha said it was the language; that she couldn’t believe everyone just accepted narratives about war and death and went along with it. I told her that if she was okay with it, we could discuss this language as a class and brainstorm possible ways to reframe these games, but I warned her that people might think it’s silly.
“That’s okay,” said Sasha. “I’m used to people thinking things like that are silly, but I don’t really care.” I quickly went from thinking she was too fearful for her own good to thinking she was actually quite courageous.
Catharsis theory, it turns out, only works in theory. In one study, in 1959, participants were insulted and then had to wait ten minutes before confronting the insulter. Half the group pounded a nail during the waiting period. Afterwards, the nail pounders were more hostile towards the insulter than the non-nail pounders. This finding has been replicated many times over. “If you measure the level of aggressiveness of high school students at the beginning of the year, and compare those who play football with those who don’t play football, the football players aggressiveness scores increase over the course of the year,” explains Dr. Bushman.
The theory behind catharsis, that it allows one to vent their anger, does not take into account that the brain doesn’t exactly have ventilation holes. Rather, in “venting,” one is essentially stoking the fire. In a paper on catharsis theory from 2002, Dr. Bushman wrote:
To vent, people punch pillows, wallop punching bags, beat on couches with foam baseball bats, throw dishes on the ground, kick trash cans, scream and swear into pillows, and so forth. In essence, venting is practicing how to behave aggressively. Such aggressive activity should prime aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavioral tendencies, especially if the people think about the source of their anger while venting. Thus, venting should keep angry feelings active in memory and also should increase the likelihood of subsequent aggressive responses.
Applied to PE, these findings did not bode well for Battleship. I asked Dr. Bushman how violent narratives might influence behavior in gym.
“If you‘re in a gym class and you see someone behave aggressively and they get a reward, it increases the likelihood that you imitate that behavior,” he responded. “If you engage in games where you cooperate and help others, those prosocial games can increase prosocial behavior and decrease aggressive behavior. Any setting in which we can teach people to be more empathic of others would be awesome.”
After the Parkland shooting in February, and President Trump’s suggestion that teachers carry guns in school, I began to look at this issue with increased urgency. How could we so casually tolerate school shootings like no other country on earth, and what could be done about it?
I spoke with Paul K. Chappell, an Iraq War veteran and the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Foundation, who advocates for teaching peace literacy in schools. He believes that peace needs to be taught as an essential competency. “I’ve had educators say, ‘Can you come talk to the students for half an hour about peace?’” says Chappell. “But an educator would never say, ‘Can you come talk to the students for half an hour about algebra or how to speak a foreign language.’ They realize that math and language are competencies and skill sets and we have to also view peace as a competency and a skill set.”
This need for peace literacy is so prevalent now because, as Chappell points out, never before has humanity had the power to annihilate itself. In addition to the reality of nuclear weapons, we are inundated with violent media, from coverage of mass shootings to Fortnite — the latest third-person shooter video game and one that my middle school students are obsessed with. If we are not able to teach empathy and prosocial behaviors, to become peace literate, so to speak, it might not be a stretch to wonder how a generation raised on casual images of extreme violence will respond to having the tools for that kind of violence at their fingertips. In fact, it’s not something we even need to wonder about. On Friday, May 18, Sante Fe High School in Texas suffered a mass shooting, the 22nd school shooting in the U.S. this year, according to CNN's coverage. The lines between the imagined safe space of a school gymnasium and the real dangers of the world seem to be shrinking
It’s no doubt an exaggeration to say that gym class is where aggression is learned. But if we maintain violent narratives and conceive of gym as a place in which to vent, we are only reinforcing society’s casual attitude towards carnage and missing a crucial opportunity. If we start to approach PE differently, maybe it can also be a place where peace literacy begins. As Maria Montessori herself once said, “Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.”
“The words we use matter and how we perceive things matter,” says Dr. Bushman. “How we frame things makes a difference.” With this in mind, I recently decided to open this discussion up to my 4th, 5th and 6th graders (throughout the fall and winter we had avoided playing any games with violent narratives). I wanted to get their take and engage them in the process of reframing.
When I asked them to circle up so we could have a discussion, their alarm bells went up. This is usually the sign that a serious conversation is about to happen, and I assured them it was an important conversation but one that I needed their help with. I explained that over the course of the year, and given recent events like the peace march that our school engaged in, in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, I had become uncomfortable with some of the language we used in class.
“I know you guys are mature enough to know the difference between real and pretend, and I know it might seem kind of silly, but I want to think about different words we can use for some of the games we play. We may not be supporting violence by using that language but we are . . .” here I struggled to find the right word.
“ — suggesting it?” offered a student.
“Exactly! We are suggesting it. And with all the violence happening in the world around us, I hope that at least in gym we can suggest other values.”
The students nodded, relieved that no one was in trouble, and the next few minutes were spent reframing, with colorful proposals for different names and stories that could apply to various gym games to tweak their narrative. “Assassin” could become “Electric Handshake,” and “Battleship” could become “Magical Ponies Throwing Apples.” The conversation turned out to be fruitful, and not because of an immediate culture shift or prosocial learning experience, but because the students, flexible of mind and spirit, seemed to get right away where I was coming from. Outside of school, they might still play Fortnite or pretend to shoot each other at the playground, but they agreed to carve out a little space where we could run and play and use our imaginations without submitting to the basest versions of ourselves. It was a small step towards teasing out aggression and welcoming in opportunities to teach empathy and peace literacy. We could elevate our discourse and include everyone, from the best athlete to the bravest little girl.
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