"BEING DOWN": CHALLENGING VIOLENCE IN URBAN SCHOOLS. by Ronnie Casella. (Teachers College Press, 2001)

A strongly written, well-researched ethnography, Ronnie Casella's "Being Down" offers a bold portrayal of the social constructs, events, and policies related to violence in a New York State public high school. Using a qualitative, grounded theory approach wherein new theory emerges from inductively coded data, Casella provides his readers with a meticulous analysis of field data, drawing heavily from an existing body of research. By weaving his findings into the wider context of violence in urban schools throughout the United States, the author reaches out to a broad audience.

Throughout "Being Down," Casella offers solid connections between his own ethnographic research and existing policy and theory. In developing his thesis that school violence is clearly situated within a wider, complicated context, Casella clarifies why policymakers must accurately identify problems before proposing solutions. More importantly, he proposes possible avenues for reform.

Casella lays out his thesis clearly and succinctly in the first and subsequent chapters: "Violence in schools is one formation of a larger street, sexual, racial, and political violence in the United States" (145). Building upon this argument, Casella offers compelling case studies to illustrate why the reality of "being down" must be fully explored before we as a society can hope to effectively challenge violence in urban schools. As he says in his final chapter, "Any violence prevention strategy must be a part of students' neighborhoods and experiences, since, as most school staff know, violence in schools and that in neighborhoods are already linked" (152). While these statements may seem redundant at a glance, the fact that school violence is not a discrete, compartmentalized problem is often inadequately acknowledged by educational policymakers and bears repeating.

Casella recognizes that political recognition of the complexity of school violence too often takes the form of premature policy changes, since "sometimes we look for solutions to social problems without agreeing on what the problem really is" (146). He illustrates this important point with effective concrete examples, including his description of how "a prevention effort to address issues associated with fights between African American and Latino [sic] girls requires an approach very different from that needed to address high suicide rates among white boys" (146).

Finally, Casella deftly addresses the important fact that an undeniable relationship exists between adolescent violence and the quality of adult involvement in adolescent lives. He cites research gathered and partially conducted by Noddings (1996), and concludes that "Too often, in the rush to improve test scores and to 'cover the curriculum,' in the panic to keep the school orderly ... many adults forget that students need to feel supported and have opportunities to support others" (152). He supports his conclusion with a vignette about Ben, a boy who struggled throughout high school but was successful, due at least in part to the efforts of a caring guidance counselor. In the absence of such support, Casella clarifies how older adolescents will respond to perceived injustice. He offers his readers a subtle warning that "When students are treated unjustly, they will react as adults will: They will fight back" (153).

In the final chapter of Being Down, Casella shares a memory from a school violence advisory committee meeting. He explains how, as other committee members were offering ideas related to violence prevention, he wondered, "'What violence are we talking about?'"(145). He emphasizes the need to differentiate between white students using firearms, gang-related tensions, and "the bullying of short, quiet, fat, disabled, or other types of outcast students" (146). Unfortunately, this ethnography falls short of paying equal attention to these diverse forms of violence. Rather, "Being Down" is focused heavily upon gang-related violence. This is not a fatal flaw, but rather a limitation that readers should be aware of.

In addition to under-representing the diversity of school violence, "Being Down" at times minimizes the perspectives of victims of school violence. Victims themselves are not outright ignored, but portrayals of victims are secondary to vivid, first-person portrayals of the perpetrators of violence in this ethnography. For example, the perspective of a stabbing victim is portrayed in an impersonal, third-person voice (92), while the perspective of a sexual harassment victim--who has romantic intentions toward her harasser--is portrayed in the second-person (40-41). The disturbing taunting of a student who might be described as some combination of "short, quiet, fat, disabled, or other ... outcast" (146) is limited to three paragraphs (36). When contrasted against the more comprehensive vignettes scattered throughout "Being Down" in which Casella describes the situations of students who had engaged in violent behavior, it is clear that victims of one-sided school violence are not the author's focus.

Casella's focus on students directly engaged in violent behavior, but not on the victims of these students, is important when one considers his policy recommendations. For example, he advocates that "zero tolerance must be replaced with more caring practices that involve students in the school, not force them out" (148). One must question whether the victims of one-way violence, including bullying and harassment, might be further victimized as an unintended consequence of more tolerant corrective measures. Even two-way reciprocating violence, including inter-gang conflict, puts innocent students at risk for peripheral victimization. Before we rush to dismiss zero tolerance policies from our nation's schools, the victims of school violence (as well as their parents and educators) must be given a voice in this debate. Given the strength of this book, it's disappointing that Casella ends on a comparatively weak note with a brief discussion of "five reform strategies" organized around a series of largely unsupported assertions (147). In laying out his first proposed reform he asserts "Top-down methods of violence prevention must be replaced with social actions that hold middle-class society accountable for the violence caused through its own policies and practices that sustain segregation, poverty, and power imbalances in schools and communities" (148). This statement begs for clarification and support, but is followed instead by an assurance that "federal money does exist" (148). In his fourth reform statement, Casella declares, "Police training, especially for school police officers, must include more than enforcement methods; it must include expectations that police protect youth--not attack them" (149). At the very least, the insinuation that school police "attack" students reflects poor word choice and is unsubstantiated in the text.

"Being Down": Challenging Violence in Urban Schools offers a valuable glimpse into the realities of violence and policies surrounding violence in our nation's urban high schools. In this ethnography, Casella acknowledges and attempts to sort through violence in its many complicated contexts. Through extensive field work and research, the author manages to describe gang-related school violence in profound detail. Other forms of school violence, including bullying and sexual harassment, receive lesser analysis. The latter is unfortunate, as being bullied or harassed is indeed a form of "being down."

This text may serve as a springboard for discussions regarding the complex problem of school violence in local school districts; Casella's suggestions for policy reform should be read carefully by educators. While Casella's recommendations are brief, perhaps it is unfair to expect him to lay out a roadmap toward a full and clear solution. School violence is not a research problem faced by one ethnographer in New York--it is a societal problem faced by all of us in urban America. Casella has provided us with a compass; it is up to each of us to pave the road toward safer schools.

REFERENCES

Casella, R. (2001). "Being Down": Challenging Violence in Urban Schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

Noddings, N. (1996). "Learning to Care and Be Cared For." In A. M. Hoffman (Ed.), Schools, Violence, and Society. Westport, CT: Praeger. (185-198).

Reviewed by Betsy Barmier