Addressing violence

Nick Couzelis wants to know why some rap artists often swear in their songs, and promote violence against women in their music videos.

"It should be about the music not about hurting people," said Nick, a Grade 8 student from Ecole Gron Morgan Public School. "I don’t really like seeing people get hurt. Maybe if it was fake, like in movies, but usually I don’t like to see that in music videos."

Nick joined about 65 other boys from area public schools at the Lakehead Elementary Teachers awareness conference on Wednesday. The conference focused on gender equity and violence against women.

The all-day conference for students in Grades 6, 7, and 8, took place at the Prince Arthur Hotel where the young men had discussion groups, karate lessons and presentations.
Nick wasn’t the only student at the conference who questioned the glorified violence found in many music videos.

Doug Dumbar, a Grade 7 student from McKellar Park Central Public School, agreed with Nick’s observations.

"In some music videos, they show men hitting girls," Doug said. "I guess they think it’s OK but it isn’t."

Neither Doug nor Nick could think of the name of any of the violent rap videos that they remembered violent scenes from.

But violence in entertainment wasn’t the only issue the McKellar student was focusing on at the conference. Doug said his goal is to help stop bullying, and hoped information from the workshop might give him a better understanding of how to achieve that goal.

Dennis Dubinsky, one of the organizers of the conference, said violent images in the media are a big problem.

The media bombards everyone so a conference where students can talk about the hidden and not so hidden messages is important, he said.

"This is an opportunity for students to get some exposure to those images and discuss what that is about," Dubinsky said. "It’s a pretty big problem, hence a conference like this. With the amount of things we are seeing in the media, locally, national and around the world, I think this was an opportunity for us to do something about it."

He said from what he’s seen in the media he felt that violence against women is a growing problem and hoped that the boys who attended would leave at least thinking about the issue more.

Organizers of the conference also had plans to address sexualisation of women in the media.

He said it would be a challenge to have to discuss these serious topics with the elementary school students but well worth the effort.