The Society for Prevention of Violence is
dedicated to reducing the prevalence of violent acts and asocial
behaviors in children and adults through education. It accomplishes
this mission by teaching children and adults the use of the skills
necessary to build their character, helping people of all ages to
acquire a strong value system, motivating youngsters and adults to
develop good communication skills and to realize growth in
interpersonal relationships. The mission of the Society includes
integration of social and academic skills to encourage those who use
them to reach their full potential and contribute to our nation's
well being by educating its population to make decisions and solve
problems through effective and appropriate means.
The Society for Prevention of Violence was established in 1983 as a
non-profit 501(c)(3) organization shortly after the founders, Dr.
Semi J. Begun and Ruth W. Begun, realized that Social Skills Training
could be used as a tool to prevent violence, if taught in a
systematic manner and by using a technique similar to that employed
by mediators to resolve conflicts. The unique first lessons to teach
social skills in this format were prepared and taught by the Society
for Prevention of Violence in the year 1983 to elementary school
children in one of Cleveland's Public City Schools. It was a great
success and was followed by more and more schools deciding to include
Social Skills Training into their teaching curriculum for all grades.
By 1990, over 100 schools utilized Social Skills Training in Greater
Cleveland alone and many more throughout the nation. Ready-to-Use
curricula lessons for teaching social skills to children at all
grades from pre-K to 12 were finally published by Simon &
Schuster, now Pearson, in 1995/1996. Ready-to-Use curricula lessons
to teach Violence Prevention Skills using this same format and real
life situations were published in 1998/1999 to provide an additional
and more intense teaching course to prevent person-to-person violence
and to achieve harmony and peaceful co-existence in schools, at homes
and in communities.
The Society for Prevention of Violence was founded, as previously
mentioned, in 1983. It was combined with The Begun Institute for the
Study of Violence and Aggression, which had been founded in 1972 and
was located originally at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.
This Institute gathered, studied and analyzed a multitude of
information during its ensuing ten-year period. Symposia were held
and involved numerous well-known presenters and participants from
various career fields. Early on, the founders of the Institute, the
same as those of the Society for Prevention of Violence, foresaw
already in 1972 the trend of increasing violence in our families and
communities across the nation, and chose to take a leadership role in
pioneering an educational approach to alleviating aggressive and
antisocial behavior.
During the next almost twenty year period, through the determination
of Ruth Begun, Executive Director first and then President, of the
Society for Prevention of Violence, and the experience of the highly
knowledgeable staff of the Society, workshops with college credits,
parent-training sessions, teacher staff in-services, Social Skills
teachings (in and out of classrooms) to youngsters of all ages,
collaborative projects with other organizations and in foreign
countries were developed. Furthermore, the above mentioned
Ready-to-Use Lessons and Activities curricula for comprehensive
Social Skills and Violence Prevention Skills Training for all grades
from pre-K to 12 were refined. These curricula are published and
available for use. The Society's educational approach was and
continues to be one of the few PROACTIVE resources that are available
to change violent behaviors in contrast to most other means, which
reflect our nation's almost complete reliance on REACTIVE tools when
dealing with problems of violence.
For more information about SPV, please click here.
Social Skills Training (SST) is a training effort used by educators to transfer between generations those skills which all people should acquire for good interpersonal relationships to be free from prejudice and hostilities which interfere with good community life and community well-being.
Such skills demand an ability to properly communicate with others to avoid and or to overcome conflicts. They are responses to internalized feelings and reactions to daily interpersonal contacts with others, and they are those complementary to academic skills which contribute to success in living the human experience.
The skills are taught by employing a highly Structured Learning Methodology which includes role-playing where two teams of people are chosen to demonstrate how these skills are used to resolve potential disagreements, to resolve conflicts and to avoid confrontational situations. They are continually reinforced in planned and extemporaneous daily activities.
Violence Prevention Skills are intended to be taught as companion skills to social skills. While the use of social skills provides the ability to avoid and defuse conflicts, the knowledge of violence prevention skills will empower children and adults to avoid or to resolve violence threatening real life situations without having to resort to violence.
The Violence Prevention Skills methodology is the same as that used for teaching social skills. Both SPV methodologies, when combined, represent SPV's Social Skills Program. The Methodology is Structured Learning. The lessons mirror real life situations which have actually occurred and can happen to anybody. Practicing these lessons enables children and adults to either avoid these occurrences or to react properly and almost instantaneously to such situations and to deal with them in a professional manner. Therefore, this training can effectively prevent violence.
For more information about SPV's Social Skills Program, please click here.
The Society for Prevention of Violence was, in 1983, the first and only organization that did teach Social Skills together with the use of conflict resolution methods to children in schools. Even of more interest is, that these then unique Social Skills/Conflict Resolution lessons, which were very similar to the present SPV curricula lessons,* were taught in two Cleveland Public Schools.
The then superintendent of the Cleveland Public Schools (CPS), Dr. Frederick Holliday, recognized immediately the value that such teaching would have in making children less aggressive since they would learn to settle conflicts peacefully. Indeed, he was so interested in this program that he assigned to the SPV one of the regular teachers of the CPS to teach those lessons throughout two entire schools. In addition, he asked the district's research department to evaluate the success of this program by doing statistical evaluation research in four schools to compare the behavior of the children in two schools where the program was taught against that in two other schools which did not use the program. Unfortunately, this statistical study was never completed.
However, according to the administration and teaching staff in those schools, the program indicated positive results and was continued over many years and in fact, at many other schools in the CPS and also in numerous Greater Cleveland suburban school systems.
The Ready-to-Use SPV curricula lessons, called "SPV's Social Skills Program," are presently taught in many Cleveland Municipal and Greater Cleveland schools and also at Greater Cleveland Head Start centers.
For evaluation purposes of the program, a simple test is given before any lesson is started and after all lessons are completed by employing a list of multiple choice questions. The outcome of the tests leaves no doubt that the program is effective since the students substitute their original proviolent answers by indicating that they prefer to use now, after they completed the lessons, peaceful and well considered solutions.
For more information on SPV's Social Skills Program, please click here.