ABSTRACT
Several common assumptions about violence and abuse in learning and work environments bear attention by the everyday student and worker, as well as by parents, teachers, job supervisors, and the public at large. Children coming from either a protective or abusive home assume that school is a primary place for learning and freedom from abuse – not for bullying or violent assaults by fellow students. A teenager hoping to escape the fury or revenge from a communitybased gang member envisions school as a refuge from possible attack. A female worker abused at home hopes she will be safe at least temporarily while doing her job – only to cringe in fear when her abusive partner pursues her at work for further abuse or even murder. In one case a nursing professor’s trusted secretary was the only one privy to the professor’s “secret” of abuse by her husband, a physician – it was too shameful to share with her nursing colleagues. Thus,
when the professor did not show up for work one day, the secretary went to the professor’s house and encountered a “murder-in-process” – the husband stabbing his wife to death. This chapter addresses violence and abuse issues and their relevance to educational and workplace settings.
