Resilience and Risk

In the age of the human Genome Project wide spread prodigious information technology, our system of education is unable to keep pace with and meet the demands for knowledge, skills, and identification and treatment of academic, emotional, social, mental and health concerns of our youth. As the Saskatchewan task force on the state of education in Saskatchewan, Canada (1999) noted, the educational system's problems mirror those problems found in society in general. Increasingly, these societal problems are being deferred to the educational institutions for identification, treatment and prevention. While all parties tend to agree that prevention of problems is desirable, there is not general agreement about the efficacy of prevention programs rather than deficit models, nor the means by which to develop resilient students. The purpose of this paper is to identify risk factors and their potency, to identify protective or resilient factors and their potency, to identify the relationship and relevancy of these two concepts for students, and to identify family, community and school practices that foster resiliency.