The paper maintains that a study of violence in American society can help junior and senior high school students understand individual rights and responsibilities, develop a fuller self-awareness, and increase their tolerance for the law. Teachers can work toward these objectives by designing activities which help students differentiate and understand various types of violence (physical, psychological, individual, corporate, and environmental), grapple with questions of why people behave in violent ways, determine personal attitudes toward violence, and investigate how violence in America might be solved. Two violence-related models are presented. The first model focuses on violence as an experience students have encountered personally or are familiar with through the media or a study of history. Activities involve students in making a survey of violence in popular songs, writing a paper on cartoon violence, and participating in a field trip to the local jail. The second model is based on creating a slide show on violence throughout American history. Students are directed to select a period of American history, locate and reproduce violence-related photographs of the period, list significant violent incidents, and locate and record music from the era. The paper concludes with a diagram showing how various reading, discussion, symposium, and/or independent study activities can be combined to develop a unit on violence. (DB)