How do we stop violence in our schools ?

Great Debates
21

Emphasis mine. What an ignorant, self-righteous statement. I’m a single, working mother and I go to great lengths to ensure that my son is not only cared for superbly but that the time I must spend away from him in order to feed and clothe us is spent as constructively as possible. I make an effort to be involved in his schooling and social activities. I know his friends, I know his teachers, and right now, at 3:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, I know exactly where he is and what he’s doing. I’m willing to bet the majority of single parents feel exactly the same way I do, and are as conscientious as I am about their parenting. I’m doing my level best, every day, to make sure that he grows up to be a good, moral person. What makes you so confident that single parents are all TV-watching, child-ignoring slobs?

And yet…there’s no guarantee that all your efforts are in vain, that there’s something wrong with your child that you you just can’t touch. Whether that is true of any of the school shooters or not, I can’t say. I’m not so quick to assign blame to anyone. I’d give the cop-out answer, I’m afraid: it’s a combination of factors.

It’s pretty easy to point the finger at all the “bad” parents out there and say they’re the walking psycho-factories. It gives one a feeling of control over a situation - “I’m not a bad parent, so my kid would never grow up to do something so awful.”

22

Where to start. As a public school teacher in a small town, I may have a different perspective than some people.

First of all, at our school, violence does not seem to be a problem. I say “seem” because I am fully aware of the fact that I am not privy to everything that the students do. They do have lives away from my classes. I do, however, see more than they may think I do.

School shootings are not a serious threat in this country. They do happen, but so do a lot of things. Kids get sick, they have accidents, they abuse drugs, they abuse alchohol, they have car crashes. There a lot of unfortunate things that can befall a young person – school violence is pretty far down the list.

In my nine-year career, I have had only one student die and it was not at school or a school related event. He committed suicide with a gun while unsupervised at home. In my current school, we had a student die at school from a chronic heart problem. Even though the outcome was tragic, she was probably better off at school than anywhere else in her world. The school had CPR certified teachers, a licensed nurse, and her mother (a teacher) all with her within seconds of her collapse.

I have to look to parents for the solutions to many of the problems facing schools. Untold millions (or billions) of dollars can be spent on schools and still not touch the problem. We can raise the salary of teachers (and please do) and still not touch the problem. Parents are the only solution.

But that doesn’t mean that all parents are bad. It doesn’t mean that the parents of these kids that do bad things are bad parents. But parents are still the key.

Parents must be involved with their kids. Have supper with them every night. Talk over the day with them. Let them hear you talk about your day. Show them how to be an adult.

Parents must teach their children how to solve problems. They already know that shooting people will solve their problems. Show them the other ways of handling the pressures and problems that every adolescent has. Give them more constructive (or at least less destrictove) tools.

Well, enough rambling. I’ve got work to do. In addition to being a role model for my own kids, I’m a role model for the community’s kids in my school. Right now, I have to show them my work ethic. Maybe I’ll chime in again later.

23

Gundy-

Ma’am, I apologize if what I said struck you as personal. It was not intended to be. I think it’s great you have taken the effort to raise your child well.

My statement, however, I feel has merit. I know dozens of single parents, ranging from their early twenties to their late forties, who quite literally couldn’t care less.

I know a mid-forties man with a young teen son who is rather rebellious. Pop works eight hour days and spends his after-work time doing little else than drinking beer and watching TV. The son, with little else to do, spends most of his time out hangin’ with his friends. The same friends he sees all day in school.

The bottom line is, the father cannot compete- if he tried- with the 12 to 14 hours a day the kid spends with his friends. And now that the kid’s in his teens, it’s almost too late- little short of duct-tape and a ball gag can now keep the kid’s attention, let alone teach him any sort of meaningful lesson.

I know 20-something single mothers who treat their toddlers as burdens, an anchor on their social life and a drag on their party time. Where are the fathers? Most likely they skipped town when they found out the girl was pregnant, or, in one case I know if, the mother doesn’t even know who the father is anyway (!)

Quote:
“It’s pretty easy to point the finger at all the “bad” parents out there and say they’re the walking psycho-factories. It gives one a feeling of control over a situation”

Agreed. We’ve seen “easy access to guns” pointed out the same way. (But nobody seems to remember the fifty-some-odd homemade pipe bombs the Columbine shooters used.)

It’s easier for someone wanting to “do something” about the situation to blame some inanimate object- a gun, a video game, an action movie- rather than the real source… because no one knows what the “real” source is. There’s no one factor.

It’s the school environment, it’s the coddling society that tries to keep everyone from hearing a bad word, or having to suffer being yelled at, or from having their “self esteem” bruised.

But all these could be managed and dealt with, if only all parents raised their children well.

24

I would like to thank everybody who has been brave enough to remind us that violence in schools is neither common nor on the rise, and especially Cyberhwk for posting that link. I find it amazing that such information has been posted in GD again and again, yet some people still talk about violence in schools as if it’s some kind of epidemic. While the amount of time that parents spend with there kids is an important concern, that doesn’t justify hyping an imaginary trend towards youth violence. What I snese from many posters (this isn’t an assault on anybody, just an observation), as well as politicians and media personalities who are spreading misinformation about the topic, is hostility towards youth culture in the United States. Clearly, many changes have occurred during the past few decades: there are more children raised by single parents, punishments tend to not be so strict, there is more media material marketed directly towards children and some of it contains violent material. Needless to say, there are many critics of these trends, and they are eager to find negative consequences resulting from such changes. That is why, in my belief, they continue to lie about school violence, even when they know that their “facts” are incorrect.

25

First of all, even though these incidents are horrendous, they are not an epidemic. Violence happens to a tiny fraction of the school population. The media has to bear a sizable portion of the blame for the perception of an “epidemic”, with their non-stop, relentless, ad nauseum coverage of any incident. (remember OJ?)

But, these incidents do still happen. My own theory? Society in general, and especially the <30 portion of society, have become desensitized to violence. They have been exposed to so much, such a pervasive, constant atmosphere of simulated violence that they have actually become numb.

Pick up any TV listing, try to find a night of the week that does not have at least one show on it involving murders, rapes or spousal abuse. Look at the video games in the mall and the rental store. Think of some recent hit movies - Pulp Fiction?

There are more guns used and ammunition fired each week on TV than would be used in a small war. From each and every side, kids today are flooded with images of gratuitous violence. A recent report (I think the FTC) estimated that children see 8000 murders on TV by the time they are teen agers.

Is it any wonder that the Columbine killers walked through the school halls laughing as they shot people?

I try my best to be civil and reasonable in these posts, but I can get all worked up on this subject. The impression that kids get from TV and the movies is that pulling a gun and using it is as common an act as flipping the light switch in a room. And please, please, PLEASE don’t give me the argument that Hollywood is only reflecting real life. If this was the case an objective viewer of a sampling of our popular entertainment would conclude our civilization was so insane that we should be locked away en masse. The visual media has always ducked responsibility on this issue, and always will as long as there is money to be made.

I’m a parent with two boys. I am a responsible gun owner. I am a Cub Scout leader, a Hunter Education instructor, and a responsible parent. I do my best, my hardest, to teach my boys the right way, to keep them safe. I resent the crap and garbage that they see on TV. I often turn off the set simply because there is nothing suitable for them or me to watch, I’d love to throw the damn thing out altogether. But since it keeps coming at my boys from all sides, I have to do my best to teach them how to handle it, how to filter what they see and hear. I hate having to constantly do this, but as a parent I can do no less.

(And to be honest, I don’t do it alone. My wife, the Domestic Goddess, works as hard at it as I do)

There are no easy cures, no quick fixes, to this problem of violence. It has come about as a result of the changes in our culture over the last 30 years. When we as a society get serious about dealing with it, it will take as long to correct.

26

Ok, I’m only responding because I’m sure there’s a pool going on somewhere betting on how long it takes me to come along and hijack this thread. :smiley:

Yes, violence in our schools is a problem. But focusing on one specific aspect of school violence – namely, the highly sensationalized shootings of Columbie & Santee – is turning a blind eye to the scope of the problem. Violence is endemic in human society, so it comes as no surprise that schools are a mirror of that. Yet most violence is committed with bare fists (i.e. bullies), leaves no bodies in its wake (but arguably scars their victims for life, and almost certainly is a factor in the actions of school shooters), and never gets reported. To condemn one form of school violence (shooting) and ignore another more pandemic one (bullying) is downright prejudiced.

Many, many factors come into this. Children are more alienated today than ever before. They are under more pressure to perform and produce results. They face more uncertainty. They are raised with fewer moral restrictions. And yes, they are influenced by the way violence is glorified by the media and entertainment industry.

In order to successfully address these factors, we’d have to address ALL of them, not pick one out as a whipping boy. And addressing each factor raises even bigger issues. Remove guns from the populace? They’ll use knives instead. Ban violence in movies and computer games? You’ll have to repeal the First Amendment, which ain’t gonna happen. Force parents to raise their kids properly and instill a proper sense of dignity and morality? That one definitely has merit, but parents are VERY defensive about being told how to raise their kids. Make children attend class in the nude? HEY! We’re on to something there… :wink:

As you can see, all of these problems are distinctly American (esp. Constitutional privileges and parental autonomity.) We could not possibly “fix” the problem without vast and draconian measures that essentially wipe out personal freedoms across the board. We can bring attention to it, and try and raise our own kids in a proper environment, but that’s about all that we can do.

So, to answer the OP, all that can be done about school violence at this point is…learn to live with it.

27

I saw an A&E ‘Investigative Reports’ on workplace shooting sprees, and they did get around to mentioning school shootings as well. Several of the ‘experts’(quotated because I don’t know who they are, not because I didn’t believe them) said one thing we should do is not plaster these shooter’s faces all over the news. They said newspapers don’t put suicides on page one because they think some people will copycat. I don’t know if that’s true, though.

The main point was that news coverage(at least in a shooter’s mind) can turn an ineffectual loser into a powerful celebrity. They get to strike out at someone and have people all over the country pay attention to them. That the attention is negative is irrelevent. They get their 15 minutes.

28

We all know that this is the explanation favored by politicians, religious leaders, and most pundits. It’s amazing that such a viewpoint can become so widespread when a few simple facts can refute it so easily. As others here have pointed out, the rates of juvenile crime and school violence in particular have decreased consistently throughout the last decade. During this time, the level of violence in movies, TV, and video games has risen consistently. Clearly, there is no correlation between the two. Furthermore, all of our successful movies and TV shows end up being exported to other countries, yet other industrialized countries have much lower crime rates than we do. Here’s an article that presents the facts and sources: http://www.reason.com/0103/fe.jf.missing.html

29

Epidemic? Haha, you’re funny dude.

I have been researching school violence for a paper in my English class just recently. I think it is funny how the media makes it look like school are dangerous. I don’t recall where the site is, but I read in a statistical report that inside a school is the safest place to be in the United States still.

Occording to the Center For Disease Control, less than 1% of all homicides among school aged children (5-19) occur at school, on the way to/from school, or at school sponsored events. Of this, only 28% of them were in the actual school. Since the 1992/1993 school year, violence at schools has greatly decreased.

I do believe that you’re onto something with the ignorant children. If those damn preps would stop pushing us around, it probably wouldn’t be so bad.

Let me take that back. I can’t speak for all of the really big districts. My school only has about 1500 students, and so does the other high school in this district. Basically, there are two main clicks (cliques?) around here… The preps (jocks) and freaks. At about 8th grade, when students enter the high school here, every student either becomes a prep or a freak (or just a loser that is, well, a nerd or something, you know?).

The jocks are very arrogant, and quite frankly, assholes. I think that almost everyone tries to be one at first, because they’re what’s seen as good in the media. But they’re not accepted by them, ridiculed and tormented, and turn to other people that are the same… It just so happens those other people don black clothes. Since they have become outcasts, they are then picked on more. It’s quite a violent cycle.

If the media would stop making school shootings look so damn cool, maybe they wouldn’t happen so much. Maybe I am the only one that views things the way I do, but I think that the Columbine incedent in Littleton, CO should have been a major wake up call. Wake up to the suffering being caused by those who are favored. Is there really any wonder why some people could snap, and instantly get revenge and fame?

Maybe one day when the media comes to their senses, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold will be praised for starting the whole media portrayal of an isolated epidemic.

30

By ITR Champion:

We all know that this is the explanation favored by politicians, religious leaders, and most pundits. It’s amazing that such a viewpoint can become so widespread when a few simple facts can refute it so easily. As others here have pointed out, the rates of juvenile crime and school violence in particular have decreased consistently throughout the last decade. During this time, the level of violence in movies, TV, and video games has risen consistently. Clearly, there is no correlation between the two. Furthermore, all of our successful movies and TV shows end up being exported to other countries, yet other industrialized countries have much lower crime rates than we do. Here’s an article that presents the facts and sources: http://www.reason.com/0103/fe.jf.missing.html
Reply:

Well, the jury might still be out on this. I don’t believe that anyone will disagree with your statement that the level of media violence has steadily risen. As you say, some rates of crime and violence have fallen. There are other possible factors: good economy, changes in the drug subculture, etc. I will still hold to the opinion that an overall trend exists that tends to desensitize people, not only the young but people in general, to various forms of violence. I also believe that the effects may be more subtle than a straight “more TV violence = more crime”.

I am also very, very careful with the argument about other countries - frequently used as well by the gun control crowd. It’s very difficult and dangerous to make direct comparisons between our country/society and others. Many other influences exist that affect such a comparison - cultural history, legal system, mores, religion, etc. An extremely interesting look at this (from the viewpoint of the gun control debate, but applicable as well to this present discussion) is found in “The Samurai, The Mountie and The Cowboy” by David B Koppel.

31

I do appreciate the comments, and I do feel that this is an issue that needs to be discussed at length as it has been here.

I also want to clarify one point that seems to be brought up often, and that was my use of the term “epidemic”. I was not clear on that so I take the blame. What I was reffering to was not so much the actual school shootings themselves (which thankfully have not reached “epidemic” proportions yet) but rather the copycat problem - and even more, simply the fear that these few events have on our schools as a whole. I know for instance in my area there where several schools that let out early in the past weeks because “someone heard someone else had threatened to bring a gun to class”, etc. To my point of view the small actual occurance of violent events seem to have an effect that snowballs to (possibly) epidemic levels in the rest of our schools.

No doubt some will still disagree with me, but perhaps I have made my opinion a little clearer.

Thanks.

32

I just realized something… Timothy McVeigh graduated from the school I go to, and there was a little boy that shot a little girl in school not too far from here… Hmm, maybe I should be scared in school. :stuck_out_tongue:

33

You obviously have the right to believe whatever you want about violence in the media and its effects on people. What disturbs me is that there are large groups of people who want the government to take action against Hollywood (aka censorship) without any logical basis for doing so. During the election, we heard both candidates and an entire swarm of pundits announcing how they would/should force those evil studios to produce exclusively good, clean entertainment. I’m quite distressed to see such a large movement growing without any logical basis. Should we as a society just go around assigning blame for certain trends to whoever we want, without evidence? The case of media violence and youths imitating that violence is particularly bad, of course, because as we’ve shown in this thread, the “trend” towards more school shootings is purely imaginary.

34

Nothingman

Believe it or not I was a teen once.

IIRC they were pretty troublesome years. I was trying to find my rightful place in the world. Trying to be understood and trying to understand things myself.
I really believe that the kids are trying to find a way to be heard. Kind of a “hey I’ve got something to say.Why don’t you listen”.
It can be difficult being the center of your world when you are a child and by the time you are a teen you find there are a whole bunch of other people that share that world.
How do you get people to notice and hear what you are saying.
Some people just take the wrong approach.