I remember hearing/reading in Sociology that school violence only looks like it’s on the rise. It was actually most prevalent in the 1800s. Who can give me some stats on the subject? Can someone prove/disprove when school deaths were the highest? Any decade or year (both?) will do.
Please distinguish deaths and shootings. Shootings is only one category.
Deaths that took place specifically in a school? I’m not sure. I AM fairly convinced, however, that such violence as mass shootings a la Columbine and V-Tech are not some new trend that represents a boom in violence. I’m also not convinced that violence perpetrated by young people (not sure if V-tech perp counts in this context) is a new thing.
If you read Jess Pomeroy’s story, by Harold Schecter (Jesse Pomeroy - Wikipedia) you’ll get some stats about violence perpetrated by young people, which occurs at about the same rate throughout history. And you’ll see people from the 1800s saying exactly what we’re saying now…that violence in schools and by youngsters is up/on the rise.
I believe that if you look at the FBI’s crime statistics you’ll find that violent crime has actually decreased (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/) in recent years. The book Freakonomics addresses the issue of the complete LACK of a suspected boom in violence.
My personal, admittedly uneducated opinion, is that we are more aware of it because media outlets and the search for ratings put this stuff in our faces much more.
Exactly. The rise of “saturation coverage” has had the effect of making problems seem worse than they really are, because whenever some major event occurs, you just can’t get away from it.
Youth violence is nothing new: look at Romeo and Juliet.
In other news, child pornography is nothing new.