The growing problem of violence in schools in the United States has become a cause for concern in the twenty-first century. Part of the reason, some believe, is that schools do not pay much attention to those students that seem to have a problem. Therefore, most schools in the United States are not using the most effective methods possible to control school violence. At 11:19 am on April 20, 1999, two heavily armed young men stormed Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Video surveillance cameras had every movement of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on tape while the two young men wounded twenty-eight people, killed fifteen, and then turned the guns on themselves.
The victims families and many other people of the nation are still asking many questions. What took SWAT teams more than forty-five minutes-almost the entire length of the rampage-to get inside of the school, and another three-plus hours to get to the library? Many fatal school attacks have happened since 1996, all of which were extremely shocking to the public. School violence is a serious problem, especially in public schools. Improving the quality of American education is difficult without also addressing the issue of school violence, since no matter how good the teachers or curriculum are, violence makes it difficult for students to learn. In fact, in the Millennium School 2000 survey, ninety-three percent say that school safety strongly impacts academic performance. School violence wears many faces. It includes gang activity, locker thefts, bullying, gun use, assault, and just about anything that has a victim.
Violence is perpetrated against students, teachers, and staff, and ranges from intentional revenge to accidental killings of bystanders. Often, discussions of school violence are grouped together with discussions of school discipline, generally both involve questions of how to maintain order in a school. Today the possibility that a disagreement among students will be settled with some type of weapon rather than an old-fashioned fist fight has increased significantly. A major difference between violence in the schools in the 1950s and the 1990s is the presence and use of weapons, especially guns. One in five high school students are said to carry a weapon at least twice a month. If that s not scary enough, handguns are overwhelmingly the choice of weapon (by seventy-five percent) for those who committed violence in schools. Students also seem to hold a grudge much longer. Some students wait until the last day of school to settle an incident that has occurred weeks or months earlier.
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The public s concern about discipline and violence in the schools is well spoken. Violence caused by school-age children (in and out of school) is worse now than it has ever been. It is on the rise and affects every part of American society. However, this does not mean that all of today s youths are discipline problems or perpetrators of acts of violence. In fact, the majority of America s youths are not violent, nor have ever committed acts of violence. Contributing factors to school violence are numerous, complex, and partially community-related. In some communities the problem of youths carrying weapons is so bad that offenders are being sent to boot camps or are required to do supervised community service. Some school teachers perceive that the major factors contributing to student violence are lack of parental supervision at home, lack of family involvement with the school (which tends to cause children to overkill which is stabbing someone thirty times instead of just once), and exposure to violence in the media. Some teachers also believe that certain types of parenting produce children who contribute to school violence. America s children are exposed to a constant flow of verbal and physical violence that begins early and continues throughout the rest of their lives.
Numerous reports have cited the fact that children in the United States spend more time watching television than attending school. Most of what children watch, involving cartoons, is unsupervised and much of it is filled with scene after scene of sex and violence. Much too often violent children are victims of an overdose of violence. The entertainment industry has received increasing attacks for its often violent content since young children cannot distinguish the difference between real and make-believe. In too many communities, children constantly send signals that they feel isolated from and rejected by society. Increasingly, many youths come from communities where the majority of the experiences to which they have been exposed have been unfriendly. They have had to fight to simply survive. These young men and women are filled with anger and a sense of rejection and believe that they do not owe society anything. At the same time, and increasing number of students whom have not grown up in mean, violent environments are involved in acts of violence.
They often state boredom or the excitement of control as reasons for their actions and it is difficult to understand their rebellion against society. Students and faculty should not have to fear for their lives every time they walk through the doors to their school. In a recent survey by Children s Institute International, forty-one percent of teenagers said they don t feel safe at school. Teachers must ensure that rules are followed in the classroom and around the school. This must be done in a firm but fair and consistent manner. Students who fail to follow the rules must be dealt with quickly and firmly or students will continue to break the rules and eventually cause chaos. Federal, state, and local lawmakers have tried many strategies to help reduce violence. Congress, in 1990, made it a felony to bring guns within one thousand feet of any gun-free school zone. Handgun Control Incorporated is focusing on state laws penalizing adults that leave guns where children can access them. Ten states have passed a similar law since 1989.
However, the National Rifle Association (NRA) said that such a law opposes the law in those ten states where the statute would limit a prosecutor s flexibility to reduce the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor. There are many ways to help the problem of school violence such as: staff monitoring and guards, use of security devices, discipline and dress codes, extended schools hours, classes for parents, crisis centers, teacher crisis meetings, teacher team meetings, support for teachers and students, and counseling programs. Infact, most school shooters say that they could have been stopped if someone would have listened. To use only one of the preceding strategies would not help the problem.
The most effective way would be to use all of those strategies together with a team effort from students, schools, parents, and the community. Students in most high schools say they would feel safer with law and order and especially with police support officers. Twenty-five percent of the nation s school system uses hand-held or walk-through metal detectors, most of which notify the students in advance when the detectors will be used. However, New York City schools say that since the introduction of metal detectors in 1988, serious incidents have declined by fifty-eight percent with scanners and forty-three percent without them. Many school districts also use police or security departments that are based inside of the school.
Two hundred and forty- five of the nations fifteen thousand school districts have police or security departments. One hundred and fifty-six districts have uniformed officers, of which one hundred and two districts have armed officers. In an economic standpoint, it will cost a lot of capital for schools to pay for security guards, metal detectors, etc. Walk-through metal detectors can cost up to ten thousand dollars alone and x- ray units cost up to seventeen thousand dollars. School districts cannot afford to place these costly security items in every school. There are obviously many benefits to extreme measures being taken place to control violence in schools. If the schools strategies are effective, it will decrease the number of deaths from shootings, decrease the number of fights on school property, and decrease the number of students bringing weapons to school. Students and teachers will feel safer at school and will most likely learn better because of it.
However, some students might conceal weapons better for use either on or off of school property, which could start this problem all over again. In conclusion, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to school violence. Since no solution clearly works in all cases, each school should try their own methods. Different schools, in different communities, will differ in their reasonable interpretations of the same data; people disagree on what works partly because they disagree on what it means to work. Schools should be free to experiment with different systems to find the solution that is best for their own needs so that school violence can be controlled better in the United States.
