School Violence

SCHOOL VIOLENCE

Every year teachers, parents and students prepare for another school session, hopefully the thought of destructive violence such as the Columbine shootings won't be in their mind. It's sad to think that violence is a concern at all. It's certainly a proven fact that violence of one sort or another is part of most schools today. School violence is a problem for everyone. It is a problem that everyone must deal with and work together to solve. The community, administrators, teacher, parents, and students must come together to focus on effective prevention and punishments.

The majority of schools have a low security system in place. This means that they do not have any guards, metal detectors, or other advanced forms of protection. Since prevention is the key to keeping everyone safe, modifications on security must be the topic for discussion. Some schools are issuing name badges to help keep strangers off the premises. However, this isn't effective if it is the student causing the violence. One out of every four students reported being a victim to some sort of violent crime on school premises. More scary yet, one in eight reported they have carried a weapon into the school. Since the 1992 school year, there has been almost three hundred violent school deaths across the nation. The majority of the deaths were caused by students shooting other students. In the 2000 school year, these numbers have drastically decreased. However, these figures are still completely unacceptable.