School Violence: What's Your Solution?
by Leslie Madsen Brooks

Using textbooks as shields. Teachers packing heat. Making students defend their own classrooms.

These are just a few of the ideas being floated in the wake of the murder of Amish girls at a Pennsylvania schoolhouse.

As a mother, teacher, and longtime student, I'm a major stakeholder in these proposals.

I think they're all asinine.

Lest you think I'm merely some suburban-educated, middle-class white girl who doesn't understand the reality of violence in our schools, allow me to flash some street cred. Snoop Dogg graduated from my high school--you can now imagine the urban environment, perhaps? The school closed down during the Los Angeles riots because buildings in the neighborhood were burning. On Wednesday nights, I'd hear gunshots during orchestra practice. My senior year, I was responsible for the obituary page in the yearbook. Students at my school--members of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (Army JROTC)--were tried for murder. (And ours wasn't the only school in the district with such trials: mostly students murdering other youth, but also a teacher murdering a student.) There were bullet holes in bungalow classroom windows. Razor wire topped the fences, and there was a heavy, rolling iron gate that clanged shut at the beginning of each school day under an arch bearing the school's motto--"Home of scholars and champions." The year after I left, they instituted locker and backpack checks, brought in search dogs, and by now I'm sure they have metal detectors.

We were told this security was not so much to keep us securely inside the school as to keep the bad elements securely out.

Living in the United States, whether you're a student in a school with a gang problem or a television viewer watching the war in Iraq, it becomes obvious pretty quickly that violence begets violence. Yet many Americans want to up the violence ante in our schools. When some right-wing white men from the rural or suburban U.S. declare that what my urban high school needs is more guns, I clench my jaw and try to breathe deeply, reminding myself that I am indeed a pacifist, and that putting my fist through the TV or computer screen won't help anyone.

Let's step back for a moment and consider the facts:

Who commits the school shootings we see in the news? White boys and white men.

Who are the ones proposing more guns in the schools? White men. Who are proposing that we teach our students to run toward gun-wielding attackers? White men.

Who are the victims? In disproportionate numbers, girls.

Who might actually be able to see this problem most clearly? And who's out of touch here? I think you know my answers.

We need a longer-term solution than the quick fixes--such as kevlar-coated textbooks--proposed by pundits and crazies. We need to teach our boys and young men to respect girls, women, and others who are unlike them because of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, class, or disability.

Part of the problem, as women and feminist bloggers have pointed out in writing about violence against girls, is that we're looking at the means and ends of school violence and not its causes. By focusing on gun crimes, we're looking too narrowly at school violence.

Cathy Davidson writes that by focusing on threats to our children by violent or predatory adults, we're doing our students a disservice:

Well, we are leaving about 30% of our children behind (http://www2.edtrust.org). That is the current high school drop out rate, making the U.S. #17 in the world. We know level of education correlates with future employment, poverty, crime, violence, incarceration (http://www.prisonuniversityproject.org). If we are concerned about internet predators because of the irreparable harm they do our children, then let’s look at the far more vast harm that comes to children right now in America because of disaffection from our schools.

I agree. We need to be less concerned with teaching our children how to fend off attackers and more focused on improving the quality of education in many of our schools. The immediate violence of a school shooting is indeed tragic, but the damage caused by a failure to graduate from high school can reverberate throughout a community and a nation.

This improved education must include peace and justice studies so that students can understand challenges in their lives and make wise decisions about how to address them. We need fewer JROTC cadets who are skilled at taking orders and primed for military service and more students who can think critically and thoughtfully for themselves.

Can we all be pacifists? No, we're too far gone as a nation to pursue that course. Would a large dose of pacifism help? Certainly. Would it hurt? Unlikely.

What's your solution to the various kinds of school violence?

(Photo by Cindy Seigle, used under a Creative Commons license)

Leslie Madsen-Brooks is an academic and freelance writer who blogs at The Clutter Museum and Museum Blogging.

Submitted by Leslie Madsen Brooks (view blog) on Sat, 10/28/2006 - 7:31am

Comments

 

I am SO tired

... of saying, over and over again, that we are desparately in need of gun control. And yet, here I am.

I believe in gun control and I vote.

Nerd's Eye View

Submitted by Pam on Sat, 10/28/2006 - 07:38
 

-Gun Control -Parents need

-Gun Control
-Parents need to TALK to their children. Sometimes it would be difficult to start, but it wouldn't be long before a parent can find out if there is a problem or not. They should know their children's beliefs (if they have any) and feelings.

www.shan.ca.tf

Submitted by Shan on Sat, 10/28/2006 - 09:02
 

Wonderful Post, Leslie...

I've walked around all day thinking about what you wrote.

I walked away from teaching because it got to the point that I feared for my own safety. And that fear meant I couldn't protect those teenagers I was responsible for. Our school had drug dealers and convicted murders in the minority with a future NFL star several entrepreneurs and many future successful employees.

Funny. I know about the kids who graduated college and are successful. Yet I remember the feeling of not being safe.

After I left, the school moved to wearing visible IDs, CCTV in the halls and bathrooms (sink areas), and two uniformed police officers assigned to the building. They, too, probably have metal detectors now. And this is a suburban high school. The "regular" students felt safer and could concentrate on their work. The teachers could concentrate on teaching.

I hate that money needs to be diverted from real learning to be spent on safety measures.

But I do not have a solution. How do we teach young people to respect the lives of those around them when what they are shown through media is self-centered, confrontational and self-centered? How do you teach a nation to live with honor, moral strength, compassion when our national leaders fail to model these attributes?

And how do with do this when currently our teachers are overwhelmed with teaching to tests? No Child Left Behind tests and exits exams that never test a child on their ability to live successfully in a society...

I do not know how to tackle this problem. But we as a society must work more to find the answers. It is beyond the responsibility of the parent only. Our entire society needs to relearn compassion, understanding and tolerance. We need to live peace.

Unfortunately, I am not certain that we can move away from easy reactions to something more thoughtful and mature.

Debra
A Stitch In Time
Deb's Daily Distractions

Submitted by debra roby on Sat, 10/28/2006 - 22:53
 

Some answers

I couldn’t answer the question at first. I was so distressed by it. And then I remembered. Why I write. Why I do the work I do.

I live on Maui, arguably the most beautiful place on the planet but 12 years ago I co-founded a youth center. We were seeing crystal meth and heroin and a level of violence that we had never seen before. A place was needed where children could be safe from the pressures of home, school, and the streets.

I research systems science so I describe love like this: the feelings and gestures associated with the free flow of information, energy, and resources between people that result in the social groups required for survival. It’s physiological. It’s genetic.

The answer is always the same: Increase that flow. Increase it in the simplest, clearest ways you can. Keep your eyes open for children who are alone, neglected, depressed, and bullied. The bullies are not the ones who shoot up schools. Look for the outcasts. Say hello. Introduce yourself.

Also, give kids a voice. Paia Youth and Cultural Center’s KOPO radio is the nation’s first youth-run community radio station. The kids choose the music. They speak out about issues that affect them.

Community is formed from connection. All the laws and all the “security” measures won’t make up for it.

The secret is and always will be love.

Submitted by Lynn Ras on Mon, 10/30/2006 - 01:10
 

My husband and I own guns.

My husband and I own guns. He's a member of the NRA. I've been shooting guns since I was a kid when I used to blow apart plastic G.I. Joes at fifty feet away.

That being said, we are in desperate need for non-idiot gun owners. People who are responsible enough to own a gun; to teach their children gun safety and a respect for life; people who don’t improperly store their firearms and leave them out for their kids to get a hold of, become a statistic, and thus harm the rights of others to own guns. That may be harsh, but damn, Gina.

Regardless of how many gun laws we have, how strict our gun control is, one thing is indisputably certain: criminals will always have guns, will always have easy access to guns, that will never change and hasn't changed over the course of decades.

As far as the guns-in-schools proposal, I only heard one man - my governor, Matt Blunt - make that proposal and I don't even think he was fully serious about it. I think it's a stupid proposal, but I think I see his reasoning - being that people with equal footing of their attackers stand a better chance for defense and survival.

I think what freaks me out is that I don't know if there is a clear-cut answer to your question, though I think Debra hits a homer: "But I do not have a solution. How do we teach young people to respect the lives of those around them when what they are shown through media is self-centered, confrontational and self-centered? ..."

Dana
Mamalogues.com
In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Pop Mama
Since Eve

Submitted by Dana Loesch on Tue, 10/31/2006 - 14:24
 

School Violence begins in the home.

How many of you are willing to openly criticize the parents of the bullies who precipitate most of these events?

Submitted by Weapon of Mass Disturbance on Thu, 11/02/2006 - 05:27
 

Lynn RasLink Text I divide

Lynn RasLink Text
I divide the school ground into two groups: the bullies and the bullied and everyone else. In second grade my son was small with rheumatoid arthritis. He couldn't be knocked around. He learned to be part of everyone else. People can learn not to live in the power/fear cycle. It's what civilized people should teach children in playgrounds, classrooms, and neighborhoods as part of daily life. I'm afraid that we Americans aren't always doing a very good job at it.

Submitted by Lynn Ras on Wed, 11/08/2006 - 00:31
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