School Violence

Word Count: 2020

From decade to decade, there has been a new type of fad to sweep the country. In the 50’s it was dancing and having fun. In the 60’s it was to dress freely and avoid the draft. The 70’s were full of pot smoking has-beens, the 80’s big hair and radical clothing. From the smallest of fades, the children in the 90’s have taken a whole new approach to the game. The changed the rules, that would affect the country for the rest of their existence. The fad? To act out in violence in school against eachother, not just fist to fist physical altercation, but from one boy’s fathers gun to another. The new fad is to take a school by a surprise attack and make news headlines. Quite a change from the early 50’s. So the question that boggles ever Americans mind, is why and how we allowed these children to invade and inhabit our lives and allow them to take the control they have at this point. The question can only be answered by figuring out the exact problem to a “T”. We need to figure out every aspect of what they are doing. What are the exact statistics on the teen crime rate? How can we stop it? Let’s start by recognizing the problem and deal with it from there.

    Here is the first step. Here are some solutions to the high rising problem, I have supplied part of the solution, it is now up to the public to take action. Three-quarters or more of all schools reported having zero tolerance policies for various student offenses. "Zero tolerance policy" was defined as a school or district policy that mandates predetermined consequence/s or punishments for specific offenses. About 90 percent of schools reported zero tolerance policies for firearms (94 percent) and weapons other than firearms. Eighty-seven and 88 percent had policies of zero tolerance for alcohol and drugs, respectively. Seventy-nine percent had a zero tolerance policy for violence and 79 percent had a zero tolerance policy for tobacco. Tobacco seems to be a rising problem on its own, and we as citizens, teachers and peers, need to do more to let the children know that this behavior is unacceptable, that they are in fact still children. Another way to help stop the problem is Requiring School Uniforms
Public school principals were presented with a list of crimes and asked to report the number of incidents of each type of crime that had occurred at their schools during the 1996-97 school year. The crimes about which schools were asked were murder, suicide, rape or other type of sexual battery, physical attack or fight with a weapon, robbery, physical attack or fight without a weapon, theft or larceny, and vandalism. Respondents were provided with definitions for each of these types of crime. Under the assumption that crimes or offenses reported to police would be more accurately recalled, schools were asked to report only those incidents for which the police or other law enforcement representatives had been contacted. It was also assumed that requiring a benchmark of law enforcement contact would minimize subjective judgment about which incidents to include. Only crimes occurring at the school, including those that took place in school buildings, on school grounds, on school buses, and at school-sponsored events or activities, but not officially on school grounds, were to be reported. While student victimization and teacher-reported data on crimes occurring at school have been collected and reported elsewhere, school principals were asked to report unduplicated incidents at the school level. During 1996-97, about 4,000 incidents of rape or other types of sexual battery were reported in our nation's public schools. There were about 11,000 incidents of physical attacks or fights in which weapons were used and 7,000 robberies in schools that year. About 190,000 fights or physical attacks not involving weapons also occurred at schools in 1996-97, along with about 115,000 thefts and 98,000 incidents of vandalism. Because the sample size was not large enough to pr

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