This list highlights just a few of the more recent documents that
offer ideas about programs and strategies that can help reduce or prevent
violence in schools, as well as information on the problem. They in turn
offer referrals to still more sources of
information and ideas. Many of the organizations listed above will send free
catalogs listing all their publications.
Arnette, June and Marjorie C. Walsleben.
Combating Fear and Restoring Safety in Schools.
Drug Strategies, Inc. Safe Schools, Safe Students: A
Guide to Violence Prevention Strategies.
Heaviside, Sheila, Cassandra Rowand, Catrina Williams, and Elizabeth Farris. Violence and
Discipline Problems in
Kenney, Dennis J. and T. Steuart Watson. Crime in the Schools: Reducing Fear
and Disorder with Student Problem Solving.
Lockwood, Daniel. Violence Among
Middle School and High School Students: Analysis and Implications for
Prevention.
http://www.ncjrs.org/ojjhome.htm,
or by calling 800-624-0100.
Zimmer, Judy, Terrence W. Modglin, and Jean F. O'Neil. Teens, Crime, and the
Community: Education and Action for Safer Schools and Communities, Third Edition.
12
Things Parents Can Do
Help stop school violence with this starter
list of ideas. Some require only individual action; some require concerted
effort. Some address immediate issues; others address the problems that cause
violence. Consider this list a launching pad -- there's lots more that can be
done.
- Recognize that keeping firearms in your home may put you at legal
risk as well as expose you and your family to physical risk. In many
states, parents can be held liable for their children's actions, including
inappropriate use of firearms. If you do choose to keep firearms at home,
ensure that they are securely locked, that ammunition is locked and stored
separately, and that children know weapons are never to be touched without
your express permission and supervision.
- Take an active role in your children's schools. Talk regularly with
teachers and staff. Volunteer in the classroom or library, or in
after-school activities. Work with parent- teacher-student organizations.
- Act as role models. Settle your own conflicts peaceably and manage
anger without violence.
- Listen to and talk with your children regularly. Find out what
they're thinking on all kinds of topics. Create an opportunity for two-way
conversation, which may mean forgoing judgments or pronouncements. This
kind of communication should be a daily habit, not a reaction to crisis.
- Set clear limits on behaviors in advance. Discuss punishments and
rewards in advance, too. Disciplining with framework and consistency helps
teach self- discipline, a skill your children can use for the rest of
their lives.
- Communicate clearly on the violence issue. Explain that you don't
accept and won't tolerate violent behavior. Discuss what violence is and
is not. Answer questions thoughtfully. Listen to children's ideas and
concerns. They may bring up small problems that can easily be solved now,
problems that could become worse if allowed to fester.
- Help your children learn how to examine and find solutions to
problems. Kids who know how to approach a problem and resolve it
effectively are less likely to be angry, frustrated, or violent. Take
advantage of "teachable moments" to help your child understand
and apply these and other skills.
- Discourage name-calling and teasing. These behaviors often escalate
into fistfights (or worse). Whether the teaser is violent or not, the
victim may see violence as the only way to stop it.
- Insist on knowing your children's friends, whereabouts, and
activities. It's your right. Make your home an inviting and pleasant place
for your children and their friends; it's easier to know what they're up
to when they're around. Know how to spot signs of troubling behavior in
kids — yours and others (see page viii).
- Work with other parents to develop standards for school-related
events, acceptable out-of-school activities and places, and required adult
supervision. Support each other in enforcing these standards.
- Make it clear that you support school policies and rules that help
create and sustain a safe place for all students to learn. If your child
feels a rule is wrong, discuss his or her reasons and what rule might work
better.
- Join up with other parents, through school and neighborhood
associations, religious organizations, civic groups, and youth activity
groups. Talk with each other about violence problems, concerns about youth
in the community, sources of help to strengthen and sharpen parenting
skills, and similar issues.
12 Things
Students Can Do
Help stop school violence with this starter
list of ideas. Some require only individual action; some require concerted
effort. Some address immediate issues; others address the problems that cause
violence. Consider this list a launching pad -- there's lots more that can be
done.
- Refuse to bring a weapon to school, refuse to carry a weapon for
another, and refuse to keep silent about those who carry weapons.
- Report any crime immediately to school authorities or police.
- Report suspicious or worrisome behavior or talk by other students
to a teacher or counselor at your school. You may save someone's life.
- Learn how to manage your own anger effectively. Find out ways to
settle arguments by talking it out, working it out, or walking away rather
than fighting.
- Help others settle disputes peaceably. Start or join a peer
mediation program, in which trained students help classmates find ways to
settle arguments without fists or weapons.
- Set up a teen court, in which youths serve as judge, prosecutor,
jury, and defense counsel. Courts can hear cases, make findings, and
impose sentences, or they may establish sentences in cases where teens
plead guilty. Teens feel more involved and respected in this process than
in an adult-run juvenile justice system.
- Become a peer counselor, working with classmates who need support
and help with problems.
- Mentor a younger student. As a role model and friend, you can make
it easier for a younger person to adjust to school and ask for help.
- Start a school
crime watch. Consider including a student patrol that helps
keep an eye on corridors, parking lots, and groups, and a way for students
to report concerns anonymously.
- Ask each student activity or club to adopt an anti-violence theme.
The newspaper could run how-to stories on violence prevention; the art
club could illustrate costs of violence. Career clubs could investigate
how violence affects their occupational goals. Sports teams could address
ways to reduce violence that's not part of the game plan.
- Welcome new students and help them feel at home in your school.
Introduce them to other students. Get to know at least one student
unfamiliar to you each week.
- Start (or sign up for) a "peace pledge" campaign, in
which students promise to settle disagreements without violence, to reject
weapons, and to work toward a safe campus for all. Try for 100%
participation
Facts About Violence Among Youth
and Violence in Schools
Taken from
http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/fact/violence.htm (Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention)
CDC's
CDC, and the U.S. Department of Education,
Department of Justice, and the
- Less that 1% of all homicides among school-aged children (5-19
years of age) occur in or around school grounds or on the way to and from
school.
- 65% of school-associated violent deaths were students; 11% were
teachers or other staff members; and 23% were community members who were
killed on school property.
- 83% of school homicide or suicide victims were males.
- 28% of the fatal injuries happened inside the school building; 36%
occurred outdoors on school property; and 35% occurred off campus.
- The deaths included in this study occurred in 25 states across the
country and happened in both primary and secondary schools and communities
of all sizes.
Our society demands that schools be safe for
our children, yet recent violent events indicate we need to redouble our
efforts to prevent violence in schools at the same time we address violence in
the larger community.
What CDC is doing to address this
problem?
CDC and its partners are updating and
expanding the original study, examining school-associated violent deaths
between July 1994 and June 1998.
Study results to date show that there were
173 incidents between
CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), is a school-based survey designed to producea
nationally representative sample of risk behaviors among students in grades
9-12.
The 1997 YRBS reported that:
- 8.3% of high school students carried a weapon (e.g., gun, knife, or
club) during the 30 days preceding the survey, down from 26.1% in 199
- 5.9% of high school students carried a gun during the 30 days
preceding the survey
- 8.5% of high school students carried a weapon on school property
during the 30 days preceding the survey
- 7.4% of high school students were threatened or injured with a
weapon on school property during the 12 months preceding the survey.
Other facts from the 1997 YRBS
report included:
- Nationwide, 4% of students had missed 1 or more days of school
during the 30 days preceding the survey because they had felt unsafe at
school or when traveling to or from school.
- The prevalence of weapon carrying on school property on 1 or more
of the 30 days preceding the survey was 8.5% nationwide. Overall, male
students (12.5%) were significantly more likely than female students
(3.7%) to have carried a weapon on school property.
- Nationwide, the prevalence of students who had been threatened or
injured with a weapon on school property one or more times during the 12
months preceding the survey was 7.4%. Overall, male students (10.2%) were
significantly more likely than female students (4%) to have been
threatened or injured with a weapon on school property.
- Nationwide, 14.8% of students had been in a physical fight on
school property one or more times during the 12 months preceding the
survey. Overall, male students (20%) were significantly more likely than
female students (8.6%) to have been in a physical fight on school
property. This significant difference was identified for white and
Hispanic students and all grade subgroups.
- Approximately one third (32.9%) of students nationwide had property
(car, clothing, or books) stolen or deliberately damaged on school
property one or more times during the 12 months preceding the survey.
CDC's School Health Policies and Programs
Study (SHPPS) provides information about school health
policies, including violence prevention. The 1994 SHPPS showed that among all
school districts, 91 percent have a written policy prohibiting student violence
and 80.3% have a policy that specifically addresses weapon possession and use
among students.
CDC continually monitors the status of
homicides of youth and adolescents as well as those homicides committed with a
firearm.
CDC has supported firearm injury
surveillance projects in seven states that focus on the development of state
systems for routinely monitoring firearm injuries and related risk behaviors
(e.g., safe storage, carrying weapons). The information generated from these
surveillance systems will help policy-makers in states assess the magnitude of
the firearm injury problem and evaluate programs and policies designed to
prevent firearm injuries.
CDC has supported research that addresses
firearm-related injuries. This research was designed to improve understanding
of the motivations and deterrents for weapon carrying behavior among
adolescents at high risk for firearm-related injuries; to estimate the injury
risk associated with firearm storage and carriage practices; and address the
effects of firearm safety training and education programs on firearm storage
and carriage practices.
CDC is conducting research to prevent both
youth violence and firearm-related violence. As an example, CDC has been
conducting research to determine which interventions work to prevent violence
among youth, both in schools and in the community. CDC will consolidate these
evaluation projects on the prevention of youth violence and provide it to
programs throughout the
Preliminary findings include the following:
- Baseline surveys confirm that violent behavior is a problem for
young people. For example, four projects reported that 10% of participants
had recently carried a gun. Moreover, there was a general concern about
exposure to violence in schools and neighborhoods.
- The full involvement of the community is critical to developing a
sense of ownership for the problem of violence and its solutions.
- The projects found that effective strategies include school-based
curricula that emphasize the development of problem solving skills, anger
management, and other strategies that help kids develop social skills. In
addition, parenting programs that promote strong bonding between parents
and children and that teach parents skills in managing conflict in the
family, as well as mentoring programs for young people, are also very
promising.
Explaining
Acts of Brutality by Youngsters:
Why Do Teens Kill? Taken from
http://www.abcnews.go.com (ABC News)
“You find
out that lots of young people knew that this was a kid who was having trouble
with the issues of violence, but they didn’t feel they had anyone to talk to. ” — Geoffrey Canada
Luke Woodham is accused of
killing his mother, then going to school and shooting nine students in
By Tristanne L. Walliser, ABCNEWS.com
May 24 — The news is starting to
become uncomfortably familiar.
A school shooting in Pearl, Miss.,
last October left two dead.
A shooting spree at
And now the most recent news that 15-year-old
freshman, Kipland Kinkel,
has been charged with fatally shooting two students in his high school
cafeteria and murdering his parents.
In each attack, a boy under the age of 16 was charged.
Now these communities are struggling to find out why
the violence happened and whether it could have been prevented. Experts, too,
are searching for an explanation.
Although statistically speaking, violence is
decreasing in public schools, the brutality of the acts and the youth of the
suspects are raising serious questions.
What is motivating kids to kill? Are we seeing a new
culture of violence where kids can no longer distinguish between fantasy and
reality? And how can communities prevent such attacks in the future?
·
Access to Guns: Too Easy
Many experts are blaming easy accessibility of guns. Young people
can easily buy firearms in their communities—whether rural, suburban or urban.
“I think the key ingredient here is the issue of access
to handguns and fire arms in general,” Geoffrey Canada, president of the Rheedlan Centers for Children and Families, said on
ABCNEWS’ Good Morning America today.
“It turns this issue from an
13-year-old and 11-year-old who have a chip on their shoulder into murderers.
If these people don’t have access to the weapons, you end up with young people
maybe getting into a fist fight or maybe being disciplined, instead of the
tragedy we have today,” he said. In
“Availablity of guns is a
huge problem,” said Dr.Cheryl Olson, a writer who
covers public health issues and studies school violence. “If they had been
using knives, they might have killed one person instead of this ambush. Behind
a gun, you have a certain detachment.”
“In the 1990’s, we are seeing increasing visitation of
violence in unexpected places in suburban and rural
“We are also seeing a transition from fist-fights to
gunfights to a barrage of bullets and ammunition; from six shooters to shotguns
to semi-automatic firepower.”
·
A Culture of Violence
But others
suggest access to firearms is just one part of the picture. Gun control may
just be a band-aid solution for larger societal problems that need to be
addressed, they say.
“We are in a culture where kids are learning to solve
their problems and deal with anger through violence,” said Dr. Howard Spivak, chairman of the American Association of Pediatrics
Task Force on Violence, also speaking today on ABCNEWS’ Good Morning
“And they aren’t learning other strategies to deal
with the stresses,” he said. “Kids (are) more vulnerable because of the level of
violence they’re exposed to themselves, family violence, excessive
violence through excessive media watching, exposure to violence in their
communities.”
·
Kids With No One to Talk To
But while it is easy to blame vicious acts on the ready availability of
firearms and the influence of media violence, some experts contend the focus
should be less on the larger picture and more on the individual situation.
“Young people really don’t feel that there are safe
places where they can talk to adults about these issues,” said
“We shouldn’t wait to have these kind
of incidents to really sit down and talk with our boys about the issues of
violence and how you handle interpersonal disputes. You find out that lots of
young people knew that this was a kid who was having trouble with the issues of
violence, but they didn’t feel they had anyone to talk to.”
In addition to feeling alienated, many of these kids
have also been victims of abuse.
“The perpetrators are often victims of abuse and
neglect, primarily from parents and other adults,” said Dr. Stephens. “It’s a
very common theme. In 80% of the cases it has been the case.”