School Violence Essay Research Paper May 21

School Violence Essay, Research Paper

May 21, 1998: Loner Kip Kinkel, 15, murders his parents, booby-traps his home with explosives and then kills two classmates and injures 22 during a rampage at his Oregon high school.

April 20, 1999: Columbine High School misfits, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, stage a bombs-and-bullets massacre, slaughtering 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide.

May 21, 1999: Lovelorn sophomore, T.J. Solomon, wounds six students at a school in suburban Georgia after being dumped by his girlfriend.

Feb. 29, 2000: Flint, Michigan, six-year-old shoots to death his fellow classmate, Kayla Rolland, also six-years-old after a dispute that erupted in the school s playground.

These are just a few horrid examples of the recent growth of school violence that is taking place in schools all across America. Reducing school violence has become one of the top challenges that public schools are being faced with as we enter the 21st century. The big question now is how do we go about preventing incidences like the ones above from ever happening again. With theses recent spates of violence at high schools across the country, including the highly publicized ones in Colorado and Georgia, the hue and cry went for stricter gun laws.

The U.S. Government has responded with large amounts of hot air and gesturing, including several new gun control proposals. The question to ask is if this is really the answer, or are we answering the wrong questions. The real answers do not lie in gun control, school uniforms, home schooling, or any other legislation that attempts to modify teen behavior. The real questions and answers lie underneath these superficial responses. These recent violent outbreaks are not the problem, but only a symptom of a deeper, stronger one. Here we will explore some of the possible causes.

One of the problems we are seeing is an accelerating change in the social dynamics of high school society. The emotional and social aspects have changed greatly over the last decade, and even more when contrasted with the experiences of the parents of current high school students. The old ideas of acceptance and fitting in have grown into an almost overriding pressure on students to fit in somewhere. Jerry Adler comments in Newsweek that high schools were once divided into the in-crowd and everyone else (1999). Today, there is much more to the social structure than this simple analogy. In today s soundbyte laden way of life, students are having to cope with an ever-changing definition of what is cool, and what is not. The clothes one wears to school, for example, are in style one day and out again in what seems like overnight. Dealing with these pressures, as well as the traditional teen problems, leads to confusion. The teen years have always been full of angst and confusion, and the constant pop culture bombardment from ads, music videos, and even peer pressure as to what is acceptable and cool does not help the situation. It is enough pressure to cause adults to have doubts and self-image problems, let alone an already insecure 16-year-old. Small problems become big, as teens are emotionally ill equipped to deal with so much pressure. This causes some to lash out violently. Fear, as well as a lack of knowledge and skills, help to contribute to the precipitation of violent student behaviors. Students who take guns or knives to school do so because they fear for their safety.

This fear can also lead to the individual to join a gang. A gang can be recognized by their distinct aggregation by others in their neighborhood. They use a name of their group to recognize themselves as a denotable group, and usually are involved in a sufficient number of illegal activities to call forth a consistent response from neighborhood residents and/or law enforcement. Most kids who join gangs do it to either make more friends, want people to look up to them, or most likely to protect themselves from other gangs. An interview with a gang member, who called himself T.J., clearly shows the reasons why people join gangs. He states that gang members, were my family. We stick together. We d kill and die for each other. They gave me love I never had before (Natale 35). He says a lot of the violence that goes on today is over money. It s all money. Who s got the biggest car, who s got the best [clothes], who s got the best girl. Without money, you re nothing, he says. To stop the problem, stop the drugs from coming over here. Ain t nobody growing no cocaine bushes in the United States. It s all overseas. He says young people need more attention (Natale 35).

Some schools are trying to relieve some of this pressure. The Paideia School, located outside Atlanta, GA., is trying to curb the effects of one of the classic teen cliques-the jocks . The school now requires every student to be on a sports team (1999). The concept seems to be working, and more schools are picking up on the idea by adding more sports and student clubs. But athletics events are not violence-free either. In fact, athletic events provide a particularly attractive environment for violence. A Galveston, Texas, high school football player in a game near-by was wounded in a drive-by shooting. School officials were forced to stop the game and reschedule the event for the next day, but as a precautionary measure, barred any fans from attending. In Richmond,