Keeping Violence Out of Schools

3 Pages 691 Words

Factors contributing to school violence are numerous, complex, and mostly community-related. For example, teachers perceive that major factors contributing to student violence are lack of parental supervision at home, lack of family involvement with the school, and exposure to violence in the mass media. Teachers are also believed that certain types of parenting produce children who contribute to school violence.
America's children are exposed to a steady diet of verbal and physical violence that begins early and continues throughout their lives. In too many communities, children constantly send signals that they feel isolated from and maligned by society. These feelings know no geographic, social, or economic boundaries.
Children often receive mixed messages from parents and other adults about what is right and what is wrong. The use of material goods to persuade children to behave in one way or to dissuade them from behaving in another is an example of mixed messages. These attitudes and actions convey strong lessons about roles, responsibilities, and the right that must be learned in odes to assume positions as citizens good in a democratic society. How children learn theses lessons is as important as what they learn.
Victims of violence in schools cover the spectrum. For example, 900 teachers are threatened, and over 2,000 students and nearly 40 teachers are physically attacked on school grounds every hour of each school day each year (Stone, 1994).
Younger students (grades 6-10) are much more likely to be victims of violence than are senior high school students (The American Teacher, 1993;U.S. Department of Education). The Department of justice reported that students whose families moved frequently are students from racial or ethnic groups that are minorities within the school are more likely to be physically assaulted. Students, who wear expensive or fashionable clothing or jewelry, or who bring cameras, cassette player...