School Violence: What Is the Reality?

This week was the first week back to school for my children, and just one county away on the very first day, one teenager shot another in the cafeteria.  Right now, rumors are flying.  We know little about the shooter other than he’s being charged as an adult and that he is troubled with a troubled family life.  Oh yeah, we know some other troubling things because of his Facebook page.  We know little about the victim, although it seems likely he wasn’t the target, since he seems to be a gentle teen with Down syndrome.

The news shook many of us in our community, although most of us are not up in arms about it in our own children’s schools.  However, we are still concerned.  After all, it wasn’t that long ago that there was the shooting at the movie theater in Colorado on Batman’s opening night.

So what is the truth about violence in schools?

According to the CDC’s Web site on school violence, “less than 1 percent of all homicides among school-age children happen on school grounds or on the way to or from school.”  Another statistic given out by the CDC in 2007 is “during the past seven years, 116 students were killed in 109 separate incidents – an average of 16.5 student homicides per year.” 

Here are a few more facts about school violence taken directly from the CDC from a study done in 2009:

·         11.1% reported being in a physical fight on school property in the 12 months preceding the survey.

·         15.1% of male students and 6.7% of female students reported being in a physical fight on school property in the 12 months preceding the survey.

·         5.0% did not go to school on one or more days in the 30 days preceding the survey because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.

·         5.6% reported carrying a weapon (gun, knife or club) on school property on one or more days in the 30 days preceding the survey.

·         7.7% reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property one or more times in the 12 months preceding the survey.

            Of course, I began this blog with gun violence, and this survey covers all types of violence from shoving to more serious such as gun violence.  I was surprised to see that 7.7% said they were threatened or injured by a weapon.  There has been such a zero tolerance policy for so long in schools, I expected that number to lower.  I was also surprised at how many students admitted to carrying a weapon (5.5%).

            If you want to put these percentages into perspective, go with the estimate that we have 55.5 million students enrolled in pre-kindergarten through 12^th grade.  So of the 7.7% who were threatened or injured by a weapon in the United States translate to roughly 4,273,500 children.  Of the 5.5% who admitted to carrying a weapon that translates to 3,052,500 children.  When you take the percentages out and put it into cold hard numbers, it feels high.

            One thing that surprised me was learning that violent deaths are more likely to happen at the start or end of each semester.  It fits completely with the shooting in Perry Hall High School just a few days ago.  Still, I don’t think of the first day of school as one where violence would occur.

            Another fact by the CDC is “Nearly 50% of homicides perpetrators gave some type of warning signal, including making a threat or leaving a note, prior to the event.”  This also proved true of the shooting this week.  The teenager’s Facebook page had a comment that showed pretty clearly that the teen would do something violent that day.  Look at the CDC’s fact sheet, and you’ll see that this teen had many of the risk factors (http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/SchoolViolence_FactSheet-a.pdf).

            Lately, most people have focused on bullying as the root cause for much of the violence in our schools.  At least that’s what school officials and the media lead us to believe.  But you look at the risks factors on the CDC’s sheet, and you get the sense that it’s more complex than that.  Bullying can be a catalyst, but there is so much more that goes into creating a child who could possibility commit violence at school.

             I don’t know exactly what I can do to keep my children safe.  Some of it has trusting the school system to monitor and evaluate daily behaviors of children and trusting people in my own community to do the same for children they know.  The other thing I tell my children regularly is to be aware of the children around them and how they treat them and just as importantly how they friends treat them. 

Once in a while I say to my son when he tells me about some taunting or crude behavior he witnessed his classmates doing to other boys that they should all be careful how they treat other kids because those kids will remember the meanness, and you never know if one day they’ll come to school and do something violent to those same kids.  I ask him how he would feel if he was treated that way.  I know it’s a harsh thing to tell my son, but that is the world we live in.