School Violence on the Rise

In the last few weeks, [Fall of 2006], school shootings have dominated the news. The frequency of these seems to be increasing. People throughout the nation are panicking; what are we to do? President George W. Bush spoke of this situation in his Saturday, October 7, 2006, radio address. He proclaimed, “We will bring together teachers, parents, students, administrators, law enforcement officials, and other experts to discuss the best ways to keep violence out of our schools.” Conferences have been called. The problem has been discussed for years.

President Bill Clinton convened such a forum in 1999. Educators, policy-makers, law enforcement officials, and adolescent-development specialists came to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on May 21, 2002. Each group was equally intent on investigating the causes and effects of Lethal School Violence. In the symposiums, experts sought solutions. Everyone wanted [and wants] to protect our progeny.

At the time, programs were initiated; yet, the violence continued. In the last month or more, we as a nation are wondering; is there no end? Will our children, our Educators, we, as a society, ever be safe?

Citizens again ask how can we secure our schools and shield our offspring from societal harm. Finally, an answer comes from a Wisconsin lawmaker. Representative Frank Lasee proposed that Teachers and Administrators carry guns daily and use these when necessary. “In the wake of school shootings in Wisconsin, Colorado, and Pennsylvania” he would “introduce legislation that would allow teachers, principals, administrators, and other school personnel to carry concealed weapons.” At the time, the Republican Representative believed our communities will be safer if everyone were armed.

Unrelated To Gangs

We know that communities have long been concerned with gang violence. However, what has occurred in recent years differs. On January 29, 1979, individual outbursts came into our collective consciousness. According to the Indianapolis Star, “Brenda Spencer, 16, opened fire with a .22-caliber rifle at an elementary school across the street from her San Diego, California home. She killed two people and wounded seven because she `didn’t like Mondays.'”

Upon hearing this story, our country held its breath as it does now. Jointly we release a communal sigh. Still the violence increases as is evident in these last five weeks. There is talk. What measures can we take to guard against weaponry?

Cable New Network reported, metal detectors were introduced in educational institutions after a 1992 shooting.

In 1994, the federal government began requiring school safety programs in an attempt to crack down on violence on school grounds. Many schools introduced metal detectors to check for guns, knifes and other weapons . . . although the Supreme Court eventually overturned the federal requirements, most school safety measures remained in place. In Los Angeles, California for instance, [as of 1997] all high schools still use some sort of metal detectors.

However, it is clear, these actions do not secure the premises. Zero tolerance campaigns were invoked. Violations are and were numerous.

Parents, administrators, teachers, and staff were told to observe student behaviors; they were asked to attend to warning signs. Discipline problems were considered predictors; yet, this was not always the case. Offenders did not only come from within the school system, they enter and exist throughout society. Witness the killings within the last month or more [before and during September 2006.]

Machines and Mandates

Whatever we choose to reflect upon, when looking at violence in our schools, our homes, or in our airports I ask us to bear in mind that traditional methods for preventing violence are not working. I think we must look at why people do what they do.

Violent crime continues to be a major problem and I suspect this will continue as long as we look for simple solutions. I observe, when we as a country, focus on machines and mandates as a means for deterring violence in schools and within society at-large, we ignore the violator. I believe the life of the perpetrator is most telling. This is the key component in a crime that can be influenced and altered. If we address it early enough and treat root causes sincerely and seriously we can make a difference.

More Are Killed

However, instead, we look at guns, knifes, box cutters, gels, powders, matches, lighters, and bombs as though these are the killers. We work tirelessly to prevent these from entering the systems, schools, airports, office building, and prisons. Rarely do we address the authentic reason for killings. People and what goes on in their heads, hearts, and souls cause death.

I propose we look at life, at our daily existence and the stress our culture promotes, rather than hypothesize; how might we use technology and authority to control the minds and misdeeds of men and women. I theorize if we assess the way in which we live and the life standards we choose to accept, then, we might be able to prevent these carnages.

I request that you, dear reader, consider what passes for the “common wisdom.” Is it sensible? Please ponder accepted theories and simple solutions with me. Then ask yourself, what might we do to truly change what comes?

On Monday, October 2, 2006, a deeply distressed man entered a one room Amish schoolhouse. He excused all the male pupils and personnel. He was interested in only the young female students. It is not known whether the church-going milkman intended to molest the girls; though there is evidence to suggest that he did. However, what is certain is that the perpetrator shot these little lovelies before taking his own life. Pennsylvania schoolhouse killer Charles Carl Roberts IV revealed in a telephone call to his wife, at the age of twelve he molested two young relatives. Events of 20 years past haunted the man throughout his life. Guilt took Roberts’ life and the lives of several young innocent Amish girls.

Five days earlier, in Bailey, Colorado an armed drifter walked into Platte Canyon High School. He then entered a classroom. The transient demanded that all the men leave the area. He wanted to be alone with the girls he corralled into a classroom. According to a student and her mother, Duane R. Morrison seemed to prefer smaller, blonde girls. This disturbed wanderer with his quarry of petite flaxen hair maidens proceeded to sexually assault some of the six young girls he held hostage. Ultimately, he shot one before killing himself. Some social scientists theorized `girls are the targets in school violence.

MSNBC News reports revealed, after the crime, “at their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Morrison’s stepmother said she and her husband, Bob Morrison, have no record of him being, having any trouble before.” “We just know the way he was raised,” Billie Morrison said, declining to elaborate. “How was he raised? Some experts think the relationships established in the lives of the killers might offer answers. In the series of recent rampages there is a seemingly notable consistency. An article in the Christian Science Monitor observed . . .

“The predominant pattern in school shootings of the past three decades is that girls are the victims,” says Katherine Newman, a Princeton University sociologist whose recent book examines the roots of “rampage” shootings in rural schools.

Dr. Newman has researched 21 school shootings since the 1970s. Though it’s impossible to know whether girls were randomly victimized in those cases, she says, “in every case in the US since the early 1970s we do note this pattern” of girls being the majority of victims.

A Complex Problem

Prior to these two incidents, the focus and fantasy was on troubled adolescents. These were thought to be the persons responsible for such horrendous school crimes. Some behavior experts hypothesized; violent young persons had been bullied in school. They were browbeaten at home. These youthful aggressors were tormented by their own inner struggles. They act out after years of deep-seated frustration. Might we consider the cause and effects of troubles early in life.

Forensic psychiatrist Keith Aldo says mental health problems, especially among young people, too often go ignored and untreated. “Everybody in the class often knows who the troubled kids are. Parents know. Teachers know,” he says. “And if anything we should know that there is a preventative bit of medicine, psychological medicine to be dispensed in our classrooms earlier than we have been doing.”…

He says unresolved issues can continue to haunt a child throughout life. “The more that you can express your feelings of fear, the more that you can talk about your reactions to terrible events, the less that those events are going to be toxic to you later on.”

Aldo says airing such concerns helps build a stronger and safer community. Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, agrees. He says the community must work at making schools safe places. “It happens by making sure that the first and best line of defense is a well-trained, highly alert school staff and student body who are aware of changes in behavior of other students as well as strangers who are walking around in parking lots and the hallways of our schools.”

I believe the more recent incidents confirm the quandary has many causes. The dilemma is not limited to youth acting out against their harassing, haranguing, or hounding classmates. These incidents are not only a reaction to discrimination from peers. Parents are not the central problem. This transgression is as all others, complex.

The complexities that cause violent crime in our nations schools are similar to those that create terrorism. Rex A. Hudson reflects in a report prepared under an Interagency Agreement for the Federal Research Division..

Terrorism usually results from multiple causal factors – not only psychological but also economic, political, religious, and sociological factors, among others. There is even a hypothesis that it is caused by physiological factors, as discussed below. Because terrorism is a multi-causal phenomenon, it would be simplistic and erroneous to explain an act of terrorism by a single cause, such as the psychological need of the terrorist to perpetrate an act of violence.

For Paul Wilkinson (1977), the causes of revolution and political violence in general are also the causes of terrorism. These include ethnic conflicts, religious and ideological conflicts, poverty, modernization stresses, political inequities, lack of peaceful communications channels, traditions of violence, the existence of a revolutionary group, governmental weakness and ineptness, erosions of confidence in a regime, and deep divisions within governing elites and leadership groups.

International terrorists, sadistic student rebels, and lone executors have a common bond; society and stressors impact their lives severely.

Student’s killers are often exposed to frequent slights from peers or parents, just as some terrorists feel slighted by our treatment of their culture and religious practices. These snubs are evident if society as a whole and those functioning within the system choose to recognize them. The stress in young lives can be reduced or eliminated if we attend to these grievances quickly.

Frustration and Persecution

We might realize that lone shooters, those that walk into our schools also are victims of a fragile upbringing. There are reasons that these solitary shooters might aim at young girls, blondes, or the most innocent among us. Again, if we as a community choose to be aware of what we are creating for our children, we can save them before they become adult or adolescent killers.

Religious or political zealots, the defiant, defensive, and the righteous also are products of their environment. They may act out against nations or peoples; still, the source of their rage is apparent if we choose to look for it. Each of these executors feels persecuted and why not.

In a world where frustrations are ignored or attributed to authority figures, women, or circumstances beyond our control, there is much to feel frustrated about. Students feel stuck in school, at home, or in lives that demand much of them and give little in return. Adults, loners and cult followers alike, feel lost in the unresolved circumstances of their past and present. They want to affect the future. However, in the future, as in the present, and the past, people are not the focus. Folly and failed systems are.

We evaluate preventive mechanized and legal measures. We disregard the fact that these are not effective.

I propose we look at life, at our daily existence and the stresses our cultures promote. I theorize if we assess the way in which we live, the life standards we accept, then, we might be able to prevent these mass and individual tragedies.

Can we as a nation protect ourselves from aggressors? I contend, guns cannot prevent a crime. Only if we face the genuine pain that prompts their reactive behaviors will our children, our Educators, and our communities be safe.