School violence
Encyclopedia
School violence is widely held to have become a serious problem in recent decades in many countries, especially where weapons such as guns or knives are involved. It includes violence between school students as well as physical attacks by students on school staff.

Australia

The Education Minister of the State of Queensland said in July 2009 that the rising levels of violence in schools were "totally unacceptable" and admitted that not enough had been done to combat violent behaviour. 55,000 students had been suspended in the state's schools in 2008, nearly a third of which were for "physical misconduct".

In South Australia, 175 violent attacks against students or staff were recorded in 2008.

Belgium

A recent study found that violence experienced by teachers in francophone Belgium was a significant factor in decisions to leave the teaching profession.

Bulgaria

Following "numerous reports over the past decade about school violence", the Education Minister in 2009 introduced stricter regulations about student behaviour, including inappropriate dress, being drunk, and carrying mobile phones. Teachers were to be given new powers to punish disruptive students.

France

The French Education Minister claimed in 2000 that 39 out of 75,000 state schools were "seriously violent" and 300 were "somewhat violent".

Japan

A survey by the Education Ministry showed that students at public schools were involved in a record number of violent incidents in 2007—52,756 cases, an increase of some 8,000 on the previous year. In almost 7,000 of these incidents, teachers were the target of assault.

Poland

In 2006, in response to the suicide of a girl after she was sexually molested in school, the Polish Minister of Education, Roman Giertych
Roman Giertych
Roman Jacek Giertych is a Polish politician; he was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education until August 2007. He was a member of the Sejm from 2001 until October 2007, and chairman of the League of Polish Families party.- Biography :Roman Giertych comes from a prominent family of Polish...

, launched a "zero tolerance" school reform. Under this plan, teachers would have the legal status of civil servants, making violent crimes against them punishable by higher penalties. Head teacher
Head teacher
A head teacher or school principal is the most senior teacher, leader and manager of a school....

s (equivalent to principals in the US) will be, in theory, able to send aggressive pupils to perform community service
Community service
Community service is donated service or activity that is performed by someone or a group of people for the benefit of the public or its institutions....

 and these students' parents may also be fined. Teachers who fail to report violent acts in school could face a prison sentence.

South Africa

The South African Human Rights Commission has found that 40% of children interviewed said they had been the victims of crime at school. More than a fifth of sexual assaults on South African children were found to have taken place in schools. Exposure to domestic violence, gangsterism, and drugs have had a substantial impact on student performance.

United Kingdom

A government inquiry in 1989 found that 2 per cent of teachers had reported facing physical aggression. In 2007 a survey of 6,000 teachers by the teachers' trade union NASUWT found that over 16% claimed to have been physically assaulted by students in the previous two years. On the basis of police statistics found through a Freedom of Information request, in 2007 there were more than 7,000 cases of the police being called to deal with violence in schools in England.

In April 2009 another teachers' union, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, released details of a survey of over 1,000 of its members which found that nearly one quarter of them had been on the receiving end of physical violence by a student.

In Wales, a 2009 survey found that two-fifths of teachers reported having been assaulted in the classroom. 49% had been threatened with assault.

United States

According to the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics
National Center for Education Statistics
The National Center for Education Statistics is the part of the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences that collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics on education and public school district finance information in the United States...

, school violence is a serious problem. In 2007, the latest year for which comprehensive data were available, a nationwide survey, conducted biennially by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...

 (CDC) and involving representative samples of U.S. high school students, found that 5.9% of students carried a weapon (e.g. gun, knife, etc.) on school property during the 30 days antedating the survey. The rate was three times higher among males than among females. In the 12 months antedating the survey, 7.8% of high school students reported having been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property at least once, with the prevalence rate among males twice that as among females. In the 12 months antedating the survey, 12.4% of students had been in a physical fight on school property at least once. The rate among males was twice the rate found among females. In the 30 days antedating the survey, 5.5% of students reported that because they did not feel safe, they did not go to school on at least one day. The rates for males and females were approximately equal.

The most recent U.S. data on violent crime in which teachers were targeted indicate that 7 percent (10 percent in urban schools) of teachers in 2003 were subject to threats of injury by students. Five percent of teachers in urban schools were physically attacked, with smaller percentages in suburban and rural schools. Other members of school staffs are also at risk for violent attack, with school bus drivers being particularly vulnerable.

Internalizing and externalizing behaviors

A distinction is made between internalizing and externalizing behavior. Internalizing behaviors reflect withdrawal, inhibition, anxiety, and/or depression. Internalizing behavior has been found in some cases of youth violence although in some youth, depression is associated with substance abuse. Because they rarely act out, students with internalizing problems are often overlooked by school personnel. Externalizing behaviors refer to delinquent activities, aggression, and hyperactivity. Unlike internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors include, or are directly linked to, violent episodes. Violent behaviors such as punching and kicking are often learned from observing others. Just as externalizing behaviors are observed outside of school, such behaviors also observed in schools.

Other individual factors

A number of other individual factors are associated with higher levels of aggressiveness. Early starters have worse outcomes than children whose antisocial activities begin late. Lower IQ is related to higher levels of aggressivity. Other findings indicate that in boys early problematic motor skills, attentional difficulties, and reading problems predict later persistent antisocial conduct.

Home environment

The home environment is thought to contribute to school violence. The Constitutional Rights Foundation suggests long-term exposure to gun
Gun
A gun is a muzzle or breech-loaded projectile-firing weapon. There are various definitions depending on the nation and branch of service. A "gun" may be distinguished from other firearms in being a crew-served weapon such as a howitzer or mortar, as opposed to a small arm like a rifle or pistol,...

 violence, parental alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

, domestic violence
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...

, physical abuse of the child, and child sexual abuse teaches children that criminal and violent activities are acceptable. Harsh parental discipline is associated with higher levels of aggressiveness in youth. There is some evidence indicating that exposure to television violence and, to a lesser extent, violent video games is related to increased aggressiveness in children, which, in turn, may carry over into school.

Straus adduced evidence for the view that exposure to parental corporal punishment
Corporal punishment in the home
Domestic corporal punishment typically involves the corporal punishment of a child by a parent or guardian in the home—normally the spanking or slapping of a child with the parent's open hand, but occasionally with an implement such as a belt, slipper, cane or paddle.In many cultures,...

 increases the risk of aggressive conduct in children and adolescents. Straus's findings have been contested by Larzelere and Baumrind
Diana Baumrind
Diana Blumberg Baumrind is a clinical and developmental psychologist.Baumrind was born into a small Jewish community in New York City, the first of two daughters of Hyman and Mollie Blumberg. She completed her B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy at Hunter College in 1948, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in...

. A meta-analysis
Meta-analysis
In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. In its simplest form, this is normally by identification of a common measure of effect size, for which a weighted average might be the output of a meta-analyses. Here the...

 of the vast literature on corporal punishment, however, indicates that corporal punishment is related to poorer outcomes in children and youth. The methodologically soundest studies indicate "positive, moderately sized associations between parental corporal punishment and children’s aggression." Gershoff found that the trajectory of mean effect sizes (the size of the effect of corporal punishment on children's problem behavior) was curvilinear with the largest mean effect size in middle school (M = 0.55; on average the mean of corporal punishment group was more than half a standard deviation higher than the mean of the non-punishment group) and slightly smaller effect sizes in grade school (M = 0.43) and high school (M = 0.45).

Gerald Patterson’s social interactional model, which involves the mother’s application and the child's counterapplication of coercive behaviors, also explains the development of aggressive conduct in the child. In this context, coercive behaviors include behaviors that are ordinarily punishing (e.g., whining, yelling, hitting, etc.). Abusive home environments can inhibit the growth of social cognitive skills needed, for example, to understand the intentions of others. Short-term longitudinal evidence is consistent with the view that a lack of social cognitive skills mediates
Mediation (Statistics)
In statistics, a mediation model is one that seeks to identify and explicate the mechanism that underlies an observed relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable via the inclusion of a third explanatory variable, known as a mediator variable...

 the link between harsh parental discipline and aggressive conduct in kindergarten. Longer-term, follow-up research with the same children suggests that partial mediating effects last until third and fourth grade. Hirschi's (1969) control theory advances the view that children with weak affective ties to parents and school are at increased risk of engaging in delinquent and violent behavior in and out of school. Hirschi's cross-sectional
Cross-sectional study
Cross-sectional studies form a class of research methods that involve observation of all of a population, or a representative subset, at one specific point in time...

 data from northern California high-school students are largely consistent with this view. Findings from case-control and longitudinal studies
Longitudinal study
A longitudinal study is a correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same variables over long periods of time — often many decades. It is a type of observational study. Longitudinal studies are often used in psychology to study developmental trends across the...

 are also consistent with this view.

Neighborhood environment

Neighborhoods and communities provide the context for school violence. Communities with high rates of crime and drug use teach youth the violent behaviors that are carried into schools. Dilapidated housing in the neighborhood of the school has been found to be associated with school violence. Teacher assault was more likely to occur in schools located in high-crime neighborhoods. Exposure to deviant peers is a risk factor for high levels of aggressivity. Research has shown that poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...

 and high population densities are associated with higher rates of school violence. Well controlled longitudinal research
Longitudinal study
A longitudinal study is a correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same variables over long periods of time — often many decades. It is a type of observational study. Longitudinal studies are often used in psychology to study developmental trends across the...

 indicates that children's exposure to community violence during the early elementary school years increases the risk of aggression later in elementary school, as reported by teachers and classmates. Other, well controlled longitudinal research that utilized propensity score
Propensity score
In the design of experiments, a propensity score is the probability of a unit being assigned to a particular condition in a study given a set of known covariates...

 analyses indicates that exposure to gun violence in early adolescence is related to the initiation of serious physical violence in later adolescence. Neighborhood gangs are thought to contribute to dangerous school environments. Gangs use the social environment of the school to recruit members and interact with opposing groups, with gang violence carrying over from neighborhoods into some schools.

School environment

Recent research has linked the school environment to school violence. Teacher assaults are associated with a higher percentage male faculty, a higher proportion of male students, and a higher proportion of students receiving free or reduced cost lunch (an indicator of poverty). In general, a large male population, higher grade levels, a history of high levels of disciplinary problems in the school, high student to teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...

 ratios, and an urban location are related to violence in schools. In students, academic performance is inversely related to antisocial conduct. The research by Hirschi and others, cited above in the section on the home environment, is also consistent with the view that lack of attachment to school is associated with increased risk of antisocial conduct.

Lax school authorities

In 2005 on a school bus in Montgomery County, Maryland, an 11-year old girl was attacked by a group of several older boys who, the girl said, grabbed her breasts and feigned sex acts. Also in 2005 on a school bus in Colonial Heights, Virginia
Colonial Heights, Virginia
Colonial Heights is an independent city in Virginia, United States. The population was 17,411 as of 2010. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the City of Colonial Heights with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes...

, south of Richmond, Virginia, three boys and two girls aged 8 to 13 held an 11-year-old girl down in the back of the bus and forcefully penetrated her with an object. In the Maryland case, the child's mother, not the school, called the police, although a school administrator did notify the girl's mother (the students were not charged with sexual assault because the police mishandled the paperwork); in the Virginia case, the bus driver saw the incident and notified both the school and the girl's mother, prompting coordinated investigations by the police and the school. In 2008, the Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

 School District failed to intervene in an act of violence committed against a teacher. A student had taken a video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...

 of a peer beating her art teacher. School officials ignored the problem until the video was posted on MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

. Some cases of school violence have not been brought to the attention of the authorities because school administrators have not wanted their schools labeled unsafe under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. With or without NCLB, in the US, there has been a history of underreporting violent incidents occurring in schools.

The media


School shootings are rare and unusual forms of school violence. School shootings are accountable for less than 1% of violent crimes in public schools, with an average of 16.5 deaths per year from 2001–2008. Some commentators claim that media coverage encourages school violence, although a more likely explanation is that the reporting follows the events in question. On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho
Seung-Hui Cho
Seung-Hui Cho was a senior-level undergraduate student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University who killed 32 people and wounded 17 others on April 16, 2007, in the shooting rampage which came to be known as the "Virginia Tech massacre." Cho later committed suicide after law...

 killed 32 people at Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech massacre
The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. In two separate attacks, approximately two hours apart, the perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people...

 before committing suicide. On the other hand, the press would likely have been faulted if it did not cover serious threats to public safety like the Virginia Tech and Columbine massacre
Columbine High School massacre
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...

s.

Prevention and intervention

The goal of prevention and intervention strategies is to stop school violence from occurring. According to the CDC
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...

, there are at least four levels at which violence-prevention programs can act: at the level of society in general, the school community, the family, and the individual.
  • Society-level prevention strategies aim to change social and cultural conditions in order to reduce violence regardless of where the violence occurs. Examples include reducing media violence
    Media violence research
    Research into the media and violence examines whether links between consuming media violence and subsequent aggressive and violent behavior exists...

    , reshaping social norms
    Norm (sociology)
    Social norms are the accepted behaviors within a society or group. This sociological and social psychological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit...

    , and restructuring educational systems
    Education
    Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

    . The strategies are rarely used and difficult to implement.

  • School-wide strategies are designed to modify the school characteristics that are associated with violence. An avenue of psychological research is the reduction of violence and incivility, particularly the development of interventions at the level of the school. The CDC suggests schools promote classroom management techniques, cooperative learning
    Cooperative learning
    Cooperative learning is an approach to organizing classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences. Students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively...

    , and close student supervision. At the elementary school level, the group behavioral intervention known as the Good Behavior Game helps reduce classroom disruption and promotes prosocial classroom interactions. There is some evidence that the Second Step curriculum, which is concerned with promoting impulse control and empathy among second and third graders, produces reductions in physically aggressive behavior. Other school-wide strategies are aimed at reducing or eliminating bullying and organizing the local police to better combat gang violence.

    • The implementation of school-wide early-warning systems, the school equivalent of a DEW Line
      Distant Early Warning Line
      The Distant Early Warning Line, also known as the DEW Line or Early Warning Line, was a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic region of Canada, with additional stations along the North Coast and Aleutian Islands of Alaska, in addition to the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland...

      -like surveillance operation designed to "prevent the worst cases of school violence," has been problematic. Recent developments in early threat assessment, however, show promise. Violence-prevention efforts can also be usefully directed at developing anti-bullying programs, helping teachers with classroom-management strategies, applying behavioral strategies such as the Good Behavior Game, implementing curricular innovations such as the Second Step syllabus, developing programs to strengthen families (see below), and implementing programs aimed at enhancing the social and academic skills of at-risk students (see below).

  • Some intervention programs are aimed at improving family relationships. There is some evidence that such intervention strategies have modest effects on the behavior of children in the short and long term. Patterson's home intervention program involving mothers has been shown to reduce aggressive conduct in children. An important question concerns the extent to which the influence of the program carries over into the child's conduct in school.

  • Some prevention and intervention programs focus on individual-level strategies. These programs are aimed at students who exhibit aggression
    Aggression
    In psychology, as well as other social and behavioral sciences, aggression refers to behavior between members of the same species that is intended to cause humiliation, pain, or harm. Ferguson and Beaver defined aggressive behavior as "Behavior which is intended to increase the social dominance of...

     and violent behaviors or are at risk for engaging in such behaviors. Some programs include conflict resolution
    Conflict resolution
    Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of some social conflict. Often, committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information about their conflicting motives or ideologies to the rest...

     and team problem-solving. Other programs teach students social skills. The Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, while developing and implementing a universal anti-aggression component for all elementary school children, also developed and implemented a separate social-skills and academic tutoring component that targets children who are the most at risk for engaging in aggressive behavior.

See also

  • Bullying
  • Bullying in teaching
    Bullying in teaching
    School teachers are commonly the subject of bullying but they are also sometimes the originators of bullying within a school environment.-Incidence:...

  • Childnet
    Childnet
    Childnet International is a registered UK charity that is working towards making the Internet safer for children. They offer online safety advice to parents, young people and teachers.-History and mission:...

  • Cyber-bullying
    Cyber-bullying
    Cyber-bullying is the use of the Internet and related technologies to harm other people, in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner. As it has become more common in society, particularly among young people, legislation and awareness campaigns have arisen to combat it.-Definition:The term...

  • Gun violence
    Gun violence
    Gun violence defined literally means the use of a firearm to threaten or inflict violence or harm. Gun violence may be broadly defined as a category of violence and crime committed with the use of a firearm; it may or may not include actions ruled as self-defense, actions for law enforcement, or...

  • List of school-related attacks
  • School bullying
    School bullying
    School bullying is a type of bullying that occurs in connection with education, either inside or outside of school. Bullying can be physical, verbal, or emotional and is usually repeated over a period of time.In schools, bullying occurs in all areas...

  • School shooting
  • Suicide of Megan Meier
    Suicide of Megan Meier
    Megan Taylor Meier , was an American teenager from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, who committed suicide by hanging three weeks before her fourteenth birthday. A year later, Meier's parents prompted an investigation into the matter and her suicide was attributed to cyber-bullying through the social...


External links

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