Parenting Resources - Electronic Media and Teens

Media and School Violence

By Corey Johnson

A teen-ager not yet old enough to drive may be tried as an adult for allegedly opening fire Thursday at Heritage High School in suburban Atlanta and wounding six classmates. Two students dead and 13 injured during afternoon shooting at Santana High School in California. Horrific shooting at Columbine High School. What type of imagery does headlines like these stir?

These are the types of topics that are bombarding our television stations and news coverage daily. Why is society so interested in chaos? Researchers have completed an analysis of 37 school shootings. The research showed that students at school usually knew what would happen because the shooters had told them, but the bystanders didn't warn anyone. This disturbing pattern gives society a brief ray of hope, because this gives teachers time to intervene. If kids tell, teachers or parents might be able to learn what a student is planning before the violence erupts.

What part does the media play in this violence? The media has become a tool to broadcast the violence. The majority of the acts of violence in schools are re-creations of a previous incident. Students are seeing acts of violence on television and want to create them at their school.

The most staggering of all statistics showed that over 90% of the school violence was caused by male students.

What can be done to stop this trend? More and more weapons are showing up in schools underscores how readily accessible they are. In response to this phenomenon, schools are resorting to random checks of students' book bags, backpacks, or lockers. They are also increasing their use of metal detectors to identify students carrying weapons. Many schools are moving to physical means of control--fences, blocked access roads, and locked and chained doors--to guard against violence. Such measures are costly and reflect the real and unpleasant image of being locked up. These efforts also divert funds from efforts to reform education and restructure schools. Sometimes this is the type of effort necessary to curve the violence in schools.

Most strategies to curb violence in school and society are designed to respond to violence after it has occurred rather than to prevent it. This is the reason the majority of plans happen as a result of the incident. Equally effective, if not more so, and less costly than guards, is the use of students' parents as monitors and teachers' aides. Studies show that youth are less likely to misbehave or engage in violent acts if parents from their neighborhood are highly visible on a daily basis in their school. Several schools have used this strategy and found it to be highly effective. When parents take a more personal role in the environment their children live in, the violence in school has decreased.Institutionalization of discipline and dress codes is another strategy used to curb violence. These codes should be developed collaboratively by administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Discipline and dress codes should be reviewed by the school district's legal staff to assure compliance with state school law. Equally important, schools must be sure that the rules created have a purpose and that they explicitly tell students what kinds of behavior are acceptable. Schools should also try to establish counseling programs for students, and assure that students do indeed have access to their counselors. Children need someone other than parents to express their feelings to. Currently, most elementary schools do not have counselors, and if they do, they are in the schools for only one or two days per week. At the high school level, counselors are part of the staff. However, the average high school counselor has between 350-400 students to advise. This is too many students for the counselor to have a personal relationship with students. Needless to say, students are lucky to see their counselor once during a school year-usually when it is time to sign up for the next year's classes-and this contact often occurs in a large group. In order to effectively counsel the students in the school-whether academically or behaviorally-and to ensure that students have access to their assigned counselor on a regular basis, counselors should be assigned no more than 125-150 students per school year. The counselor should have only one job and this is counseling.

Another form of "counseling" is the widespread use of conflict resolution strategies to defuse potentially violent situations and to persuade those involved to use nonviolent means to resolve their differences. These types of strategies help to diffuse escalating problems before they reach a boiling point. Some schools that have adopted conflict resolution strategies are trying to teach young people new ways of channeling their anger into constructive, nonviolent responses to conflict. As a means of addressing violence, conflict resolution programs in schools start by identifying a core group of student leaders in the school. This group receives intensive training and supervision in the use of conflict resolution strategies and student mediation. Members of the "conflict resolution team" then use their skills and knowledge to help maintain order in the school by counseling their peers, intervening in disputes among students, helping them talk through their problems, and training other students to use conflict resolution strategies. Conflict resolution strategies should be used in individual classrooms as well as school wide. In addition, high school team members should visit students in elementary school and teach them the value of conflict resolution skills. Thus, conflict resolution strategies can be used for both prevention and intervention.

Schools should strongly consider the establishment of crisis centers for students who commit violent acts or threaten violence. Teachers and administrators can refer students to the centers, which should be staffed by professionals who are specially trained to work with violent students. Crisis centers should not be used for long-term interventions, but rather as in-school areas where students can be sent to "cool off" and to receive on-the-spot counseling. Nor should crisis centers be viewed as a replacement for after school detention programs.

To maintain a safe and orderly classroom conducive to teaching and learning, a teacher must set forth both academic and behavioral expectations for all students. In addition to school wide codes, each teacher must articulate to students on the first day of class the basic standards of behavior for the class. Additional standards may be developed with input from the students to reinforce their commitment to the standards.

Although the violence in schools has tripled in past years, parents need not get discouraged. All attention in the media may not be harmful. With the large media coverage now given to school violence, parents are now aware that there is a problem. With parents aware of the violence, they can now speak with their children to make them aware of what's happening in schools. The best defense parents can give their children is awareness.

Serving the following States in the U.S. and international locations:

Alabama (AL), Arkansas (AR), Alaska (AK), Arizona (AZ), California CA), Colorado (CO), Delaware (DE), District of Columbia (DC), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Hawaii (HI), Idaho (ID), Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Iowa (IA), Kansas (KS), Kentucky (KY), Louisiana (LA), Maine (ME), Maryland (MD), Massachusetts (MA), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Mississippi (MS), Missouri (MO), Montana (MT), Nebraska (NE), Nevada (NA), New Hampshire (NH), New Jersey (NJ), New Mexico, (NM) New York (NY), North Carolina (NC), Ohio (OH), Oklahoma (OK), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Rhode Island (RI), South Carolina (SC), South Dakota (SD), Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Utah (UT), Vermont (VT), Virginia (VA), Washington (WA), West Virginia (WV), Wisconsin (WI), Wyoming (WY), Canada, Mexico, Cayman Islands