How to Stamp Out School Violence

Due to the recent rash of school violence, lawmakers and other government officials have turned their attention to school safety and will soon be holding summits to find new ways of making schools safer. Therefore, I will offer a few suggestions of my own for them to consider. My suggestions are unique in that I guarantee that they will stamp out any and all school violence, if implemented as I prescribe. So, without further ado, here are my three simple suggestions:

1) Don't allow anyone who has ever been charged with any crime, even a misdemeanor like speeding, to live within ten miles of any school. We must only allow the pure and the best of the best to live near our schools.

2) Install maximum security features at every school. That means putting prison-like bars in all school windows and building twenty-foot-high, three-foot-thick cement walls around every school. On top of each wall, there should be barbed wire extending two feet high. There would be no "door'" openings in the walls for people to go in and out (see item 3).

3) Guards should be placed outside the walls that surround each school to prevent anyone from ever getting in. Those permanently kept out would include teachers, students, school board members, elected officials, etc.  

Comments

[Helena]

You are so funny! Do you mean that school violence is actually incurable except that there are no people on campus?

[Colin]

Helena I agree, I think this is a sarcastic argument but a valid one, because it allows people to realize that anytime you have two or more people (or just one person w/ destructive tendencies)there will be violence on a long enough timeline. The problem with school violence without getting into the other problems with our school system is that "school violence" has been blown totally out of proportion. The fact of the matter is that today more children will die from abuse than have ever been killed in school. However I have yet to see child abuse covered on a regular basis by the media.

While all life is important we need to be doing the best good for the greatest number (utilitarianism hooray!) or at least not spending superfluous amounts of money to garrison our schools like a military outpost. Just as "only the dead have seen the end of war" only the dead have seen the end of school violence, we just need to look at more important things first :/

[Steve Poynter]

Sounds exactly like a prison to me. With respect to you, are you serious about your suggestions? When is the last time you were actually inside a school, and have you considered asking some of the incredible teachers and students there what they think about your suggestions? You may be surprised if you do so.

I think a better solution is to focus on the transformation of all schools into environments for fostering peace within the school and the community. As HH Dalai Lama said, “Fight violence with peace."

Coleman McCarthy stated it well when he said, "Blame nobody for the current situation- except yourself. Each of us has to ask, “Am I using my gifts well to be peace makers?” As an educator, I totally agree.