Learning About School Violence

Full Title: Learning About School Violence: Lessons for Educators, Parents, Students, & Communities
Author / Editor: Matthew W. Greene
Publisher: Peter Lang, 2001

It
is common knowledge that our children report feeling increasingly unsafe
traveling to and from school, as well as during time spent at school. Studies
have variously documented nearly half of all teens believing their schools were
becoming more violent, a tenth feared being shot or wounded by armed classmates
and twice as many feared restrooms as lairs for student victimization. Much
federal money has been allocated to prevent aggressive behavior in our schools
while simultaneously targeting early interventional and therapeutic measures.
As school districts are faced with armed children, schoolgoers lacking
compassion, serious substance abuse issues and juvenile criminal records, it is
critical for the community at large to be actively involved in the complex
social policy problem that is school violence.

Learning About School Violence: Lessons for
Educators, Parents, Students and Communities is a most pedestrian compilation of Matthew W Greene, a
Ph.D. in political science from the University of Colorado who counsels
students and families on educational planning. The very first paragraph indicates
that "as a graduate student with long-standing interests in conflict
resolution and policy-making, (Greene) began gradually to link (his) study of
theories of nonviolence, such as those of Ghandi (sic), King and Sharp":
the reader knows what lies beneath. What follows are page after painful page of
documentation, definition, ill-expounded theory and more documentation. Most of
this pertains to the State of Colorado, the Denver Public Schools (Top Ten
Suspension Reasons over Time, anyone?), and the Colorado Springs School
District, all whittled within the fabric of bureaucratic policy makers by the
chisel of pithy prose. While one cannot argue that epidemiological data is
necessary in risk stratifying and identifying and delineating patterns of problem-related
factors, simply slapping the reader’s forehead with accumulated numbers and
figures will not make the problem go away. It will just result in a massive
incorrigible headache.