NCJ Number
208955
Journal
Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy Volume: 11 Issue: 3 Dated: Fall 2004 Pages: 553-580
Date Published
2004
Length
28 pages
Annotation
This article examines the problem of violence in the American school system, the common responses to the violence, and presents a unique possibility in terms of effectively reducing student violence.
Abstract
While providing a quality education has been heralded as one of the most important functions of State and local governments, the public education system has recently experienced the problem of increasing violence within its schools. State statutes dictate that public schools must provide protection for students and staff while attending and traveling to and from school. A conflict exists when schools must not only provide an education for violent children, but must also provide a safe environment for nonviolent students. The current article contends that school systems have become dependent on disciplinary schemes that do not effectively teach students to act nonviolently. The role of schools, it is argued, is to not only provide an appropriate education but to also teach students to be nonviolent citizens. Part 1 of the article explores the prevalence of violence in American schools and possible sources and causes of that violence. Part 2 analyzes the deleterious effect of school violence on the quality of education. Part 3 evaluates three of the most common disciplinary schemes for dealing with school violence: (1) Zero Tolerance policies; (2) heavy reliance on the criminal and juvenile justice systems; and (3) heavy reliance on alternative schools for violent children. Part 4 describes the unique methods employed at the Maya Angelou Public Charter School in Washington, DC, that have met with success in curbing violence among violence-prone students. The author explores the possibility of utilizing these methods in traditional public school settings. In the end, it is the schools that are responsible for addressing the causes of student violence before turning to the police or justice systems; The Maya Angelou Public Charter School has shown that reducing student violence is well within the purview of the American public school system. Footnotes