A rash of school shootings in rural and suburban areas has alarmed the nation but most schools are very safe, according to a nationally renowned expert in juvenile violence at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ at Boulder.
"It's much safer to be in a school than at home or in the streets in front of your home," said Delbert Elliott, professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence. The school shootings shocked people because of where they occurred.
"Violence in the 1990s is very different because it's likely to erupt anywhere: the grocery store, the post office, the shopping mall and at school events," Elliott said.
Elliott is co-editor of a new volume titled "Violence in American Schools: A New Perspective," published this month by Cambridge University Press. The book is co-edited by CU-Boulder sociology Professor Kirk Williams, associate director of the violence center, and Dr. Beatrix Hamburg, past president of the William T. Grant Foundation of New York.
The book will be released Oct. 14 at a Washington, D.C., news conference featuring Elliott and Dr. Hamburg, now a visiting scholar at Cornell University Medical College.
The book includes chapters by more than 20 experts from several disciplines -- including public health, criminology, ecology and developmental psychology -- reviewing the latest research on school-based violence prevention programs and the causes of school violence. The book concludes by offering new strategies for preventing violence based on an integrated approach to the problem.
The best way to prevent school violence is by creating a social climate where children and adults view violence as unacceptable behavior, Elliott said. This social environment creates an important social control among students for their own behavior. "So that if a student says he's going to bring a gun to school, his friends would say, 'Don't do it, that's stupid!" Elliott said.
The book provides a new perspective on the problem because it views school as part of a larger system of families and neighborhoods, and discusses how violence and violence prevention programs in those areas affect the schools, he said.
Fear undermines learning, Elliott said. The ability of students to concentrate and think is directly influenced by their perception of safety.
"It's when kids do not feel safe that they're more likely to bring a gun to school," Elliott said. Guns are a great leveler if a student is being intimidated by a bigger and stronger youth, he noted.
Children today face many conditions that didn't exist when older generations were in school, Elliott said. There are greater opportunities for learning than ever before and there also are greater opportunities for self-destruction through violence, drugs and sexual activity.
What makes creating a safe and supportive environment difficult in inner-city schools in poor areas is the high turnover rate among neighbors and schoolteachers, Elliott said. But most parents in such areas are very concerned about their children and can be enlisted to help.
Once a safe and supportive environment is established it tends to be self-perpetuating, like a good neighborhood, and does not require a great deal of effort to keep it going, Elliott said.
Other measures schools can take to prevent violence include:
o Discussing rules and expectations in every classroom, and dealing with incidents fairly and according to procedure. "If kids perceive that the rules are enforced unfairly, it undermines the whole process," he said.
o Establishing a safety plan in every school. "One of the things that concerns me is that many school principals deny that there is a problem," he said.
o Forming an advisory committee consisting of police officers, teachers, parents and community leaders to help the school principal create a safety plan. All parents should be informed of the safety plan to encourage reinforcement of its provisions.
o Setting out procedures ahead of time on what to do if a student brings a gun to school so that the result is not chaos, but a smooth implementation of procedure.
o Monitoring areas where bullies can intimidate other students, such as bathrooms and playgrounds.
Other Western, industrialized countries have all experienced a rise in violence along with the United States, but other countries' levels of violence were relatively low to begin with, Elliott said.
"What's unique about violence in America is the love affair with the gun," he said. Using guns to solve problems has spilled out of urban areas and into suburban and rural areas, he said.
The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence was established at CU-Boulder in 1992 with a grant from the Carnegie Corp. in New York to provide informed assistance to groups committed to understanding and preventing violence.