The Violence Project

Courtesy of eduwonkette

The blog eduwonkette recently posted an interesting piece that looks in depth at violence in Chicago schools. The article goes beyond gun violence and uses research to study overall violent incidents at school and students’ attitudes toward violence.

I’m happy to see it separate the recent gun violence and the violence that happens within many schools. Many media outlets — including this one– have all too easily tied the problem of students getting killed as one tied directly to the schools, but out of the more than 20 students killed by guns this school year, only two were on school grounds. Many have tried to use this fact to take away the blame for the schools and put it strictly in the hands of parents and law enforcement. On the flip side, a teacher recently told me in an interview that the Chicago Public Schools isn’t running away from these deaths but cynically embracing it in order to push for stricter gun-control laws.

What is the best first step forward? Maybe just talking about it and getting people to pay attention. The schools are part of these communities where these kids are being killed –just like a church, a mom-and-pop shop and other local institutions. Schools can’t think of themselves as not having a stake in this, since it is their job to educate these children, one of the most valuable jobs to have in a community. All too easily many (and even some churches) fail to see that point.

An excerpt from eduwonkette:

What long-term effects can we expect from this wave of violence in Chicago? This Science paper, “Firearm Violence Exposure and Serious Violent Behavior,” provides some insight. The authors analyzed data from Chicago, and argued that there is a causal relationship between exposure to firearm violence and subsequent perpetration of serious violence. The effects were quite large - “exposure to firearm violence approximately doubles the probability that an adolescent will perpetrate serious violence over the subsequent 2 years.”

Education bloggers (present company included) spill a lot of ink over the smallest details of accountability plans, but it’s important to remember that this is the context in which our schools are working. Community problems inevitably seep into schools, and the interventions that we spend the most time talking about do little to help kids manage the emotional toll of these events.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 12:24 pm and is filed under blogs, research, schools, violence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.