17 of 20 DOCUMENTS Buffalo News (New York) April 22, 2001 Sunday, FINAL EDITION SCHOOLS' RESPONSE TO COLUMBINE: A FAILING GRADE BYLINE: JAMES ALAN FOX and JACK LEVIN; Special to The News SECTION: VIEWPOINTS, Pg.H5 LENGTH: 844 words It has been two years since two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., opened fire on their classmates and teachers, perpetrating the bloodiest school shooting in American history. In the aftermath of the massacre, Americans were horrified. Across the country, groups of anxious parents, teachers and psychologists huddled in seminars, conferences and meetings to address the issue of students who seek to get even with a semi-automatic. Only now, long after the fact, do we realize exactly what lessons Americans have learned from the experience of mass murder at Columbine High. Judging by the policies and practices implemented over this period of time, it is sad to say that they have learned absolutely nothing. In many middle and high schools, principals have installed metal detectors, stationed armed officers at school entrances and fitted hallways with surveillance cameras (even if they couldn't afford to hire someone to monitor them). Other schools have banned knapsacks that could potentially hide a weapon deep within. School boards, including many in Western New York, instituted zero-tolerance policies, automatically suspending any student caught carrying guns or threatening to blow up their school building. Meanwhile, teachers were handed manuals on violence "warning signs" and were trained how to spot trouble makers who had the potential for being the next schoolyard sniper. Rather than employ long-term policies and programs that had some chance of working to reduce school violence, politicians, principals and parents proposed easy, short-term, politically expedient solutions. School administrators typically took a law enforcement approach that, from the outset, had little if any chance to be effective, but was punitive enough to satisfy public opinion and pacify nervous parents. They spent millions of dollars on security equipment -- money that could have been used instead to make genuine inroads in the battle against school violence as well as to upgrade the entire educational experience. Even worse, panic-stricken school officials suspended many students for the most trivial of reasons -- from threatening to hurt Barney the Purple Dinosaur to making a gun out of construction paper. Students were summarily expelled without regard to their unique circumstances or criminal history; classes were canceled at the slightest provocation; and common sense was totally ignored. And two years later, incredibly, virtually all of the conditions that precipitated the Columbine massacre -- and school shootings elsewhere -- remain very much in place. As much as ever, bullying is a daily threat to hundreds of thousands of youngsters, as cliques and intolerance for diversity continue to dominate school culture. Many children still attend schools that are far too populous and impersonal, and sit in crowded classrooms where teachers are simply overwhelmed by the class size. Children are advised by overburdened psychologists, nurses and guidance counselors, who are lucky if they recognize the faces of their students, let alone their names and personal problems. Cities and towns around the nation have begun to punish parents, through fines and even jail terms, when their children are truant from classes. Little attention has instead been devoted to finding ways of encouraging bored youngsters to attend school. The back-to-basics movement in public education has deprived many children of the "frills" that had made school halfway tolerable as well as esteem-building. Students lack a sufficient range of extracurricular activities -- from freshman sports teams to drama and chess clubs -- which were often eliminated as a cost-cutting measure. Wanting to feel special and belong to something important, students may instead join up with other bored teens during the after-school hours, far away from the watchful guidance of adults, to celebrate the hate-filled ideology of Adolph Hitler or the mean-spirited teachings of the occult. Public opinion as well as criminal justice policy are all too often shaped by collective hysteria in reaction to extraordinary events like Columbine. For example, many school officials respond to bullying only out of fear that some harassed high school student might decide to kill his classmates, not because it is the right thing to do or that it might improve the quality of life for all children. The problem with being scared into addressing an issue is that attention to it remains only so long as the perceived threat persists. Regrettably, the legacy of the Columbine tragedy appears to be little more than a long list of ineffective quick fixes. Yet, in the midst of hype and hysteria, we never really came close to addressing the fundamental problems that alienate children. Despite the "A" for effort, America's campaign against school violence deserves a failing grade. JAMES ALAN FOX is the Lipman Professor of Criminal Justice and Jack Levin is the Brudnick Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University in Boston. LOAD-DATE: April 24, 2001 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Associated Press Students are led from Columbine High School during the April 20, 1999, shooting incident. Two years later, incredibly, virtually all of the conditions that precipitated the Columbine massacre -- and school shootings elsewhere -- remain very much in place. Copyright 2001 The Buffalo News |