I wasn’t planning on a three-part blog on the issue of the rise in violence in schools but when I read the paper this morning, I found a few more interesting comments that I want to share (if you missed the earlier blog, go here.)
One caller said we should lockdown the schools. Her kids attended school in Michigan and once the school day got underway, they locked the school and in order to get in, a visitor had to ring a buzzer. School personnel then looked on a monitor to see who it was and if it wasn’t a parent you had to state your business. Anyone who was unfamiliar was not admitted.
Another caller felt the problem could be traced back to the “violent, horrible video games that our children are playing with.”
I found several interesting comments regarding the student who was suspended for having the list of students he hated. One caller wanted to know if the principal questioned the student who tipped the school off. They wanted to know what that student’s involvement was and also wanted to know, “did the students do something to the child?” The caller felt perhaps the students on the list had been harassing the suspended student.
Another caller asked this question, “ Does anyone other than me think that these recent threats at our local schools have been done by students who just don’t want to go to school?” Seems a bit extreme to me. Another caller feels that the schools are not overacting because students should be able to attend school and not be “cursed, bullied and taunted.”
Finally, regarding the caller who said the problem was with the public schools it was pointed out that the Amish school “is about as private and exclusive as you can get.”
Again, these were all interesting and in some cases valid points and I am no closer to the answer on how we stop this violence than I was when I wrote the earlier blogs. I did find out that in Tyler’s school they had a practice lockdown yesterday much in the same way as they have fire drills (and of course down here we have hurricane drills). This is a great idea so that they will have some idea what to do in case there is a problem. Hopefully, they will never have to put into practice what they learned in the drill.