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Root Causes of School Violence: Another Perspective

School violence is no longer a new issue to the world, what may be new to us is the different root causes of the menace. A web site, findarticles.com, examined the root causes of school violence where they attributed the actual causes of school violence to poverty and the resulting crime that characterized such a society. Let us consider the perspective to which the site viewed as being the root causes of the violence in schools.

 

Experts believe that urban societies have larger number of poverty rate. The poverty experienced there leads to rampant crime occurrence and drug abuse. The urban society again has high level of unemployed which leads to many people being idle. If the saying that: “An idle mind is the workshop of the devil” is anything to go by, then that should explain why the urban areas have more criminals than other societies. The children of this society tend to pick certain undesirable behaviors such as aggressiveness, bullying behavior, frustrations with virtually everything, drug abuse, learning how to use and acquire weapons etc. The children would have become acquainted with crime so much so that they consider the hardened criminals in their society as heroes that should be emulated.

 

At school, they behave as local champions in violence, aggression and bullying. They are not afraid to unleash terror to fellow students as well as their teachers. To stage attacks on their target is not at all a big deal to them.

 

The urban environment has certain “Risk Factor Domains” (The School Violence Resource Center , 2002), that includes individual risk factor, family risk factor, community risk factor and school risk factor. The individual risk factor includes aggressiveness of the individual, drug abuse, interacting with peers that are delinquent, complication at birth etc. Family risk factor may include background criminal and violence record of the family, lack of proper home discipline, poor monitor of conducts on the side of the parents, Parents drug abuse. Community factor is the ability of individual to gain access to weapons and drugs easily within the community, rampant violence, transient population, broken homes and economic deprivation. The school risk factors include factors like poor ability to perform academically, lose of interest and concentration in learning and joining gang (school Violence Resource Center, 2002).         

 

 These are the factors that cause school violence according to this view. It is clear that the factors enumerated have the potentials to actually cause violence; how that is possible have been adequately addressed in the discussion above. Therefore, it is now left for the stake holders for the control of violence to come together and put all hands on deck to free our schools from this terrifying social problem. Our poor children deserve to have an environment of learning that is peaceful and conducive. The responsibility of providing same is laid on the neck of the stake holders and we are ready to support them in any way possible to achieve this noble goal. We look forward to a future where our children will go to school and return safely and peacefully throughout their educational pursuit.