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Are Students Safe Anywhere?? Essay, Research Paper

Joseph Kisiel

Research Paper: Final Draft

Are Students Safe Anywhere?

For most people, living in the suburbs means living a better life: fresher air, better schools, basically an all around cleaner and safer environment. Does that mean living in the suburb guarantees a safer environment? There is always one thing that is inescapable wherever one lives, and that is violence. Violence is everywhere, and for the most part, I would like to discuss the violence in America s schools. What I would like to find out is, if there is a significant difference in violence in urban schools than in suburban schools? Are suburban schools at a greater risk for violence than urban schools?

Most people would think that urban schools are worse than suburban schools because of the type of people that attend them: urban teens. People assume that suburban schools are better because the students there don t have to walk through metal detectors when they enter the front doors of their school. Urban schools are not held in high regard compared to suburban schools because of the stereotypes that are placed on urban teens pregnant, drug addicted, violent, fatherless, welfare, dependent, poor, black, and uneducated (Way, pg. 1).

After seeing what happened in the mid-sized town of Littleton, Colorado, I feel safer being in an urban school. In all my years of urban schooling, I have never experienced or heard of any serious act of violence. When I think about what happened in Littleton, Colorado, I know that it could have happened anywhere because I have met some pretty disturbed people in my high school. When I had heard that two disturbed students shot and killed twelve youths and one teacher before pulling the trigger on themselves, I was flabbergasted. I quickly thought to myself, wow, that could have very well been my school , because there were kids in my school who were in a similar situation as the two kids in Colorado.

Some may believe that a school s location may play a role in the outcome of violence. For example, Mary Karpos, a criminology expert and professor at the University of Miami, feels that the disassociation of an emotional response from peers is more apt to occur in the city (Krieg, pg. 38). Karpos says that, Cities have a high population turnover People become disconnected and anonymous to each other (Krieg, pg. 106). Psychologist Charles Ewing says that, urban school shootings tend to involve one person, and are usually carried out for reasons of self defense or during another crime such as a robbery (Krieg, pg. 106). Ewing, however feels that suburban deaths are generally quite different.

Ewing feels that emotional reasons are to blame for the killings in suburban schools. They re killing because their rage is directed at their peers and to assert emotional autonomy , says Ewing (Krieg, pg. 104). He also says that, kids in the suburbs may have more time and monetary resources to carry out sophisticated broad scale killings that involve various types of weaponry (Krieg, pg. 117). I can agree with Ewing on this notion because it makes sense. Generally, kids in the suburbs have more money than those in the city. So the more money and the more time one has, the bigger and better weapons and plans one can obtain. If students have the resources for these violent actions, then what precautions can we take to make sure that these violent actions don t happen?

The problem is that students all over the country, whether they are urban or suburban students, has or can easily obtain resources like guns, knives, or even bombs to commit violent acts. Like a prison, schools all over the country, predominantly urban schools, are using metal detectors, police officers and security cameras for prevention tactics (Krieg, pg. 118). Though these tactics have been around a while, students still manage to get around these tactics and are still able to sneak instruments of crime into our schools. Joseph Perry, a psychology professor at Miami s Barry University, feels that urban schools are a step ahead, because they already recognize the problem that kids are unsafe at school (Kreig, pg. 118). Even though this realization gives urban schools an advantage, it also gives reason to believe that urban schools are more violent than suburban schools.

The reason to believe this is because urban schools have experienced so many incidents with guns and gangs, that it was almost mandatory for them to install metal detectors and add security to the schools. One example of why there is reason to believe that urban schools are more violent is from what Kristine Barker, a special needs teacher at Weymouth Intermediate School in Massachusetts, has experienced. Barker worked at an urban school district outside of Boston. Here, she went through violence prevention training. She feels that this training, has given her an edge in her current suburban situation (Kreig, pg. 119). Now that she works in a more suburban district, we have less training , she says (Kreig, pg. 119). Given Barker s situation as a teacher, her experience would lead one to believe that urban schools are more violent than suburban schools. These examples do not necessarily lead to the determination that urban schools are less safe than suburban schools.

Fran Hellar wrote a letter to one newspaper company. In his letter, he brings up a good point that violence committed by youth in suburban areas is a new occurrence. The thing is, these killings and other acts of violence are not addressed in the statistics (Hellar, pg. 17). In a way, one can see why officials wouldn t reflect on the statistics of suburban violence. Since suburban violence is newer, why would they want people to know that violence is a part of their communities now? I feel that these suburban communities seem to want to live up to their stereotypes

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