Teenage Violence: A Problem Or Not?

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate July 2001

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Violence has not only risen dramatically to our society in the past few years, but in our schools as well. This can be seen just by picking up a newspaper lately. Names like Littleton, Columbine, and Jonesboro are all familiar to us now because of the horrific school shootings that took place in these towns. This trend seems to be escalating greatly and will soon become an epidemic if it is to stopped. In their article, "The Need to Address Bullying- An Important Component of Violence Prevention," Howard Spivak and Deborah Prothrow-Stith discuss the existence of this trend as well as causes and a solution. In, "Early Identification and Intervention for Youth with Antisocial and Violent Behavior", an article by Jeffrey Sprague and Hill Walker, we read again of the existence of a rising trend of violence in our schools as well as causes of this trend and a solution as well.

"Weapon Carrying in School: Prevalence and Association with Other Violent Behaviors," by Kimberly Y.-Z. Forrest, PH.D., et al. discusses, once again, the trend of evidence in our schools as well as causes and solutions. I will be showing you what they have to say as well as giving you my voice on this subject as well. Things to be discusses are the existence of a trend, causes for it, and any solution to be considered.

In, "Weapon-Carrying in School: Prevalence and Association with Other Violent Behaviors," Forrest et al. tell us that there has been a dramatic increase in violence and weapon carrying among the youth of America (133). They give surprising statistics such as in 1999, 6.9% of high school students carried a weapon to school. They also show us that when the demographic is smaller, the percentage increases up to 15%.

In, "Early Identification and...