School Violence

Essay by donala37College, UndergraduateA, January 2008

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School Violence"A 1996 Children's Institute International Poll of American Adolescents revealed that 47 percent of all teens believed their schools were becoming more violent, 10 percent feared being shot or hurt by classmates carrying weapons to schools, and more than 20 percent were afraid to go to restrooms because these unsupervised areas were frequent sites of student victimization" (The US Department of Health and Human Sciences, 2003). "Highly publicized school shootings have created uncertainty about the safety and security of this country's schools and generate fear that an attack might occur in any school, in any community" (Vossekuil, Fein, Reddy, Borum, & Modzeleski, 2002). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theory that there are necessary conditions that must be present to follow through with school shootings.

Although school shootings are rare, there is the need to research why this happens. We need to find out what happens with the students that make them want to cause such harm.

Students and staff are becoming insecure in a setting that should be safe for them. Learning is important and everyone involved in school needs to know and feel that when the go to school everyday that they are in a safe environment.

According to Katherine S. Newman, there are five necessary conditions for school shootings; these conditions are necessary but not sufficient. According to Newman, a necessary condition is one that is required, that the event cannot happen without it, and that a sufficient condition is one that always produces the event. Therefore, it can be argued that all five conditions must be present for a shooting to occur, but the presence of all five conditions will not always produce a shooting (Newman K.S., Fox C., Roth W., Mehta J., & Harding D., 2004, Appendix C, Para 2).