Pass legislation specifically guaranteeing students the right to be free from bullying and harassment in public schools. Provide schools with resources for school counselors and school psychologists to work with aggressive students and victims of bullying. The extensive and protracted coverage of the Columbine shooting frightened parents and educators across the country. Too much emphasis was placed on highly emotional images of traumatized children and anguished parents. If one picture is worth a thousand words, unfortunately, one fear-arousing photograph seems to outweigh a thousand facts.
Fear clouds an objective, rational analysis of the problem.
Now the highly arousing coverage of the most recent shootings threaten again to generate more distorted perceptions that schools are not safe and that every angry teenager is a potential killer. Homicides at school, although tragic, represent only a tiny fraction of the fatalies suffered by youth people every year. The coverage given to school shootings is far out of proportion to the danger they actually pose to our children. Children are more likely to be killed at home or on the streets than at school. Yet because of the school shootings, some schools now have children walk through metal detectors at the entrance.