There's no easy answer, no quick fix. Today teachers and school employees are confronted by a challenge in schools that goes far beyond the traditional classroom culture of teaching, inspiring and disciplining children. Violence, gangs, guns and drugs continue to seep from the mean streets into schools. Once fisticuffs were considered the extreme for students looking to settle disputes. Now it's automatic weapons.
Violence walks through the schoolhouse doors too often.
It arrives with a child who suffers from physical and emotional abuse in the home. It breeds in environments where hate, illiteracy, poverty, drug abuse, unemployment and inadequate health care are pervasive. Violence poisons children who turn to television for a daily bombardment of filth and degradation. On an average day, more than 150,000 children will miss school because they are afraid of being hurt by other students. Children cannot learn and teachers cannot instruct in an atmosphere of fear.