Weapon-related violence in schools

According to a resent research, every week, up to 8,000 teachers will deal with a pupil carrying an offensive weapon to school in the US, such as a knife or a gun. Teachers are facing worrying levels of violence, poor behaviour and disruption in schools. The study also shown that 1 in 10 teachers reported being pushed or manhandled by pupils.
The study by Dr. Sean Neil, of Warrick University's Institute of Education, revealed that serious incidents are increasingly taking place in schools serving disadvantaged areas. According to Steve Simott, General Secretary of The National Union of Teachers, which comisssioned the research , carrying weapons to school doesn't make students safer but more vulnerable and he remarked that they need to get that message across. Teachers are encountering the problem, especially in some of the toughtest schools in the toughtest areas, particularly among boys from socially deprived backgrounds. Boys from disadvataged areas are more likely to have low aspirations, be worse behaved, commit offences and become gang members.
Teachers said in the survey that rather than takle the problem with more referral units, they would prefer actions to reduce class size, make curriculum less restrictive and get more support from parents for school discipline.
As regrading weapon-related violence in school, there's a proposal in Britain to introduce metal detectors in schools. This proposal to introduce " airport style" security in schools represents a remarkable U-turn for the government, since it was againts the move 3 years ago. However, the official line has changed as the cult of the knife has grown among british youngsters. A reserach revealed that the number of teenagers who were found carrying knives to school more than doubled from 482 in 1997 to 1,256 in 2006.
The metal detector plan will be a key element in a new government action plan against violence in schools supported by teachers.The proposal will also shift more responsibility on the parents with a plan to make them sign up to scanning and serching policies as a condition of entry when their children first apply for a school place.
In the US metal detectors have been used for the last 15 years with some succes. Some detectors were installed in response to the 1992 Columbia High School shootings, and in response to some other shootings. A study suggested that metal detectors have helped to cut the number of weapons being brought into schools by more than a half and to cut knife-related violence by about a %35.
In my opinion, to install metal detectors in schools to prevent weapon-related violence is a sensible preacaution. On the other hand, a problem with metal detectors is that this meassure tackles just weapon-related violence but it doesn't tackle violence in schools itself. Violence within students and against teachers is a problem at a general scale and metal detectors are the solution to only one of the consequences of this wave of violence in which we live today. We need to prevent that violence. And in order to do that we need to search for it real causes, rather than dealing with only one of its consequences.