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WHY ALL THE HYSTERIA? I ASK
from the LA Times, Wednesday, August 4, 1999
High School Violence in Decline,
Study Finds Safety: Despite media coverage of campus killings, fewer students report carrying weapons or fighting.
By TERENCE MONMANEY, Times Medical Writer
Amid turbulent national debate over school shootings,government researchers are reporting a largely unheralded decline in high school violence in the 1990s, with many fewer students saying that they carried a weapon or engaged in fights than at the beginning of the decade.
In four biennial surveys of more
than 45,000 high school students
nationwide between 1991 and 1997,
the number of youths who said they
carried a weapon to school fell by 28%,
the researchers found. The number of
students who said they got in a
schoolyard fight fell by 9%. And the
proportion who carried a gun on or off
campus dropped 25%.
Reconciling those positive trends
with the more recent mass killings on
school campuses is difficult, the
researchers and other analysts say. But
the study, made public today in the
Journal of the American Medical Assn.,
suggests that various efforts to reduce
schoolyard dangers have been effective
despite the rare outbreak of
inexplicable mayhem.
"This is real progress," said study
coauthor Thomas Simon, a behavioral
scientist at the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
In a separate study in the same
journal, which this week was devoted
to violence research, North Carolina
researchers reported that child abuse-related deaths are far
more common than official statistics indicate. (Is anyone proposing licensing parents?)-cm They attributed
the discrepancy to errors in interpreting death certificate data.
Regarding the school violence study, Simon said it is unclear
how students' feelings and behavior might be affected in the long
run by recent tragedies such as the fatal shooting of 12 students
and a teacher in Littleton, Colo., last April. But because the
study draws on such a large number of students, it "is more
representative of what is really happening with kids today," he
said. -cont'd-
© Los Angeles Times 1999
[This message has been edited by Covert Mission (edited August 04, 1999).]
WHY ALL THE HYSTERIA? I ASK
from the LA Times, Wednesday, August 4, 1999
High School Violence in Decline,
Study Finds Safety: Despite media coverage of campus killings, fewer students report carrying weapons or fighting.
By TERENCE MONMANEY, Times Medical Writer
Amid turbulent national debate over school shootings,government researchers are reporting a largely unheralded decline in high school violence in the 1990s, with many fewer students saying that they carried a weapon or engaged in fights than at the beginning of the decade.
In four biennial surveys of more
than 45,000 high school students
nationwide between 1991 and 1997,
the number of youths who said they
carried a weapon to school fell by 28%,
the researchers found. The number of
students who said they got in a
schoolyard fight fell by 9%. And the
proportion who carried a gun on or off
campus dropped 25%.
Reconciling those positive trends
with the more recent mass killings on
school campuses is difficult, the
researchers and other analysts say. But
the study, made public today in the
Journal of the American Medical Assn.,
suggests that various efforts to reduce
schoolyard dangers have been effective
despite the rare outbreak of
inexplicable mayhem.
"This is real progress," said study
coauthor Thomas Simon, a behavioral
scientist at the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
In a separate study in the same
journal, which this week was devoted
to violence research, North Carolina
researchers reported that child abuse-related deaths are far
more common than official statistics indicate. (Is anyone proposing licensing parents?)-cm They attributed
the discrepancy to errors in interpreting death certificate data.
Regarding the school violence study, Simon said it is unclear
how students' feelings and behavior might be affected in the long
run by recent tragedies such as the fatal shooting of 12 students
and a teacher in Littleton, Colo., last April. But because the
study draws on such a large number of students, it "is more
representative of what is really happening with kids today," he
said. -cont'd-
© Los Angeles Times 1999
[This message has been edited by Covert Mission (edited August 04, 1999).]