Student Support Should Be Our Top Priority in Dealing with School Violence
Notes from the Field
Submitted by Frank Murphy on September 20, 2011
In late March of this year, a seven part investigative series on school violence, titled Assault on Learning, was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer. This report provided a comprehensive and balanced looked at the problems created in classrooms across the city as the result of the disruptive and sometimes criminal behavior of a small group of juvenile offenders.
Throughout this series, the reporters did a good job of describing what school violence looks like to the people who inhabit our public schools. They provided a variety of examples of its ill effects on students, teachers and parents. They also identified the schools having a large number of incidents of school violence.
In addition to detailing the extent and types of serious incidents that have occurred in the district during the last five years, the journalists also attempted to delve into the root causes that contribute to violent student