Preface: When Violence Becomes an Acronym
We Are in Quite the "What Do We Do Now?" Phase of School Aggression
“Nobody ever trained for this; we were just teachers doing what we had to do every day.” — Columbine Faculty, from The Columbine Wall of Healing Memorial
So where to begin about assault and battery — and worse — in America’s schools?
Where do we go a month after the February 13, 2023 indiscriminate slaughter of three students with five others wounded at Michigan State University, my undergraduate alma mater?
Or a year and a half after the November 30, 2021 murder of four students, seven seriously injured, at Oxford High School, only 40 miles north of where I teach?
What resources should we reexamine first?
Probably not The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. . . .
The year before the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, the CDC happened to publish much-needed pioneering research on 4.9 million students from 1991-2019 regarding school violence — before their hard pivot in March 2020, to confusing communiques, dubious restarts and reworded pandemic directives for the next two disconcerting years.
When CDC Director Rochelle Walensky publicly admitted last August to serious errors, “We are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes. From testing, to data, to communications," we probably shouldn’t depend on them for much crisis management insight. Surely not before the CDC significantly improves “sharing scientific findings and data faster."1
In 1990, the CDC had also published one of the worst alphabet soup abbreviations ever. Their editing team came up with what sounded like a violently suppressed sneeze: YRBSS, short for the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System.
YRBSSssssssss!
(Bless you)
From their website:
"The YRBSS was developed in 1990 to monitor health behaviors that contribute markedly to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems among youth and adults in the United States."2
Call this the Pompous Acronym Declaration Designed to Invoke Necessary Gestures (PADDING).
In 2019, also courtesy of the CDC, more additional PADDING:
“Technical packages” to explain Adverse Childhood Experience, or ACE, a potentially traumatic event that occurs in childhood (0-17 years) such as experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect.3
One Little Problem: The CDC’s figures and the subsequent treatment relied on the released 2019 data, not any reports from 2020-2022, the worst surge yet in school violence, both in shootings and aggravated assaults, since 1990.4
It’s as if they left town saying we finished that school violence stuff four years ago, just review our ACE bandages, er, packages, while we focus on this pandemic thingy. No need to further address the worst yearly upsurges in school violence since compiling such statistics.
Imagine if the CDC website presently contained only info announced just a month after the Covid lockdown, as if all knowledge froze, at say, April of 2020?
“Do we need more questionable unquestioned top-down proclamations by the Department of Homeland Security?”
So what now?
Just continue to review the modules provided by the State-mandated "ALICE" Training,® the registered (disaster capitalism) trademark acronym for "Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate?"
Do we need more questionable unquestioned top-down proclamations by the Department of Homeland Security?
More “run, hide and fight” drills?
Beneath Einstein’s tongue (on back wall): early 2022 debris reveals two smashed tables from a student fight in an unsupervised classroom, after a sub departed with the door unlocked. The melee later resumed in another substitute’s room, thanks to the added convenience afforded by cell phone videos, texting, social media and notably, the continued shortage of qualified teachers….
Photo by the author
So, I do intend to gradually cover more recent, more in-depth inquiries around the spikes in school violence in future Substack columns, including periodic interviews (even a couple of future podcasts) with current and former educators, administrators, union officials, counselors, social workers, security guards, parents and most importantly, students.
The newly Democrat-controlled Michigan state legislature and Governor (for the first time in 40 years) are enacting gun-control and relegated school reform bills we will also examine more closely.
This suggests a commitment to more front-line analysis, less bureaucratic bombast.
Meanwhile, can we at least agree on four initial statements?
Highly qualified teachers, counselors and related support staff are more necessary than ever.
A massive shortage exists state-wide and nationally of such needed professionals.
Adequate mental health resources can help reduce all assaults in schools, not just the “lone psychotic gunman.”
Vigilant hall monitoring during passing time will not prevent most students from fighting.
I’m not joking about #4. Locally, it’s been a desperate go-to with some previous administrations. When all else fails for both excessive truancies and increased violence, some have insisted teachers do extra hall duty. Never mind how most fights occur during lunch or after school — not in hourly passing-time moments.
Such dictates also disregard our first paternal obligations, en locus parentis, to our classrooms, where problems could erupt if priorities switched to hourly hall monitoring.
Several years ago, during passing time, a distracted student almost had four fingers accidentally severed (not just broken) when another classmate slammed down an open aluminum alloy-framed window on his perched hand. Contradicting prior desperate dictums, the teacher naturally got in trouble for not watching their own room first. . . .
The government acronym KIA, unveiled in the press during the Vietnam War, recorded both combat and civilian fatalities. Imagine if we lived in a world where, say, KIA meant Knowledge Inspiring Activism, or CDC abbreviated Compassion Devoted to Children?
A world with less PADDING and more empathy?
Something peaceful, something disarming, something weapons-free?
Sigh.
TO BE CONTINUED. . . .
I SO agree! Horrified at the state of schools nationwide where shootings are becoming commonplace.
I don't know why fighting has increased and become more violent. Less structure at home? Adults too preoccupied to give their kids the love and attention they need? Schools too demanding and confining? Too many violent videos and games that are being played constantly, numbing reality? Too much drug accessibility?
You are on the front lines and have more insight than I do. I'm interested in reading more of your thoughts on this.
What are the general outcomes of success for students these days? Do the majority go on to college or trade school? Get jobs?
I find it interesting that so many high schoolers are not interested in learning how to drive. What are your thoughts on this?
Is this general laziness and apathy? Lack of responsibility or something else?