The problem of violence in schools has not gone away despite radical reductions in violent crimes throughout the country over the last decade. Students continue to harrass, haze, and harm each other in a variety of ways, disrupting classrooms and whole schools. In the wake of the Columbine massacre, many focused on the worst kind of school violence: deadly assaults with dangerous weapons. But other forms of violence are more persistent, common, and just as destructive in many ways: fighting, sexual abuse, carrying weapons to school, vandalism, and assorted other crimes that happen behind the closed doors of elementary, middle, and high schools across the country. The consequences range from violent victimization and death, to the disruption of learning and fear among student bodies and teaching staffs. Here, Thomas provides a foundation for understanding why the violence occurs, preventing it from happening, and treating both offenders and victims after it happens. Using scores of case descriptions to illustrate the types of school violence and their treatment in recent years, the author skillfully shows readers how the problem of violence and crime in schools is an insidious issue that cannot go untreated. He offers both tested and proposed methods for dealing with a host of violence issues and a guide to planning treatment of the problem and its associated consequences. He answers the questions: What are prominent types of violence in American schools? What conditions contribute to those types of violence? What methods can be applied in an effort to reduce school violence? Readers will come away from this book with a greater understanding of the scope of violence in America's schools, and the myriad ways of addressing it.

This volume offers a strategy for the problem of youth violence.

Choice's Outstanding Academic Title list for 2013 Through interviews and case studies, Klein develops an explanation for bully behavior in America's schools In today’s schools, kids bullying kids is not an occasional occurrence but rather an everyday reality where children learn early that being sensitive, respectful, and kind earns them no respect. Jessie Klein makes the provocative argument that the rise of school shootings across America, and childhood aggression more broadly, are the consequences of a society that actually promotes aggressive and competitive behavior. The Bully Society is a call to reclaim America’s schools from the vicious cycle of aggression that threatens our children and our society at large. Heartbreaking interviews illuminate how both boys and girls obtain status by acting “masculine”—displaying aggression at one another’s expense as both students and adults police one another to uphold gender stereotypes. Klein shows that the aggressive ritual of gender policing in American culture creates emotional damage that perpetuates violence through revenge, and that this cycle is the main cause of not only the many school shootings that have shocked America, but also related problems in schools, manifesting in high rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-cutting, truancy, and substance abuse. After two decades working in schools as a school social worker and professor, Klein proposes ways to transcend these destructive trends—transforming school bully societies into compassionate communities.

A thorough overview of violence and crime in America's schools explores which solutions work and which don't, providing a framework for prevention at every level. Although it is major incidents like Columbine or Virginia Tech that grab the headlines, everyday occurrences of bullying, harassment, and physical intimidation in schools impact entire communities, driving kids out of public schools and destroying faith in public education. Preventing Violence and Crime in America's Schools: From Put-Downs to Lock-Downs provides educators, parents, law enforcement officials, and other youth-serving professionals with a unique perspective on the topic of school violence. More important, it offers solutions to the problems facing all schools when it comes to violence and safety. Two expert authors examine specifics relating to school violence, opportunities to prevent and intervene, and the importance of planning for a crisis. Most other books about school violence either highlight the research or highlight practitioner viewpoints. This revealing book presents both, balancing insights gained through real-world experiences with research on best practices. The result is a fuller understanding of the problem—understanding that will enable solutions.

The Crisis of School Violence is the only interdisciplinary book about school violence. It presents a broad and in-depth approach to the key questions about why bullying continues at an unprecedentedly high rate and why rampage school shootings continue to shock the nation. Based on extensive research, The Crisis of School Violence investigates human nature and its relation to aggressive behavior, with a special focus on the culture of violence that predicates school violence (including rampage shootings) and perpetuates industries that profit from violence. Marianna King presents the considerable psychological and neuroscientific research that investigates the effects of violent entertainment media on the brain and, subsequently, on behavior, which clearly reveals a causal connection between exposure to violent electronic entertainment media—especially violent video games—and increased aggressive and violent behavior. The book also reveals a more specific connection between exposure to violent video games and rampage school shootings. Ultimately this volume is a call to action that includes recommendations for parents, teachers, decision makers, and citizens alike.

In this comprehensive, multidisciplinary volume, experts from a wide range fields explore violence in education’s different forms, contributing factors, and contextual nature. With contributions from noted experts in a wide-range of scholarly and professional fields, The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education offers original research and essays that address the troubling issue of violence in education. The authors show the different forms that violence takes in educational contexts, explore the factors that contribute to violence, and provide innovative perspectives and approaches for prevention and response. This multidisciplinary volume presents a range of rigorous research that examines violence from both micro- and macro- approaches. In its twenty-nine chapters, this comprehensive volume’s fifty-nine contributors, representing thirty-three universities from the United States and six other countries, examines violence’s distinctive forms and contributing factors. This much-needed volume: Addresses the complexities of violence in education with essays from experts in the fields of sociology, psychology, criminology, education, disabilities studies, forensic psychology, philosophy, and critical theory Explores the many forms of school violence including physical, verbal, linguistic, social, legal, religious, political, structural, and symbolic violence Reveals violence in education’s stratified nature in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the problem Demonstrates how violence in education is deeply situated in schools, communities, and the broader society and culture Offers new perspectives and proposals for prevention and response The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education is designed to help researchers, educators, policy makers, and community leaders understand violence in educational settings and offers innovative, effective approaches to this difficult challenge.

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