Schools are trying to figure out how to prevent school shootings and other violence. University of Georgia professor Peter Smagorinsky writes today about our ability to evaluate which students may be a danger and whether other threats within schoolhouses are being overlooked, including predatory adults. And he ponders how schools can both police their students and inspire trust in them.
This piece was inspired in part by his recent trip to London where citizens see daily reminders to report anything out of ordinary in messages and signs such as these:
Like other criminals, terrorists need to plan. You will know your neighbourhood, your route to work, the parks, pubs and shops you visit often, better than we do. If you see anything that seems out of place, unusual or just doesn't seem to fit in with everyday life, don't be afraid to raise your concerns with the police. Any piece of information could be important, it is better to be safe and report. Remember, trust your instincts and ACT. Action Counters Terrorism.
By Peter Smagorinsky
I was in London in June, and every public transportation stop included some sort of announcement echoing this imperative from the City of London Police to report any suspicious activity. In 2017 there were five terrorist attacks in London, three involving vehicles on sidewalks, after which the city installed large concrete barriers at regular intervals on high-density pedestrian walkways to deter vehicles from slaughtering people on foot. One attack took place on a tube, an underground train system, with a homemade bomb that injured more than 20 riders.
I can’t fault the city government for raising alerts about suspicious activity, given how easy it seems to be to detonate an explosive in a crowded city like London, including the transit system that so many rely on to get around. At one of the academic conferences I attended while in the UK, the question came up about whether or not a surveillance society is now necessary. Some thought so; others not. Perhaps these days, it’s naïve even to ask the question; I really don’t know.
I open with this story because the Chicago Tribune recently published an editorial board essay, "The awkward obligation: When you suspect a student is dangerous." Their concern is not international terrorists, but kids shooting up schools.
The editorial endorses a recommendation by the U.S. Secret Service that "schools create 'threat teams' that can include teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, mental health and law enforcement professionals. The aim of this group enterprise: 'to identify students of concern, assess their risk for engaging in violence or other harmful activities, and identify intervention strategies to manage that risk.' Instead of only focusing on the student's personality or school performance the teams would, for instance, flag threatening social media posts, texting or other troubling communications. The teams also could try to determine a student's access to weapons or explosives. The threshold to intervene should be 'relatively low,' before dangerous behavior escalates, the Secret Service says."
I have no answer to the question of how to prevent or deter international terrorists or school shooters. My intention here is not to critique this proposal, or London’s plan. I’m as concerned about societal violence as anyone. I simply hope to think through some consequences of having every school develop a threat team to look for suspicious behavior among students. This plan would establish a culture of surveillance of students to prevent violence in school. Often, ideas sound great on paper. But just as often, these plans overlook potential problems in implementation, focusing solely on hoped-for positive outcomes.
My first concern would simply address the person-power issue of having teachers, who are already burdened with overcrowded classrooms and decreasing resources, add this very demanding duty to their workdays.
I was an English teacher from the mid-1970s through 1990. With much better work conditions, I was always stretched thin because my job involved grading writing for 125 or more students—a very low number compared to what teachers in Georgia now teach in under-resourced schools.
Where is this labor force going to come from, what will be lost in the process of putting it to work, and what, if any, compensation will they receive for their time?
A second concern is the likelihood that some students are more likely to be identified as threatening than others, often when they have done nothing. Just this summer, white people have called the police about black people cutting the grass, using a coupon, selling lemonade, using a swimming pool, and other mundane activities.
The national teaching force is over 80 percent white, as is the national cadre of school administrations. Black students are already disproportionally subject to school discipline, and Latin American students are increasingly subject to harassment, citizen or not. The vast majority of school shooters are white men and boys.
I’m sure many AJC readers will think that I’m playing racial politics here. Actually, I’m reporting cold hard statistics. Schools tend to be run by white people, schools tend to get shot up by white males, and black and Latin students tend to be interpreted as threatening and take the brunt of punishment. It’s hard for me to believe that the threat teams proposed by the Secret Service will defy these trends, or that when they encourage students to report on one another, some sorts of kids won’t get reported more than others because their appearance alone is threatening to some.
A third point relates to an altogether different issue, that being the threats teachers pose to students, and students to teachers. School shootings are too frequent, and their consequences are terrifying. Yet, they are not nearly as common as teachers assaulting students, either punitively or sexually.
Meanwhile, a "silent national crisis" has emerged involving students assaulting teachers. Concerns about school shootings are largely preventative, given that a relatively small number of the nation's nearly 100,000 schools have experienced one. Anyone who reads the AJC, however, knows how often teachers impose themselves sexually on underage students.
I see just as urgent a problem with teachers’ sexual exploitation of students as I do with school shootings, perhaps more given the greater frequency with which it occurs. Yet, I have never seen a proposal to form threat teams composed of students to identify sexual predators on the faculty. Until now: I’m proposing just such a thing. Undoubtedly, there would be abuses. But no more, I suspect, than we will get from threat teams on the alert for school shooters.
Whether schools form threat teams as advised by the Chicago Tribune and Secret Service is up to them. I hope they think through the questions and outcomes of this initiative and not just assume that forming the teams will prevent shootings without other consequences. I also hope they put school shootings in the context of other sorts of school violence and determine which problems are most urgent and which solutions are most likely to succeed.
We all undoubtedly would agree school violence is unacceptable. What remains unclear is which violence presents the most immediate threat, how to deploy resources to address it, how to ensure the targeted problem is being addressed without punishing the wrong people, and how to undertake surveillance that does not produce a policing culture in schools that undermines students’ confidence in the value of their education.
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