What’s Happening in Schools Today?
“OUR Schools in Crisis: Bring in Cops Now” was a recent front-page headline in a New York City newspaper. The New York City Board of Education has its own school security guards—a force of 3,200—who patrol the more than 1,000 city schools. Now many want the regular city police brought into the schools to help with security. Are they really needed?
A New York Times headline said: “Report Finds 20% of Students in New York City Carry Arms.” The head of New York City schools from 1990 to 1992, Joseph Fernandez, admitted: “I’ve never seen anything like the violence we now have in our big-city schools. . . . I could not imagine when I accepted the chancellorship in New York in 1990 that it would be so bad. It’s not a phase, it’s a malignancy.”
How Bad Is It?
Fernandez reported: “During my first ten months as chancellor, we averaged a school kid murdered every other day—stabbed on subways, shot in school yards or on street corners . . . Some high schools have fifteen or sixteen [security guards] working the halls and grounds.” He added: “Violence in our schools is epidemic, and extraordinary measures have had to be taken. Schools in Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit—all the big metropolitan centers—now present the same image of an almost apocalyptic savagery.
“The shame in this is stunningly obvious. Over the last two decades we have come to accept the unacceptable: American schools as war zones. Houses of fear and intimidation instead of havens of enlightenment.”
There are security officers in 245 school systems in the United States, and in 102 of these, the officers are armed. But they are not the only ones armed. According to a University of Michigan study, it is estimated that students in the United States carry some 270,000 guns, not counting other arms, to school every day!
Instead of improving, the situation has grown much worse. The metal detectors used in many schools have failed to stop the flow of weapons. During the fall of 1994, reported incidents of violence in New York City schools rose 28 percent compared with the same period a year earlier! “For the first time ever,” explains Phi Delta Kappan about a poll taken in the United States, “the category ‘fighting, violence, and gangs’ shares the number-one position with ‘lack of discipline’ as the biggest problem confronting local public schools.”
School violence has created a crisis for schools in many countries. In Canada, Toronto’s Globe and Mail carried the headline: “Schools Are Turning Into Danger Zones.” And a survey in Melbourne, Australia, revealed that almost 60 percent of primary-school children are driven to and from their school by parents because of fear of assault or abduction.
Violence, however, is only part of the problem. There are other things happening in our schools that cause grave concern.
The Question of Morals
Even though the Bible says that fornication—having sexual relations outside of marriage—is wrong, schools today do not uphold such sound moral teaching. (Ephesians 5:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5; Revelation 22:15) Surely this has contributed to the situation Fernandez described when he said: “As many as 80 percent of our teenagers are sexually active.” In one high school in Chicago, a third of the female students were pregnant!
Some schools have nurseries to care for students’ babies. In addition, condoms are routinely handed out in a futile effort to stem the epidemic of AIDS and of skyrocketing illegitimacy. If condom distribution does not actually encourage students to commit fornication, it condones their doing so. When it comes to morals, what are students to think?
A longtime university teacher said that there is a “surprising number of young people who think there’s no right or wrong, that moral choices depend on how you feel.” Why do youths think this way? The teacher noted: “Perhaps it was their high-school experience that led them to become moral agnostics.” What is the consequence of such moral uncertainty?
A recent newspaper editorial lamented: “No one, it sometimes seems, is to blame for anything. Ever.” Yes, the message is that anything goes! Consider an example of the profound effect this can have on students. In a university class on the subject of World War II and the rise of Nazism, a professor found that most of his students did not believe anyone was to blame for the Holocaust! “In the students’ minds,” the teacher said, “the Holocaust was like a natural cataclysm: It was inevitable and unavoidable.”
Whose fault is it when students are unable to recognize right from wrong?
In the Midst of Critical Times
In defense of schools, a former teacher said: “The problem originates in the community, and the schools simply reflect the problems already existing there.” Indeed, it is difficult to successfully teach what society’s leaders fail to practice.
Illustrating this, during a time when the immorality of U.S. government officials was headline news, a well-known columnist wrote: “I have no idea how teachers in this cynical age can set about teaching morality. . . . ‘Look at Washington!’ the littlest voices will cry. They know . . . that the dirtiest cheating in history has gone on under the roof of that big white house.”
The Bible foretold that “in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5) Surely these are critical times! In view of this, what is being done to cope with the crisis in schools today and to help students get a good education? What can you as parents and students do? The following articles will discuss this.