CSPV
School Violence Fact Sheets
Exposure
to Urban Violence
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The social and economic
costs of school violence have reached alarming proportions
over the last two decades. Students
in some urban schools regularly confront violence. Teachers
find themselves spending increasing amounts of time
dealing with students’ violent and disruptive
behavior.
Exposure to violence most affects
students and teachers in urban schools that are marked
by high levels of poverty and low academic achievement.
Every day approximately 100,000 children
are assaulted at school. Additionally, 5,000 teachers
are threatened with physical assault and 200 are actually
attacked.
Approximately one of every eight students
has reported carrying some form of weapon to school.
Twenty percent of students have reported
that threats involving a weapon and/or threats of assault
in school represent a major problem for them. However,
the most frequently reported forms of violence in school
are pushing and shoving.
Most of the violence to which students
are exposed occurs in their home neighborhood and in
the neighborhood surrounding the school rather than
in the school itself.
A school setting is "contaminated"
by the attitudes, expectations, and behaviors that students
and teachers carry from other settings into the school,
as well as their immediate experiences within the schools.
Exposure to violence generates a sense
of fear and leads to acts intended to reduce or control
fear.
Exposure to violence is psychologically
toxic. This exposure may produce:
- generalized emotional distress;
- disruptions in interpersonal relationships;
- problems with aggression, conduct disorder, and
truancy;
- cognitive, psychological, and physical issues related
to learning and teaching;
- physical symptoms, such as chronic fatigue.
The effects of exposure to violence in schools may spread
to others within the school setting.This spread, or
"contagion," changes the school setting in
ways that negatively alter schoolinteractions and interfere
with the schools’ capacity to achieve its educational
and social goals.
Widespread concern about violence within a school may
reduce the quality of teaching, disrupt classroom discipline,
limit teachers’ availability to students before
or after the school day, and reduce students’
motivation to attend school and/or willingness to participate
in extracurricular activities.
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