Zero Tolerance for Violence in Schools

If parents didn’t have enough reasons to pull their children out of government-controlled re-education camps, here is another: violence perpetrated by students from shore to shore.

• On Feb. 23, 2023, in Jacksonville, Florida, two 14-year-old boys attacked with scissors and tried to rob another student in a restroom.

• On Feb. 21, 2023, in Palm Coast, Florida, a 6’6”, 270 lb., 17-year-old male student charged at a 57-year-old teacher’s aide and mother of two, knocked her unconscious and then proceeded to punch, kick, and stomp on her as she lay helpless on the ground. The cause of the colossus’ rage was the aide taking away his Nintendo Switch gaming device. While still in the school, he threatened to kill a police officer.

• On Feb. 13, 2023, in Kingston, Oklahoma, an 18-year-old male student at Kingston High School began swearing at his teacher when the teacher told him to remove his hat in class. While he was being written up in the assistant principal’s office, he saw his teacher, ran into the hall, and threw his phone at him, hitting him in the face hard enough to require a trip to the hospital.

• On Feb. 10, 2023, in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the presence of school staff, a 16-year-old male student stabbed to death a 15-year-old peer who the suspect claimed had “jumped” him.

• On Feb. 3, 2023, a 16-year-old girl was attacked, dragged by her hair, and beaten by three female peers at Miami Killian Senior High School in Miami, Florida.

• On Feb. 1, 2023, a 15-year-old boy mercilessly beat a 9-year-old girl and her 7-year-old brother on a school bus in Homestead, Florida.

• On Feb. 1, 2023, an 11-year-old boy in Houston, Texas, sexually assaulted a 6-year-old boy on an Aldine Independent School District bus.

• On Jan. 30, 2023, in Wheaton, Illinois, an 18-year-old male student at Glenbard North High School was arrested for threatening to kill two classmates.

• On Jan. 26, 2023, in Conyers. Georgia, a teacher’s leg was broken during an attack by a female student at Heritage High School.

Leftists who control our schools flail about searching for solutions that won’t transgress leftist narratives. They search in vain for ways to rein in the destruction leftist values, beliefs, and policies have created.

Here is what leftists have done to churn out poorly educated activists who turn against authority and each other like the worm ouroboros who eats itself:

They shut down schools during a pandemic that posed no serious risks either to students or adults under 60 (who comprise the majority of administrators, faculty, and staff in schools). In so doing, leftists exacerbated the social, emotional, and educational challenges facing already-challenged students.

They have politicized curricula, replacing sound, non-partisan material with divisive Critical Race Theory and obscene, inappropriate “gender” and sexuality dogma.

They have replaced conventional discipline, including suspensions and expulsions, with “restorative justice” that emphasizes relationships and reconciliation. Sounds good in theory, but in many communities, while the number of suspensions and expulsions has gone down, violence has increased.

Leftists have passed “Raise the Age” laws, which prevent 16- and 17- year-olds from being charged as adults. Instead, they are sent to family courts where consequences are light. Consequently, gangs now have 16- and 17-year-olds committing crimes, and both crime and recidivism have increased.

Even more shocking, Illinois Democrats recently attempted to raise the age again from 18-19. If their bill had passed, an 18 ½ year-old man who “has violated or attempted to violate … a federal law or State law, or county or municipal ordinance, and the law or ordinance is classified as a misdemeanor offense” could not be prosecuted at as adult.

Misdemeanors include, first and second DUI convictions, theft, criminal trespassing, disorderly conduct, and assault.

As reported by NPR Illinois, in a presentation to the Illinois legislature’s Public Safety and Violence Prevention Task Force, Chicago Public Schools Chief of Safety and Security Jadine Chou shared the effects of leftist “best practices”:

“She says in a situation where a student is having some kind of crisis episode, their best practice is actually not to remove the student from the classroom, but to remove everyone else. Then have trained behavioral specialists who can de-escalate the situation.”

Chou acknowledged, however, that parents of non-disruptive students are asking why their children’s school day should be disrupted for troublemakers:

“It's a little controversial, because what I hear from other parents is ‘Well, why does my child have to suffer? Why is my child disrupted for one kid?’”

In this meeting, Illinois educators complained about the increase in school violence since 2016 when the Democrat-pushed law (SB 100) took effect, curbing the disciplinary options available to teachers and administrators:

“Senate Bill 100 went into effect back in 2016. It told schools to limit exclusionary discipline like suspensions and expulsions. And to only resort to it if they’ve exhausted other interventions and the student’s presence would be a threat to safety or significantly disrupt learning.”

While teachers’ union representatives blame understaffing as the problem, they once again demonstrate their inability to recognize or unwillingness to address root causes.

The root cause of the growing problem of student rage, lack of self-control, and violence cannot possibly be too few teachers. Was it a lack of teachers that caused the 17-year-old student in Florida to attack and brutally beat the aide who took his video game? Was it a lack of teachers that caused the 15-year-old student on the Florida bus to savagely beat a 9-year-old girl? Was it a lack of teachers that caused a Glenbard North student to threaten to kill other students?

When will school and political leaders finally admit that the primary root cause of student rage and violence is the chaotic, broken, and dysfunctional families in which they are being raised?

What will it take to admit that our easy divorce culture and our intentionally fatherless and motherless families are wreaking havoc on the emotional lives of children, leaving them suffering and unable to deal with the stressors endemic to a miasmic culture.

Leftists mock and shame moral discernment, self-denial, discipline, and boundaries, while exalting selfishness, hedonism, absolute autonomy, and libertinism masquerading as liberty, all of which result in suffering children with malformed moral compasses who act out their pain (and sense of entitlement untethered from any sense of obligation) in anti-social and even deadly ways.

America doesn’t have the resources to fix all the children whom our anti-culture is turning into social misfits. More security staff, aides, and teachers cannot fix what ails our children, our schools, and the nation. At best, the addition of staff constitutes a band-aid that may for a moment stem the bleeding.

Only strong, intact loving families led by a mother and father can prevent what we are seeing in our schools and streets. Low tax rates and a favorable business environment cannot fix our foundational problems.

While a strong family with a mother and father is no guarantee that the evil ideas and images polluting our culture will not captivate and capture the hearts and minds of our children, there remains no better source of protection.