Do metal detectors in schools actually prevent most dangerous objects from getting in?”
A violence-filled week for Baltimore public school students – including a shooting on the grounds of Frederick Douglass High School yesterday – has ignited a community debate over whether installing metal detectors would make children any safer. State Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said she would support having metal detectors in the city’s most dangerous schools, especially if parents want them. But many others said the fix would be short-sighted, expensive and ineffective.City school system officials said that, while they are willing to discuss the issue, they are not going to rush out to buy the devices immediately. They were quick to point out that a metal detector would not have prevented yesterday’s shooting, which happened outside. Whatever the outcome of the debate, it’s clear this week’s events have left teachers, parents and students frightened. And coming on the heels of highly publicized school shootings in Colorado and Pennsylvania, the local developments were particular
Should Metal Detectors Be Used in Schools? Overview of Violence in Schools: Is There a Need for Surveillance of Weapons in Schools? Unarguably, school violence is a problem that cannot be regarded as trivial. The problem of students bringing weapons to school is an issue that will not go away by itself. As acknowledged in the trial of People versus Pruitt in 1996, “Judges cannot ignore what everybody else knows: violence and the threat of violence are present in the public schools….School children are harming each other with regularity” (qtd. in Johnson, 2000). Obviously, this is not true in every school district, but the point being presented is that violence in schools must be eradicated. Inner cities have the highest rate of violence reported. “The problems of urban schools are particularly acute and are complicated by their connection to the prevalence of poverty, crime, and despair in America’s cities” (Oneill, n.d.). More specifically, students in inner-city schools attended by “
Metal detectors, threat-evaluation software, police officers — hundreds of American schools have added tighter security since 1999’s attack at Colorado’s Columbine High School. But these solutions “are not likely to be effective,” and are potentially harmful, according to federal researchers who conducted the most thorough study of school shootings across the nation. Of what value is a metal detector, the researchers asked, when an attacker is willing to kill others and take his or her life? Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here Or threat-evaluation software, when most attackers do not make a threat before an attack? Or a SWAT team, when most attacks last only a few minutes and end before police arrive? Instead of relying solely on physical security, the researchers suggest, schools should be paying more attention to listening to students, discouraging and discovering attacks while they’re still in the planning stages. After the nation’s third deadly school attack in a w
