But the reality is that schools are a lot more dangerous than they were just 10 years ago.
If our response to that shouldn't be cameras and backpack checks, then what's an appropriate response? (Perhaps the bigger picture political answer is "gun control", but that's not something schools can sit around a wait for to happen)
Child of the 90s here. Schools are a whole lot safer than ever before. In my time I've witnessed drug deals, assaults, armed robbery, knife and razor fights, and was aware of rape and sexual assault. We had to bring clear backpacks and pass through magnetometers daily. And not one of us felt safer for it. All of those crimes occurred despite increased security theater. This was also a majority minority school, none of those incidents rose to even local news. I guess we weren't the right socioeconomic bracket.
> If our response to that shouldn't be cameras and backpack checks, then what's an appropriate response?
Money. This country is literally running out of teachers. We do not have enough adults in a typical school to tutor, observe, and guide students. Adults don't want to do the adulting anymore and the kids are having to learn to fend for themselves. None of these technological "solutions" are there to make kids learn or keep them safe. It is there to save some money for responsibilities the schools no longer meet.
Work to heal the divides in the country and improve social cohesion. Figure out how to reinstill the sense of community that prevented these things over the course of history. Help all students find a supportive peer group.
I suppose if you're comparing 2018 to 2008, then sure. But that seems cherry-picked, since it looks like shootings were more common before then. Then you also have to consider that the population has been growing, so per-capita shootings might be down? And then there's the question of whether body-count is going up. I think combining all of these factors makes the data-set very noisy. I'm sure that OP has the best intentions and likely believes that schools are more dangerous than 10 years ago, but I don't think the data bares that out.
I think what OP said is pretty clearly correct. If you find a data point contradicting it, please share, but eyeballing what I think it'd be even per capita, I think OP is still right. If you chose a different data point than 10 years, maybe it'd show something else, but OP said 10 years so it seems fair to judge on the basis of what was said.
But certainly school safety is a bigger issue than just shootings.
My own emphasis, personally, would be on mental health issues being on the rise for young people.
Wikipedia suffers very much from recency bias in reporting.
Keep in mind that the site was founded in 2001, was growing rapidly through the 2000s, and (along with much the rest of the Internet) saw a huge boost in use and access with the spread of mobile devices.
Inconsistency in reporting is a general problem with crime (and other human activities), with reporting rates rising and falling for numerous reasons. But a standardised crime reporting database would be preferable.
schools are safer across the board than ten years ago (all violent crime has been declining for all groups for 30 years); there are actually fewer shootings than there were in the 90s despite the media narrative. technology simply follows its own logic of control unless there are hard constraints.
> But the reality is that schools are a lot more dangerous than they were just 10 years ago.
Only in certain places in the western world, due to the governments refusal to implement gun control. Most countries haven't had a school shooting in decades (or ever).
Gun control doesn't work? Go tell that to the graves of children who died due to school shootings, just because the country they were born in refused to implement gun control.
It's frankly ridiculous to the rest of the world how easily people can buy guns in the US.
This is not a problem that can or should be solved with surveillance. It's a gun problem, that should be solved by making guns harder to get.
Edit: Why the downvotes? Is anything I've said not true? Please do explain.
But the reality is that schools are a lot more dangerous than they were just 10 years ago.
If our response to that shouldn't be cameras and backpack checks, then what's an appropriate response? (Perhaps the bigger picture political answer is "gun control", but that's not something schools can sit around a wait for to happen)