Violence in schools appears to many to be a recent problem. However, violence in schools did not start with Columbine. Interestingly violence in schools has a long history in the good old fashioned one room school house. Apple for the teacher and a rock through the window! The difference is that given the prevalence of guns in this country violence becomes lethal and at times on a large scale basis. Jonathan Zimmerman, a History Professor at NYU, in a recent commentary in the Philadelphia Enquirer observes that:
"We've always had school violence, and we've had youth gangs for a long
time, too. The new factor is gun possession, plain and simple."
Taking a historical view of school violence should finally lay to rest the other prevailing view that school violence is a byproduct of special education inclusion. Inclusion is not the driving force behind school violence especially since in the 19th and early 20th century there was no inclusion, but there was still school violence. The horrible tragedies occurring in our schools are the result of a failure of our society to control guns, not the promulgation of IDEA or its predecessor Act first enacted in the 1970s.