School Shootings

Background

With rising cases of school shootings, a focus group researcher with an aim to find the reasons for this issue and a long-lasting solution arranged a discussion which involved 12 parents. They assisted in the understanding of main causative agents for violent children behavior in the society. The parents, however, identified the guardians' involvement to be a significant influence on how their children conducted themselves. The optimistic parents, nonetheless, remain hopeful that the situation can be corrected and a sober society can be reinstated. This case study scrutinizes the primary causes of violence among children as well as the incidents of increased school shooting.

Key Issues

The following issues were discovered to be the primary causes of children violence that may have led to the increased school shootings in the country.

• Parents –Research has shown a direct correlation between parent’s involvement and the behavior of their children in the society (Kearney, Harris, Jacome, & Parker, 2013). Parents involved in the study argue that the raising of children without their participation due to the commitment at work may be the major cause of the rise in indiscipline cases.
• Government – The governmental policies to increase the weapon capacity and to restrict the disposal as well as the change of gun ownership may have led to the rise of school shooting cases. The government has also failed to install the weapon detectors in schools; hence children can bring guns there unnoticed.
• Media – The media has contributed much to the children’s violent acts. According to the Impact of Media Use on Children and Youth (2003), an ordinary child watches an approximated 12,000 acts of violence and rape aired on TV. Parents are complaining that the games and the graphical content viewed by their children are full of violence and murder, and it has triggered a societal degradation of moral standards.
• Economic changes – The change in the economic state has led to a reduction of time spent with children, and this may be a reason for increased decay in the moral standards among them.

Analysis

Issue1: Society dictates that children are the major influences of a lifestyle. Therefore, if parents fail in performing their roles then the society will have no morals (Erickson, 2014).  Rules and laws imposed in the Constitution of the USA have also played a part in reducing the parent’s control over their children.

Issue 2: The government has lost its touch on the handling of moral values. It should be responsible for imposing the rules for controlling and filtering of digital content. Moreover, the government has failed to regulate the handling, disposal, and transfer of guns to other parties. It was not also successful in introducing capital punishment for youngsters who were involved in acts of violence. Juveniles, however, are  employed as an alternative but they do not act to improve or make the children responsible for the violent acts committed.

Issue 3: The media’s role is the most significant in the current digital age. With the kids being exposed to unlimited content that is not monitored, it is almost obvious that they will watch a graphical violence. The violence in broadcasting media perceives as something heroic deed thus leading to the rise of shooting in schools. In such a way, children assume they will become famous.  

Issue 4: The shifts in economic structure have resulted that parents work more and have less time for their children. According to Kearney et al. (2013) most of the American parents are struggling to become the middle class, thus they tend to spend more time at their workplace. Consequently, parents are caught in the crosshairs of where to put the efforts either on their work or children. This leads to the limited time spent with their sons and daughters.

Lessons Learned, Recommendations, and Practical Applications

Lessons Learned

From the study, it is evident that parents have a significant role to play not taking into account whether the government intervenes or not. Moreover, parents are supposed to be the order keepers in the homes and control the activities of their children. Parents should also limit the interaction of their children with modern technological devices as this is the major cause of violence in schools. Nonetheless, they will need to allocate more time with their children hence cutting down their work time. Although it may cause a reduced income in families, children are more important.

The main recommendations would be to lessen the media influence on children as this is the main factor that affects their behavior. Reducing violent graphical content and banning of violent games played by children would significantly decrease the amount of brutal cases experienced in schools.

Strengths or Opportunities

Improved moral standards would boost the confidence of parents when taking their children to local schools and school with reduced shooting cases.

Costs and Benefits

The monitoring of children’s activities and spending more time with them will lead to a better society and a generation that is more social based than technologically addicted. It will be better to raise a generation that is morally upright rather than group the technology-reliant violent adults.

Barriers to Implementation

The barriers to the above recommendations may be the uncooperative parents who may turn down the request of making a sacrifice of their working hours at the expense of spending time with their children.

Ramifications

With the successful implementation of the above-suggested alternatives, the society will experience a peaceful and calm atmosphere in schools, and thus there will be no violence-related cases and shootings in schools.

Unintended Consequences

The silencing of media may lead to filtering out of content that may greatly assist the children in this issue.