In Canada, the number of violent criminal incidents among young people has increased in recent years. Some studies and statistics seem to also indicate that school violence has increased in degree and frequency. Unfortunately, this perception has been formed based on data gathered primarily from administrators, teachers; and police, but not extensively from students themselves.
The literature indicates that school violence is often understated by school staff and that students themselves are reluctant to report incidents of violence. Little data has been collected in Alberta to either support or refute these claims. As part of the on-going commitment of educators to provide students with a safe community of learning, it is meaningful to understand the extent and context of school violence, from the perspective of the students. Violent behaviors have existed in our schools since they were first built. A generation ago, the schoolyard bully was physically intimidating; a person who everyone knew should not be agitated.
Today, that bully may still be the “big guy,” but he can equally be the “little guy” with a “big gun” or “big knife.” In many incidents of school violence, fists have been replaced by weapons, such as knives, and guns. It is found that 42% of police agencies polled reported seizing knives from youth aged 12 to 17 years within schools and on school property. This figure increased from 35% reported the previous year.
For the same time period, 74% of surveyed school authorities, representing sixty-nine school boards across Canada, reported seizing knives from students; up from 58% in 2015. In the past 20 years, it is believed that not only has school violence increased, so too has the nature of that violence changed. The Canadian Teachers’ Federation, in its 1993 report, agreed that violent incidents over the past five years were on the increase and added that the perpetrators were becoming younger.
The violence observed in Canadian schools cannot be viewed in isolation from the violence prevalent in a society that has changed in many ways over the past decades. This generation of youth has faced an almost indifferent acceptance of violence. By the time a person is 18, he or she has viewed 28,900 murders on television; a woman is sexually assaulted every 6 minutes in Canada; the biggest users of pornography are boys between 12-18 years of age; four of every ten sexual assault victims are children, four are teens; of the 150,000 street children in Canada, 94% have been physically abused, 80% sexually abused. Thirty-five percent of the criminal caseload in Canada is comprised of Young Offender Act violations and represent crimes that are committed both inside and outside of the school.
