Word: safes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...easy to understand, even before Columbine but certainly since, why the adults in a high school could conclude that their most important job was less to teach kids than just to keep them safe, hold their hands, feed them, shape them, show them right from wrong. In loco parentis is just the beginning. In loco all the rest of us as well. Politicians and reformers can talk all they want about standards and vouchers and academic performance, but the people on the front lines worry about a lot more than test scores...
After Columbine, West Paducah and Conyers, some schools have turned into citadels, metal detectors at the doors, mesh backpacks required. Not Webster. The doors are open at dawn and left unguarded; 96% of the kids polled this fall by the student newspaper say they feel safe in school. They say the kids get along pretty well, races mix, jocks and geeks hang out together. And yet they will say, if you ask, "Littleton could happen here." Last spring, after Columbine, someone scrawled a bomb threat on the wall of a boys' bathroom. The marginal kids know they are being watched...
...goes farther and accuses irony of corrupting public spirit goes too far. Cowardice, tact and irresponsibility all, as Purdy points out, often enlist irony in disavowing publicly a private conviction. For example, someone might say, "Why do I want to work in investment banking, you said? Oh, for the safe money, of course." Most people, after all, don't want to get caught holding an unfashionable belief. What's the news? But my purpose here is not to defend an everyday kind of hypocrisy. Nor, on the other hand, is it to defend the high tradition that runs from Socrates...
...pollsters feed the data into the wrong hole? These are the questions no doubt running through the minds of parents and educators as they mull the counterintuitive results of a New York Times/CBS poll, released Wednesday, which shows that the vast majority of American teenagers feel somewhat safe, safe or extremely safe in their schools. In 1994, 40 percent of teenagers worried they would be a victim of violence in school or on the street. Today, only 24 percent fear for their safety. (The results are virtually identical for students at rural, suburban and urban campuses...
...many older Americans, all this sounds deeply suspicious. How can kids feel increasingly safe in a country where school shootings have become almost as routine as fire drills? There doesn?t seem to be any one reason for teenagers? relative calm; rather, it's a combination of practical and psychological factors. In the wake of Columbine et al, schools have bulked up security ? in part to quell students? fears of violence, but also to calm parental nerves. So maybe it?s not such a surprise that many students feel safe: Surveillance cameras, metal detectors and daily pat-downs do tend...