Devon MosleyProfessor DavisENG-101, Full Paper RoughDraft08 July 2018Are My Children Safe Here?When we send our children to school, we like to believe that they are in good hands. However, one third of children are bullied each month in schools ( Lee and Geier, 2016).
Bullying happens at any age, also cyberbullying is mostly common in teens. Not to mention, bullying is not the only worry parents have. Crimes in school in the twentieth century became serious with gangs, drug abuse, drug possession and dangerous weapons. Attorney General Jeff Sessions reported, that from 2014 to 2016 violent crime rate increased by 6.8 percent, and the murder rate increased by 20.
4 percent. Parents consider homeschooling because of these reasons (Kaplan, 2017). In spring of 1999 an estimated 850,000 students across the United States were homeschooled. In 2003, 1.1 million students were reported to be homeschooled. In 2007 there were 1.
5 million homeschooled children and finally the latest report conducted in 2012 shows there were 1.77 million students being educated at home (Homeschool Statistics, 2018). Furthermore, students should be homeschooled to avoid school shootings, bullying, and peer pressure. Students should be homeschooled to avoid school shootings. On February 14, 2018, seventeen people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland Florida by a 19-year-old ex-student.
Nikolas Cruz decided to go into his old high school right before dismissal despite the fact that he was not allowed on the property. He went into the school with an AR-15 shooting at students and teachers killing 17 people. The 19-year-old recorded videos of himself saying how he was going to be a professional school shooter.
“I’m gonna go take uber in the afternoon before 2:40 p.m. from there I’ll go into–onto school campus, walk up the stairs, unload my bags and get my AR and shoot people down at the man–The main courtyard, wait, and people will die”. This is clearly not the words of a person who should have access with these type of deadly weapons. It is becoming way to easy for people who have mental illnesses to get a hold of such weapons allowing them to enter facilities and take innocent lives. There should be stricter gun laws and definitely more security in schools for children. Moreover, on May 18.2018, two months after the Parkland shooting.
Ten people yet again were gunned down by a 17-year-old student at Santa Fe High School. It was the second highest number if school fatalities. Dimitrias Pagourtzis ran into Santa Fe High School with an assault rifle, shotgun, a pistol and explosives killing 10 people. Pagourtzis wanted his story to be told so at the time of the shooting he let certain people live and did not shoot them.
The police took Pagourtzis into custody along with two other people of interest. He was charged for capital murder. First, parents have to be concerned about weapons in schools and now the threat has grown larger to where explosives are being brought on to school grounds along with weapons. At this point students and parents have a double threat to fear. To prevent children from being harmed or traumatized by such school violence homeschooling could be the answer parents are looking for to educate their children in a safe environmentSecond, students should be homeschooled to avoid bullying. Bullying in school ranges from harassing another person physically or verbally to insults and threats.
As stated in the article “Bullying in Schools” “victims may feel humiliated and thus alienated from everyone in their peer group, while bullies may feel that they have established a position of superiority in the same group. Bullying behavior can continue in adulthood although by that time it may be regarded as criminal behavior and result in legal action” (Coulson, 2015). Bullying is aggression that is normally taken out on someone that is smaller than another. It is even taken as far as cyberbullying. Bullying affects people differently. According to Coulson boys and girls have different ways of behavior when it comes to bullying. Boys are more physical and girls are more gossipy.
Developmental disorders and disabilities sometimes come from being constantly bullied (Coulson, 2015). Schools are now becoming more aware of the psychological damage bullying can cause so they are trying to find ways to resolve the problem. Even though bullying happens amongst all age children cyberbullying is mainly done by teens who are able to access internet, social media websites, and who have access to a cell phone. In the article “Bullying in schools” it is stated that “cyberbullying is the most prevalent amongst teens, but it can also be found in upper elementary grades”. Cyberbullying is harder to prevent and stop unlike bullying in schools because through the internet there are no teachers to mediate or to see what is going on amongst students.
Cyberbullying tends to go home with the victim it is not something the person can forget about at the end of the day like they would be able to if it were only happening in school. There are victims of bullying who have even gone as far as harming themselves or even committing suicide. Third, students should be homeschooled to avoid peer pressure. Peer pressure is about saying no to something when peers are saying yes.
Children want to be popular so by doing the opposite of what their peers are doing does not exactly get them their popularity points. According to the article “4 Powerful P’s to Prevent Peer Pressure” “one of the toughest tasks for parents and teens is teaching their adolescent children to resist peer pressure” (Coulson, 2013). Adolescent children do not like to be the ones to stand out or the less popular one. They want to be looked at as equals to their peers, so parents trying to explain to them why they should not follow the rest is not simple because they do not want to understand what their parents are trying to say. In addition, a lot of peer pressure comes from what is called priming. So for instance, if children are around a lot of negative behavior they tend to follow that pattern of negativity or if they have a lot of positivity in their environment they will go towards the positive things. So if priming is taken into consideration it can lead the child to do the right thing and be less concerned about what their peers think and say.
Unfortunately, with peer pressure bullying is still a problem for some. Due to peer pressure, some kids become lonely and parents become worried that they are being excluded. In Justin Coulson’s 2015 article Peer Pressure at school, he says “boys and girls are beginning to learn about one another throughout primary school. Most of the time boys and girls will choose to play separately. But by around age nine, some children are beginning to have an increasing awareness of the opposite sex and may even start to claim boyfriend and girlfriend status. While this can be often harmless, in many instances having a boy or girlfriend can create significant social challenge. Teasing can occur” (2015).
In school, there are people who will not be friends with others because they are not considered cool enough to be friends with.There are those who argue that homeschooling is not beneficial for children. There are critics who think that children who are homeschooled will lack in social skills and they will not be introduced to different beliefs and backgrounds like they would if they were in public schools (Chittom and Newton, 2018). Homeschooling teaches children to do what they like and it also shows what their individual abilities are. They are able to work at their own pace to move forward in their academics. Homeschooling allows parents to have less worries in regards to school violence. Parents will not have the worry of overcrowded classrooms where they feel their child is not receiving the proper education.
However, the fact is that children who are homeschooled are not given state mandated tests by a testing proxy but are given by the students parents. Unlike teachers who get a degree in education parents are not required to get any formal training when it comes to homeschooling. Although parents are allowed to homeschool their children they are not responsible for their child’s progress. Being that children are homeschooled by their parent that students beliefs will be that of their parent. It is hard to evaluate a students progress because it is not required in some states for parents to submit any test scores for their child. Students are being cheated out of a proper education because they are lacking in highly educated teachers and the ability to interact with other people their age.
Should students stop going to public schools and get home schooled? I believe that if the teachers, parents, and government work closer together children should be around their peers. Bullying, school violence and peer pressure are major issues in schools today. The government should make stricter gun laws such as making it impossible for a child to get a weapon. Also they should thoroughly examine those adults in which want to conceal a weapon. Parents should also be held responsible for any child who comes in contact with their weapon. Educators and parents should work together in learning more methods to prevent bullying. Parents should make time for their children to discuss with them how to think and act on their own without the influences of their peers.
By doing this bullying and peer pressure can be minimized to its lowest in schools today.Works Cited Chittom, L, and Newton, H. Home Schooling: An Overview. Points of View: Home Schooling. 1, Mar.
30, 2018Coulson, Justin. Peer Pressure at school. September 2015 www.kidspot.com.au/school/secondary/peer-pressure/peer-pressure-at-school/news-story /4fafcfe5bbc8c458c698df4bfc18d484Coulson, Justin.
4 Powerful P’s to prevent peer pressure. September 2013 www.kidspot.com.au/parenting/child/child-behaviour/4-powerful-ps-to-prevent-peer-pressure /news-story/17d61f42c3a50bfe144c6b1e13dda903Dianne Gallagher, Meridith Edwards, Jamiel Lynch and Steve Almasy, CNN.Parkland shooter described plans on cellphone video.Updated 9:35 PM ET, Wed May 30, 2018 www.cnn.
com/2018/05/30/us/florida-parkland-nikolas-cruz-videos/index.html”Homeschooling Statistics.” Time4Learning, www.
time4learning.com/homeschool/homeschoolstatistics.shtmlLEE, D; GEIER, DB. Bullying in Schools: An Overview. Points of View: Bullying in Schools. 1, Mar.
31, 2017. Miller, Justin, et al. “10 Killed in Texas School Shooting, Deadliest since Parkland: A Student Reportedly Burst into Art Class and Opened Fire Early Friday Morning and Planted Bombs.” Daily Beast (New York), 18 May 2018, p. 1. EBSCOhost,
