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Show School Tn and j Home cp 1 by Dr. Daryl J. McCarty I Executive Secretary .1 Utah Education Association 4iwW. If we humans encounter some particularly bad news, we tend to deny it. Tell a person his favorite basketball team lost, and you'll get this reply: "Oh,' no!" Likewise, we deny other unpleasantries such as death, disaster and disease. In ancient times, the sensitive sensi-tive public sometimes stoned the bearer of bad news. At the risk of a few bruises, I'd like to pass along a bit of bad news. It's this: Some young people do some rather rotten things. Compact, the bimonthly magazine of the Education Commission of the States, noted in its February edition that school violence and vandalism is escalating across the land. The magazine noted that "debates already are raging in many areas over whether schools must divert money from education efforts to finance armed guards, security secur-ity systems and other 'hardware'." A survey by the National School Public Relations Association Assoc-iation found that vandalism is costing most of the school districts surveyed between $1 and $13.50 per student-and the tab in Chicago is a horrendous $18.50. Last year a Senate subcommittee subcom-mittee found that assaults on students had climbed 85.3 percent from 1970 to 1973-and that assaults on teachers were up 77.4 percent. This isn't Chicago. But a survey in Utah several years ago showed that vandalism and violence are no strangers to many of our schools. It would be nice to be able to report to you that educators have come up with a behavioral behav-ioral penicillin that cures this kind of ill. But it hasn't happened. The best suggestion suggest-ion I can offer is that denial of our problems is no answer. We may not have the wisdom to solve all our problems, but we must have the courage to try. |
