“And there they are, our children dumped out on these mean streets. The evil sweeps them up and brings them to their knees.”

— Nanci Griffith, “Time of Inconvenience”

It should be no major surprise that American schools are being turned into war zones with children attacking children.

Unfortunately, we are all to blame.

Battles that are usually fought on fields or in jungles have now been transported to the schoolyards.

Venting repressed anger by using violence as an attention-seeking device symbolizes the failure of schools and parents to collaborate with each other on preventive measures for curbing children out-of-bounds.

Quit pointing fingers. We are all to blame.

Extensions of social breakdowns which have trickled into American schools as budget cuts have undermined their original purpose by causing increased problems with decreased solutions. Programs in every academic area (based upon geographical region and socioeconomic background) have either been scaled down or totally eliminated.

Losses of educational programs in the arts and sciences which could have presented positive alternatives in channeling children’s negative energies are being replaced with further overloaded amounts of schoolwork to keep them “busy” while trying to “maintain” classroom standards.

This is ironic because some of these children (regardless of where they live) will graduate from high school or even college without ever learning how to read or write.

Even physical education and recess activities are not immune from budget cuts.

Rather than using the schools to expand the development of children with the full cooperation of their parents, they are now viewed as “baby-sitting” services for parents who are unwilling to accept responsibilities for cultivating their offspring’s educational growth.

Let’s face today’s dysfunctional educational structure with the hard truth: We are all to blame.

Parents and schools must relearn how to cooperatively work together to avert another Springfield, Paducah, Bethel, Pearl, Johnsboro…

If not, more schoolyard massacres will occur.

Then again, we are all to blame.

Violence in children starts at an early age with parents who inattentively monitor their children’s overall activities without evaluating their family lifestyle patterns. Most social problems begin and end in the home.

There are no easy solutions.

With some children, taking a gun to school is the only way to resolve a problem. Bombs and guns are not the only weapons used in generating violence among children.

Children are exposed to direct violence through verbal and emotional abuse, physical assaults and sexual harassment. Violence in children that is untapped during preschool and elementary school can further escalate when they enter junior high and high school.

By then it is too late; these children have already evolved into walking terrorists.

The pain caused by violent children carries long-term psychological scars on their living victims, and this pain will haunt them well into adulthood without consistent professional therapy.

As communities heal after the loss of their loved ones, there must be a movement toward proactivity among parents and schools to develop preventive measures in stopping another schoolyard calamity.

Again, no location (not even Ames) is safe from schoolyard violence.

It is up to all of us to stop these violent children from causing greater harm.

If we don’t, we are all to blame.

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Adrian De Vore is a senior in hotel, restaurant and institution management from Newark, N.J.