Pat Says...

Who wouldn't want to see schools be safer? On the other hand, would this mean that the kids will act out more when they are other places?

The question is not of school safety per se, but a broader issue of youth conduct. You can pour money into metal detectors, K-9 sniffers, security guards, and generally make the kids feel like they are in jail for six hours a day. This doesn't seem to be a constructive solution to problems with youth conduct.

A better way to provide school safety is to research the factors leading to misbehavior in and out of school, and begin to address those as a society. There could be serious problems that we'd otherwise never know enough about to be able to fix them. It could be that kids need to be reached out to more than is happening. Contemporary media, including the internet, may play roles by establishing the unusual as the norm, and by promoting development of cliques that isolate kids on the outside. Pervasive images of war, and feelings of helplessness to do anything about it, must certainly contribute to teen angst. Lack of after-school activities at low or no cost, and lack of part-time jobs, may fuel a search to end boredom, with unproductive results.

The point is, there may possibly be so many motivations for misconduct that solving the school safety problem by making schools more secure is to miss the target entirely.