You would think that school is one of the safest places your kids could be, right? However, worrying news reports and recent research may show that simply isn’t the case. Your child’s school could be far more dangerous than you realize due to violence, peer pressure, cleanliness, and hygiene. Let’s look at some of these issues and think about how they could be a danger to your child’s health.
Bullying
Bullying is a lot more dangerous than people realize and lately, it’s become a far stronger presence in schools. This is mainly due to technology and new ways that children are able to bully under the radar. Social media is one of the common ways children now bully others. They can set up profiles online for that individual, post pictures or send hateful messages. This could be happening in school environment without you ever realizing there’s an issue. Teach may not even realize it’s going on and could argue it’s out of their jurisdiction. Particularly, if the messages are being sent out of school hours. Unfortunately, bullying can have severe and often fatal consequences. Cases of bullying have been linked to numerous child suicides over the years and increase the chance of self-harm.
Dangerous Individuals
Teachers working in a school should have been put through extensive checking procedures. Unfortunately, it seems that more often than not, dangerous individuals do slip through the cracks. There have been cases of teachers with a history of sexual offenses as well as staff with mental illness. It is clear that there needs to be more checks on anyone working with children. Background checks must be thorough, and they should go back years. Otherwise, how can we guarantee that our kids are safe in school? The answer is that quite simply, we can’t.
Cleanliness
You may not think of cleanliness in schools as a major issue. But think how many sick days could be prevented if schools were held to a higher standard of hygiene. Thousands of pupils are off school every year. This is due to illnesses that could have been prevented with better measures for cleanliness. The issue is that schools are facing tighter budgets. Many are trying to cut back in an area that doesn’t seem important, and that’s cleanliness. There should be a school cleaning checklist so that owners can make sure all the areas are completely covered. This will certainly reduce to the number of viruses and bugs kids contract in school.
Violence
Finally, from the knifing of a teacher in England to the shootings in America, it’s clear schools aren’t as safe as they used to be. It seems every year; there is another tragedy involving a school pupil involved in an attack. We need to be doing more to protect the children inside the school walls. This does not mean that staff should now be armed. However, it is a time we had metal detectors in every school across the country. We need to make sure that an armed civilian can never again enter a school and attack the children.
