Danger!!!
USATODAY.com – Students in smaller schools much more likely to be troubled — Sounds like BS to me.
She reports that, all else being equal, male students in small middle schools and high schools, both public and private, are almost four times as likely to attempt suicide than those at larger schools. They also have a higher incidence of depression.
Boys at private religious schools are nearly twice as likely as others to bring a gun to school or threaten to use it; girls at religious schools are three times as likely to do the same.
The study challenges widely accepted notions that small schools create safer, more nurturing environments for teenagers.
The context surrounding these students lives and their families is probably a lot more relevent than the school size. This is like trying to gauge penis size by guys’ shoes!
I can think of some of the small school situations I’ve been around — in communities with 30% unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, surrounded by larger WASP enclaves — where we never really had to find something as absurd as school size to blame for producing a lot of screwed-up kids. All the other reasons were self-evident.
I grew up in a smaller, semi-rural “redneck” school and I have to say that we had several serious head-cases among the student body and at least one or two among the teachers.
I’ve met rural parents (including my brother) who enroll their kids in urban schools only to be surprised at how much better the school is than they expected.
My niece was sent to private Christian school for years because her parents assumed the city school was terrible. Finally the cost was just too-high and they sent her to a predominantly-minority urban school. When I asked my niece, she said that she _preferred_ the urban public school!
Go figure.
This sounds fishy. I’ll bet that this has more to do with the overall population around the school than the population at the school itself. Specifically, I’ll bet that this has more to do with whether there are sufficient non-school activities for students rather than pure school population numbers.
Larger populations would more likely dilute problems. For example, in a school with a large population, unpopular kids would have more opportunities to find friends. But in a small town, with a small school population, if a kid got a bad rep (i.e., not cool, smelly, stupid, too smart, etc.), he’d never be able to live it down.
It is not the size that counts. It is how you use it.
Smaller schools generally have fewer resources for students. I also imagine they would be in less populated districts.
Such communities could have more bullying then larger schools.
Interesting thought though. It is sure to challenge a few set ideas.
to do with gun culture. I grew up in SERIOUS gun culture where gun love was totally ingrained in us. Where I lived in the city, this was much less so. In the city, guns are more associated with criminality than a sacred way of life.
But times are different. I routinely carried a knife to school — almost every day of my time there. It never occurred to me to use it as a weapon. Like most kids, I got in a few fights — some very frightening — and it never crossed my mind to pull out my knife.
Hank’s right. I grew up in the mid west were hunting was a sacred right. There were plenty of high school students who brought their hunting guns to school to show them off back in the 70s/80s. The only time there was a problem was when a student (a friend of mine) brought a hand gun to school. They didn’t like that. But rifles were never a problem back then.