Metal Detectors in School

Metal Detectors in Schools When confronted with a frightening phenomena, people often tend only to look at the symptom, rather than the underlying cause, and in turn they end up making the problem worse, as in the case of installing metal detectors in schools in an attempt to stop violence.

Although at first glance installing a metal detector might seem like an obvious choice towards making schools safer, this kind of thinking only makes the problem worse by wasting time and energy on a "solution" that ignores the larger problem, is not actually effective, and harms the very people it is meant to protect. Examining these three faults in greater detail will reveal how the use of metal detectors is born out an ignorant, careless approach to safety that harms the public while making money for a few self-interested parties.

The first problem with using metal detectors in schools is that they allow those in charge to ignore the larger problem, which can not be solved with scanners but only by looking at the social conditions and motivating factors that encourage this violence in the first place. However, investigating social injustice and reducing poverty does not make much money, and not nearly as much as expensive contracts to install and maintain metal detectors in schools.

The fact that this is largely about money, and not about solving any real problem, can be seen in an article arguing in favor of metal detectors in schools, which actually begins by admitting that "violence-related behavior in schools has declined in recent years" without bothering to wonder if that renders the rest of their essay irrelevant (Mawson et al., 2002, p. 243).

However, because they need fear to in order to sell metal detectors, the authors continue, saying that although the actual threat of violence is down, "the perception of risk remains high," most likely due to "a spate of school shootings in the U.S. [that] has prompted policymakers to address the public's growing perception that our schools are unsafe" (Mawson et al., p. 243, DeAngelis et al., 2011, p. 312).

This misguided concern over dramatic, rare events allows those with a vested interest to make the argument that these dramatic, rare events are actually so common as to necessitate constant vigilance and increased surveillance in order to maintain even the smallest bit of safety. Thus, Mawson et al.

continue on to suggest that installing metal detectors in schools will mostly make people feel safer, as if spending millions of dollars to install expensive equipment in order to alleviate the anxiety caused by people's ignorance is somehow better than educating people about the realities of violence in schools (Mawson et al., 2002, p. 243).

Because the fear of violence is much more prevalent than actual violence, the most important step towards preventing the violence that does occur would be to learn about why it happens, not throw one's hands up in desperation and decide the only way to protect students and teachers is to scan them for metal objects. The second problem with metal detectors is that in general, they are not even effective in stopping the majority of violence that happens in schools.

The authors arguing in favor of metal detectors claim that "current proposals for preventing school violence [do not] address the issue of lethal violence and hence personal safety," arguing that the only way to prevent lethal violence is by using metal detectors to search students for weapons (Mawson et al., 2002, p. 243). However, like the overhyped fear regarding the extent of violence in schools, these conclusions rely on assumptions regarding the nature of violence in schools that is simply not true.

Even though the majority of school violence is not lethal, even when that does happen "weapons screening cannot easily prevent such an outcome [because] a great many objects found in schools for legitimate purposes can be used aggressively" (Toby, 2002, p. 261). Once again, this demonstrates how the idea of using metal detectors in schools comes from a kind of mentality that does not think one step beyond the obvious, surface level solution.

The problem is not the weapons used, but rather those factors motivating the violence, something that can not be solved by simply keeping certain kinds of weapons away from schools. The third, and perhaps the most important, reason why metal detectors in schools are harmful is because they actually harm the very people they are supposed to protect, and much more so than any potential danger their presence might have precluded.

In what many researchers call the "schools-to-prison pipeline," "schools have begun to function less like spaces of empowerment or exploration and more like juvenile detention-recruitment centers where poor people, and especially poor people of color, are tracked into a life of imprisonment" (Hartnett, 2008, p. 500).

This is because school surveillance and punishment is being implemented in many of the same ways as prisons, so that schools with metal detectors and other extreme security rules "exhibit what students have referred to as a prison-like atmosphere while their discipline policies penalize and remove students instead of providing support and facilitating positive growth" (Tuzzolo & Hewitt, 2007, p. 60).

Protecting students has ultimately transformed into collectively punishing them, because even having to go through a metal detector can be considered a kind of psychological control or coercion, especially for people in a position of already limited agency due to their age. While some might argue that metal detectors offer a way of stopping the most dangerous weapons from entering schools, the.