What, Another Conference on School Violence?

I didn't know whether to feel pleased or sad that the one-day conference attracted such a sizeable group of significant school decision-makers.

More than 100 Connecticut superintendents, assistant superintendents, principals, and school security administrators had come to participate in a conference titled "Gangs in Schools: Coming to a Community Near You."

The parody of typical movie advertisements seemed to underline the paradox of the growing casualness with which we talk about serious crime while at the same time we try to alert citizens to the urgent need for aggressive planning and action to prevent the spread of gang activity.

Presenters included Bernard James and Ronald Stephens, both from the National School Safety Center, with considerable credentials earned from their experience in Los Angeles and other cities. The topics included such non-traditional issues as gang recognition and identification, legal implications for school administrators, the drug connection, armed and ordinary weapons, drive-by shootings, and what to do when a gang member enrolls in your school.

For a moment I wasn't sure I was in the right room or the right conference. But we were in the right room all right and this was the right agenda and the most relevant curriculum for today's times. That's the depressing part. Dozens of busy and important school functionaries had to spend the entire day on crime and violence instead of topics related to improving the quality of our education programs.

One could argue that this issue is, at the moment, the central problem in any effort to improve our schools, but I yearn for the time when we could focus our energies on new approaches in science and math.

The video we saw in the afternoon dealt not with a new pedagogy but with the stark reality of gang initiation rites, their communication systems (including beepers, flying colors, flashing hand signals, or graffiti), their awesome weapons, and most importantly their total disregard for life--theirs and anyone else's.

I certainly am not a novice to this problem, having served for many years in tough inner-city New York City public schools as a teacher and administrator and as a teacher in a maximum security detention house (i.e., jail) in the South Bronx for juvenile delinquents under age 16. I recall vividly being in charge of an evening community center that I struggled to keep as neutral territory between our "neighbors" on the Lower East Side--the Egyptian Crowns and the Untouchables, two prominent local gangs.

Yet as the video showed girls physically assaulting a friend as an initiation rite for membership in their gang or two gang members holding up a convenience store and murdering an individual who moved when he shouldn't have, I felt engulfed by a chilling emotional wave of disbelief, sadness, rage, and frustration. I asked, "How can this be happening in this county of ours?"

Not only is it happening, but it is happening with frightening regularity. In the same video, a 15-year-old male gang member is asked to think about what he might be doing when he is 18 years old. His almost casual but serious response is, "I don't know. Maybe I'll be in jail, or maybe I'll be dead." The total lack of hope and the fatalistic acceptance of a sorrowful and perhaps brief future hit us like a slap in the face.

Close to Home

As the lights in the room went back on, we sat motionless, trying to simultaneously absorb and reject what we had just seen. For the first time in many years I had the fleeting thought that perhaps there is nothing we can do. These young people live in such a different world than ours, with such different values and different perspective on life that we cannot possibly understand, much less try to change.

We finished the afternoon with more discussion of nitty-gritty topics of prevention, intervention, and suppression of gang activity. As the conference ended, I empathized with all these school administrators who had to go back to face this terrible challenge daily in their school districts. At least I was no longer in a position to have the official responsibility for dealing with this fearsome problem. I had the luxury of being able to go home now.

I was delighted to see that my two teen-age daughters were home by the time I arrived. We chatted about the day's activities. I asked how they had enjoyed their first big school dance sponsored by their urban middle school as an after-school extracurricular activity.

"Oh, we didn't go, Dad."

"Why not?"

"They cancelled the dance at the last minute because there were rumors of a gang shootout at the school."

Coming to a community near you.

Hernan LaFontaine served as superintendent in Hartford, Conn., for 13 years.