Question

What else need to be research about the topic for safety sake a case study of School security effort and there in pak on education reform

Answer 1

In the aftermath of the violent incidents between Asian and black students at Seacrest High School in the 2009-2010 school year, it is understandable that school and district administrators would have placed great emphasis on addressing matters related to safety, order, and security. Moreover, after signing a consent decree with the US Department of Justice and the state Department of Human Relations, which required the district to enact a variety of safety measures, and under pressure and scrutiny from local media and community groups, it makes sense that the district would have taken every step available to ensure that there would be no recurrence of violence at the school. A vast body of research on schooling has shown that safety is an essential requisite for a positive educational environment. In fact, education philosopher John Dewey 37 and psychologist Abraham Maslow 38 have argued that violence, disorder, and threats to physical safety are antithetical to an environment where students can learn and develop and where teachers can instruct effectively. However, several studies have also shown that school safety is largely a by-product of strong positive relationships between students and staff, and not the adoption of advanced security measures. In fact, as this study of Seacrest has shown, by placing a disproportionate amount of energy and attention on security issues, the school neglected other important elements of its larger educational goals, namely teaching and learning and a positive school culture. It is important to understand that the fragmented focus on school safety is not unique to Seacrest and the unusual circumstances that were confronting the school. Schools as complex organizations are driven by multiple and often competing goals. Since the advent of zero-tolerance policies, schools across the country have adopted a number of costly security measures and highly punitive discipline policies in an attempt to ensure safety (or the perception of safety) at the expense of other concerns Positive perceptions of safety are not insignificant, as they are vital to upholding the school’s moral authority to maintain order, as well as to students’ and teachers’ abilities to focus on academics.

However, the effort to create safe and orderly schools increasingly has come to resemble the fight against crime in the larger society, and like the larger effort, underlying issues related to poverty, inequality, and institutional bias have largely been ignored. The fact that some students and staff at Seacrest looked favourably upon the increase in surveillance, policing, and zero-tolerance approaches to discipline despite their negative effects on school culture and learning draws attention to how school policy not only materially affects students’ and staff members’ everyday lives (e.g., creating paperwork, bringing new and harsher punishments) but also limits the range of solutions they perceive as possible or effective in addressing problems at school and likely beyond the school doors as well. School policies have socializing powers and contribute to shaping the thinking of how societal problems should and could be addressed (e.g., through supportive versus punitive interventions). Certainly, the school’s tactics were first informed by the larger US “culture of control, but the school’s role in reinforcing and influencing society in return must also be recognized. As the case of Seacrest shows, narrowing the focus of school improvement efforts to a singular goal can result in schools neglecting important aspects of the educational mission that are essential to school success and youth development. The alternative to a narrow focus on safety and security is a broad focus on the environmental conditions within schools that promote strong, positive relationships between educators and students that are essential to learning and child development. American education philosopher John Dewey, in writing about the conditions for growth, explains why a broad focus on the learning environment and school culture is essential. He writes Development when it is interpreted in comparative terms, that is, with respect to the special traits of child and adult life, means the direction of power into special channels: the formation of habits involving executive skill, definiteness of interest, and specific objects of observation and thought. The adult must use his powers to transform the environment thereby occasioning new stimuli which redirect student powers and keep them developing. Ignoring this fact leads to arrested development. In narrowly pursuing safety or higher test scores in isolation from other goals that Dewey describes as essential to child development, schools like Seacrest invariably remain mired in failure. Cases like this one are reminders that safety cannot be disassociated from the broader mission of schools, and to the degree that they are, genuine and sustainable school improvement will continue to be out of reach.