Teach Your Children
 The 1997-98 school year sent shock waves across America. As children
took aim in classrooms and schoolyards, quiet communities with names like
Columbine, Pearl, Springfield, West Paducah and Jonesboro were forever
changed and the nation was horrified by the discovery that youth violence
isn't confined to one section of the country or one segment of the
population.
Will every new school year be as dangerous? One heartening difference
is that parents, teachers and others who interact with children now have a
heightened awareness of the problem. Many are trying to prevent further
violence by identifying the causes and finding ways to intervene before
children harm others.
Shortly after the March 24 shooting in Jonesboro, Howard Spivak, MD,
was invited to visit the shaken Arkansas town to develop long-term
violence prevention programs. Spivak, who is vice president of community
health at New England Medical Center, has 15 years' experience at the
forefront of Boston's youth violence prevention efforts. While he
decries the availability of guns, Spivak says they are only part of the
problem: "If guns were not accessible, you probably wouldn't change
the number of incidents but you would dramatically reduce the number of
people killed and wounded. We'd see the same amount of violence but
fewer deaths."
What would change the level of violence?
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