Schools, then, are safer than neighborhoods, but people still are unnerved by the perception of an alarming rise in schoolyard violence that has been generated by heavy media coverage of the recent incidents.
Some conflict theorists object to the huge outcry about recent violence in schools.
After all, they note, violence in and around inner-city schools has a long history.
It seems that only when middle-class White children are the victims does school violence become a plank on the national policy agenda.
When violence hits the middle class, the problem is viewed not as an extension of delinquency, but as a structural issue in need of legislative remedies, such as gun control.
Meanwhile, feminists observe that virtually all the offenders are male and, in some instances, such as in the case of Jonesboro, the victims are disproportionately female.
The precipitating factor for violence is often a broken-off dating relationship yet another example of violence of men against women (or, in this case, boys against girls).