Horace Mann, generally regarded as the father of America's current public school system, once prophesied: "Let the Common School ... be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged." Mann would probably be surprised to learn that crimes are now occurring with such frequency in the schools themselves that two federal agencies see fit to issue an annual report on the matter.
This year's report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2008, indicates that a higher percentage of students in public schools than in private schools reported victimization, theft, gang activity, hate speech, hate-related graffiti, and fear of being attacked or harmed at school.
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