School Violence: It's No Longer New

School violence: The shocking thing is we're not shocked anymore.

Rob Roberts from The National Post wrote an article on school violence and how it's no longer as shocking as it was before:

"Another day, another school lockdown. When I began in this business two decades ago, no one had ever heard of lockdowns. Now it is part of the language for teenagers who practise lockdowns as I once practised fire drills. Today, there was a stabbing outside Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute, which led to the lockdown at the Scarborough high school. There was a time we would interrupt regular programming and broadcast live on the air, our news chopper flying above, the satellite truck on scene, but not anymore. Such incidents have become so commonplace we don’t always report them. In our afternoon editorial meeting at Global, where we decide the line-up of our nightly "News Hour" broadcast, today’s lockdown was bumped down to a part of the broadcast usually reserved for features, after the health news, even after the weather forecast. As a city, we should not — cannot — become numb to a school lockdown. One student has already died on school property, and all the signs suggest it will happen again. Perhaps it's no coincidence we don't hear it called 'Toronto the good' anymore."

He was right. Why is it that now when a crisis breaks out, a school locks down, or someone gets killed, it's all old news, not even worthy for the front page? This just goes to show what Toronto is coming to. The once peaceful city is now slowly being consumed by all this evil and not enough people are getting involved. How many more have to die for us to be shocked once again?

For me it’s a scary thought going into high school in a few weeks. The basic worries of grade school, such as whose turn is it on the climbers, have upgraded to being stabbed or shot or robbed coming home from school. I bet quite a few kids my age going into high school have the same feeling of anxiety about what could happen. Hopefully by the time I get to school my fear will have died down but for now, I don’t see my nerves settling any time soon.