> I'd wager that you're speaking from the privilege of living in a community where you don't have to worry about your kid being knived, shot or raped at school, otherwise you might have a different opinion.

Not that it makes a huge difference, but I'd wager that, outside the USA, that's almost unheard of in the developed world .

I know that doesn't make a lick of difference to an American who is in that situation, but surely it's a reflection of American society and culture, not the concept of public schooling in general.

There is a lot of violence in public schools in developed countries outside of the US.

I went to a public school in Australia in a relatively wealthy area and saw multiple gang beatings. One guy beaten so badly that he was knocked out cold for over ten minutes with people jumping on his head.

I know for a fact it's worse in less wealthy areas.

Australian public schools don't have shootings but there is enough to fuck up kid's development. They always descend into honor culture violence. I'm speculating but I do wonder if it's significant part of the problem that poor Black communities in the US face. These young boys thrown into a pit in a status game where they have to prove themselves and become brutalized in the process.

One solution to that is private schools where the staff are accountable to paying customers who won't stand for this violence. Low tier bureaucrats who can't get fired in public schools just don't care or can't stop it.

There are exceptional public schools with no violence, often they're selective, but they're rare.

> Not that it makes a huge difference, but I'd wager that, outside the USA, that's almost unheard of in the developed world .

Raped or shot, probably. Knives tend to get more common in Europe too, at least in the very diverse urban centers.

Maybe? Some criminals swap guns for knives in countries other than the US (though there's still plenty of criminals with guns too). The main difference is the culture though. Violent crimes are at least an order of magnitude less common in a lot of non-US countries. I'm all for gun laws but I don't think the weapon really changes the equation much.

Schools are the same. I don't think I've ever heard of someone being knifed in an Australian school. Even though theoretically anyone could do it. There's no security or anything, it just doesn't happen as often as in the US.

As an American, I think the tolerance for violence in American society is astonishingly high. I think that our high urban crime rates and our documented problems with police brutality are symptoms of the same disease. Certainly widespread gun ownership and latent racism are confounding factors, but I don't necessarily believe they're the driving force because they are a poor explanation for the violence we see in places like Baltimore and Chicago.

I've come to believe that there is something very wrong with our attitude towards violence, and yet it's not clear to me why we are different or how we got here, let alone what policy changes could address it.

For what it's worth, the USA is very commonly perceived overseas as an incredibly violent society.

It is and it isn't, it varies heavily on where you live. Most people never see or experience violence outside of schools. For all the talk on the news, I've never seen or met someone whose encountered violence lately.

It's certainly less common in Europe as well but not unheard of. I feel like we're slowly going towards the US, with the UK leading the way, but we're still quite far away.

Where is this level of brutal violence the expectation of public school? That sounds far more like an 80s movie.

At risk of oversharing and personalizing, we attend school in Brooklyn, at a school that prioritizes inclusion of non-native English speakers and kids on food assistance. A large percentage of our classroom's kids live in public housing. It's a safe room and building.

And, please don't kid yourself about private school buying your way out of the potential for traumatic experiences. Elite boarding schools don't have the best histories wrt sexual assault.