ABSTRACT
Youthful aggression and violence in school is a relatively recent phenomenon. Indeed, citing evidence that most teachers in the mid-1950s considered their pupils to be either well behaved or exceptionally well behaved, Arnold Gold stein and colleagues argued that the years prior to 1960 can be called the "pre escalation period” in American school violence (A. P. Goldstein, Harootunian, & Conoley, 1994, p. 8). Beginning in the 1960s, however, children’s behavioral problems began to increase both in and out o f school (Damon, 1995; Kilpatrick, 1992). By the year 2000, many school administrators considered physical vio lence to be a major problem in the schools ("Physical violence,” 2000), and a nationwide survey revealed that 75% of parents worried about violence in the schools ("Parents rank violence,” 2000).
