New Moral Army

"We're seeing more efforts to involve students in school safety and take responsibility for their schools," says Joanne McDaniel, acting director of the Centre for the Prevention of School Violence in North Carolina. "It's not just offering them an opportunity to report, but educating them so it's not seen as ratting or snitching."

And it's working. In Hoyt, Kansas, where three teenagers were charged last month with planning a school attack, a tip on the school hotline led to a search of one boy's home, where bombmaking material and white supremacist literature was found. However, teachers had already been monitoring his activities. "We had done a lot of crisis training and [raised the] awareness of our staff, and it helped, because one of the things that alerted us was [his] inflammatory writing" in class, Marceta Reilly, superintendent of the Hoyt schools told the Christian Science Monitor. The school had been determined not to resort simply to extra security.

In Elmira, New York, a senior lugged 18 bombs and two guns to school a fortnight ago - and passed a note detailing the contents of his duffel bag to a friend. Like Hoyt, the school had a resource officer, who was familiar to the gunman. After the friend alerted the administration, the officer confronted the student, who surrendered.

Similarly, when three boys in Fort Collins, Colorado, threatened in January to "re-do Columbine", two girls who overheard them tipped off police. The officers found sketches of the plan and weapons at one boy's house.

However, in 1999 in Altamont, Kansas, two students spent months in detention after a classmate embellished a late-night discussion into a plot against the school and teachers. "You need to build safeguards into the process so the chances of a false accusation are minimised as much as possible," McDaniel warns.

And still community after community is looking for ways to tackle the problem.

Last month, Boston unveiled a 12point school safety plan, including random security sweeps and developing early-warning systems for disruptive students or parents. In Phoenix, Arizona, a non-profit agency has stepped in to help. Touchstone Communities Inc, a mental health agency, has developed a programme designed to help school staff members identify violent traits in students. School employees - everyone from the principal to the caretaker - learn the character traits that could lead to violence. These include withdrawal, skipping school, bullying and uncontrollable outbursts of anger. Suicide threats, lack of parental involvement and violent drawings or writings also can be signs of potential violence. President Clinton's education secretary Richard W. Riley last year warned, however, of the danger of relying on simplistic behavioural profiling techniques in identifying potentially violent students. Some 22 schools across the country have been testing computer software designed to help principals determine whether a student who has made a violent threat is likely to carry it out. "While we must work to prevent school violence, we cannot rely on mechanical profiling of students," Riley told school counsellors in Chicago. "We simply cannot put student behaviours into a formula to come up with the appropriate response." Profiling is controversial because of its potential to stigmatise troubled students who present no real threat of violence and because some police departments have used it to target minority groups. The Seattle-based Committee for Children, a non-profit organisation focusing on social and emotional learning, is the brainchild behind Second Step, which targets elementary and junior-high students. Developed in 1986, it is taught in about 300 schools in Washington state and is becoming one of the most widely used programmes of its kind in the US and Canada. The programme focuses on violence prevention and developing social skills, empathy training, impulse control and anger management, and uses roleplaying. The aim is to give students ideas about how best to handle their anger when they want to fight. Second Step teachers provide lessons on dealing with peer pressure breaking down stereotypes and discussions on emotions and conflict resolution. Such a holistic approach appears to be among the most successful in actually reducing the level of violence in schools. The tragedy of Columbine seems to have been an important catalyst for a cultural change that is gradually passing through the education system. The message - listen to the kids. "There is better reporting, better awareness," says Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Centre in Thousand Oaks, California. "Staff and parents are more observant, and individuals are learning that it is in their self- interest to report some of the early warning signs." Omerta may be dying.