What fuels violence in schools? The school shootings that occurred one after another last April brought long-standing debates in the US to Türkiye. Bourgeois authorities, attempting to profile children with the potential for armed violence, have resorted to solutions such as developing stricter control mechanisms in schools and labeling children deemed "socially maladaptive" as fitting the profile. The consequences of the education system, the family institution, and military strategies aimed at creating aggressive soldiers and competitive workers result in violence becoming even more widespread in working-class neighborhoods. Children who would be sent to the front lines are not only sent to school, but many are trained in a violent manner using numerous techniques to prepare them for combat on the battlefield. Much of this training returns to the children as physical and psychological violence from the adults around them.

There are some commonalities in school attacks of this type worldwide: easy access to weapons for children, the presence of adults around them who portray the violent tendencies of patriarchal culture as something to be proud of, and teachers’ statements about the children having psychological problems. In capitalism, children, constantly pitted against each other, confined to patriarchal gender roles, and forced into isolated existences where they form their own values ​​within their virtual groups, become either killers or victims as a result of their isolation. This system controls large masses in working-class neighborhoods by teaching them to attack or to submit. Situations like school attacks are a consequence of the military propaganda applied, the investment in war technologies and the training of professionals who develop and use these technologies, and the rise of militaristic discourse in society, resulting in us seeing more violence in our daily lives: at home, at school, at work...

Children’s safety is impossible under capitalist conditions! Within the exploitative capitalist system, children often develop numerous psychological problems: at home under the paternal authority representing the State, at school under the authority of the curriculum and educators, in competition with their peers, and in an environment where those who cannot adapt due to capitalist individualistic relationship patterns become isolated. In urban life, where there is little opportunity for young people to socialize healthily in safe spaces, they develop inadequately both physically and mentally. It is understandable that young people are angry, but the target of this anger is not their classmates or teachers, but the capitalist system itself. While this system transforms a group of young people into aggressive criminals, it turns many more into defenders of bourgeois culture who resign themselves to their fate or spend their lives pursuing petty interests.

The disorganization of the working class makes it easily manipulated; it prevents workers from engaging in class struggle by keeping them mired in internal conflicts. From childhood, people are categorized according to gender, race, intelligence type, and many other factors. The "self and the other" mentality is meticulously crafted by the system. Both constructs are used to create the "reasonable" individual who will ensure the continuation of capitalist society, either through violence or submission. The capitalist State operates through violence and obedience. The only way to resist it is to involve future workers in a culture of struggle through worker organizations and trade union activities. Students gain a better understanding of the conditions of their worker relatives and teachers, develop empathy, and form opinions about their own futures. Most importantly, they realize that the real harm comes from the capitalist system and its apparatus.