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John Devine paints inner-city schools as a war zone, where violence has become endemic and has in too many cases become accepted as the norm. He argues that the typical responses policing strategies, peer mediation, diversion of money from teaching programs to metal detectors and hightech surveillance cameras-not only don't work, but make matters worse. They cause both students and educators to view violence as the norm. Devine faults educators for turning their heads instead of taking responsibility; teachers, he says, have progressively withdrawn from any real social involvement with youth. He takes a passionate and often combative stance toward right-wingers (they blame students, their families, and principals for chaotic schools); and left-wingers (they are in a state of denial about the growing school violence and see kids only as the victims, not as both victims and perpetrators).