Intimidation in educational institutions

It was estimated in 1993 that in the USA 160,000 children stayed at home each day because they were frightened to go to school. In 1989 two security guards were required to enable a philosophy professor to teach a class there.

A study conducted in 1995 showed that Israeli children hate school more than pupils in over two dozen other countries surveyed. Two studies released in 1999 may give a clue as to why: the level of violence in Israeli schools. The studies found 10.3 percent of more than 8,000 Jewish pupils surveyed had brought either a knife, gun, or stick with them to school at least once during the previous month. A study conducted by the Hebrew University's Rami Benvenisti found that of more than 15,000 pupils from 232 Israeli public schools, some 16% of elementary-school pupils, 8% of middle-school pupils and 4% of high-school pupils had skipped school at least once out of fear of an attack. About 43% of Israeli pupils admitted to bullying fellow students, and almost 16% of students had been either pushed, pinched, slapped, kicked or punched by teachers and staff.