A recent article in Arab News on the growing violence among Saudi boys and teenagers in schools caught my attention because of the universality of this problem. Students carrying knives and other weapons have been a phenomenon happening in the United States and Brazil for years now. What all of this points to is a desensitization to violence engendered by the overexposure to violence on television and in movies and the weakening of family structures.

Many public high schools in urban areas in the US since the 1970s have had to install metal detectors at their entrances to screen all students entering for knives and guns. This may seem like an extreme measure for Saudi schools, but surely some sort of daily inspection of students entering educational premises could be implemented to stop knives from being smuggled inside classrooms.

Parents often like to blame teachers and their schools for the violence that their children are exposed to at schools, but the main problem in my view is the lack of family socialization that teaches children that violence is not the right way to resolve differences. Many families do not monitor the behavior of their rowdy children, let alone reprimand or punish them for bad behavior. These families expect the school systems to be the cops that discipline their offspring, abdicating any responsibility that they should have.

This lack of parental responsibility happens everywhere in the world nowadays, not just in Saudi Arabia. I often see Brazilian parents with their small children in public turn the other way as their offspring wreak havoc on other children, adults and general surroundings, breaking things and hitting other children. It’s as if these were not even their children! This lack of parental setting of limits and punishment when their children do something wrong or anti-social leads to spoiled brats that think the world owes them everything and that there are no consequences for their bad behavior.

At a recent gathering I met my Portuguese teacher Dona Celinda from the American School that I studied at in Brasilia from sixth grade to twelfth grade. “Your generation was always polite and well-behaved, but the newer generations drove me crazy with their bad behavior. I would confiscate a student’s cell phone in class, and then the headmaster would just later give it back to the student. That was one of the reasons that I finally retired from teaching,” she told me.

That type of bad behavior may seem benign compared to stabbings and other violent actions by students, but it does mark a loosening of respect for authority and the introduction of cell phones and social media into the educational environment, often to negative ends. Several violent school fights between groups of teenage girls here in Brasilia were filmed by students on the cellphones and then uploaded to the Internet for the whole world to see.

Saudi authorities should clamp down on all of the gratuitous violence that is shown on TV and in movies. Censors seem more concerned with cutting out immoral scenes, then with moderating the violence that young Saudis are exposed to on a daily basis. Social workers should also visit the family homes of school troublemakers in order to try and find out why the children are acting out at school. Violent behavior at school should also be punished, letting all students know that punching a fellow student or a teacher is not acceptable behavior.

Saudi schools should be weapons- and violence-free zones. I am appalled that reportedly not all public schools have banned the carrying of knives and other weapons by students. Doing so would be a major step to making schools safe zones where learning is the priority and not fighting. The world outside schools is already so violent that we should ensure that our children grow up in safe and nurturing environments and not have to fear going to school because the school bully may beat them up or stab them.

- The writer is a Saudi journalist based in Brazil.