Children who are at risk of turning violent because of bad parents should be removed from their homes and sent to more loving families, a Birmingham expert has claimed.

The drastic measure is been advocated by Dennis Lines based on ten-year experience as a school counsellor at Shenley Court Specialist Arts College and Sixth Form Centre.

Mr Lines claimed such radical intervention was the only way to stop some youngsters turning into potential psychopaths or suffering other psychological problems.

However, his views were dismissed as "simplistic" and based on a "middle class bias" by one social psychologist.

Mr Lines unveils his ideas in the latest edition of the journal of the National Association for Pastoral Care in Education, a Coventry-based charity focused on student care.

Based on a study of psychopathic killers by US child psychologist Jonathan Kellerman, Mr Lines writes: "High profile shootings in the US have left educationalists in search of explanations.

"Stabbings of peers and teachers have occurred in the UK, indicating that the problem is no way confined to the US.

"Society has no option but to take the problem seriously, to ban guns from children outright, to work with violent children before they are six and to remove high-risk youngsters (boys in the main) from home into families where love and good adult modelling teaches them how to manage their aggression."

Mr Lines claimed research showed children of aggressive parents needed to be shielded from their behaviour early on if they were not to replicate it.

"A youngster of a parent who handles their stress by hitting someone, they will internalise that and it is very hard to offset.

"By the time they get to secondary school what you are trying to do is patch up porous inner tubes. You are trying to steer a rampaging bull and it is all too late."

Mr Lines admitted suggesting children should be removed from bad parents was something no politician would advocate.

But he added: "If someone should so overstep barriers, then perhaps they should not be brought up by their parents.

"It is incredibly politically explosive, but is there a biological right to parent one's own child irrespective of society?"

Dr Lines paper comes in the wake of America's worst-ever campus killing spree in which a psychotic student shot dead 32 fellow students and teachers before turning his gun on himself.

Concern has also grown in the UK over increased aggression and a weapon-carrying culture among schoolchildren in the UK.

A study by The Birmingham Post last year revealed Police were being called to deal with knife offences at West Midland schools an average of two times a week.

However Dr Gary Wood, a social psychologist at Birmingham University, questioned Mr Lines' conclusions.

"There are inequalities in society and this doesn't address any of this. It puts the blame on the family because it is easier," he said. "It is a very middleclass bias that assumes we should all subscribe to one set of values.

"Also, who is deciding what is a loving, caring family? There are a lot of families that seem loving and caring that end up abusive."

Norman Wells, of the Family and Youth Concern charity, added: "It's important to avoid a knee-jerk reaction to high profile and extreme cases.

"Certainly there are occasions where children need to be removed from violent homes as a last resort for their own protection, but we need to be very careful when making subjective judgments about children and their families.

"In some situations heavy-handed intervention can create more problems than it solves."

The National Union of Teachers called for more investment in primary schools to help problematic youngsters.

Birmingham City Council has already pledged to slash reception classes by about a half in a bid to get youngsters on the right educational track.