BrainStuff Classics: Why Are Mass Shootings Happening in U.S. Schools?

for you today. We're talking about mass shootings in the United States and why they seem to be happening so frequently at schools. We're not getting graphic, but listener discretion is advised. On Valentine's Day this year, seventeen people, including students and teachers, were killed by a nineteen year old former student at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This was the tenth mass school shooting in the United

States in the past five years. A mass shooting is generally defined as one where at least four people are killed in single incident, and once again Americans are left asking ourselves why lost in the noisy debate over gun control and mental health screening is another confounding question, why schools. Why does so many troubled young men choose schools as the place to act out their violent and vengeful fantasies, And what, if anything, could schools do to avoid becoming

the next Columbine Sandy Hook or Stoneman Douglas. We spoke with Brian Warnick, a professor of educational ethics and policy at the Ohio State University who co authored a paper on the meaning and motivations behind targeted school shootings. Even though many associate gun violence in America with poor inner city communities, mass school shootings almost always occur in upper middle class, suburban schools. That's where the status tournament takes place,

explains Warnick. He said, suburban schools do a lot of things to select winners and losers in ways that go beyond academics. Think the adelation of athletics and the crowning of homecoming kings and queens. He continued, the way we see it, when schools set themselves up as judges in the social status tournament, the resentment will sometimes be directed against the school itself. He notes that in the book

Hollywood goes to the movies. Sociologist and author Robert Bulman says that while Hollywood films set in urban schools focus on heroic teachers and academic achievement, films set in suburban settings focus on student journeys of self discovery in the same vein many suburban school shooters see what they are doing is acts of self expression. Warnick said. There's a different value system at play in suburban schools. It's called

expressive individualism. What we see in movies and TV is students engaged in this process of self discovery, breaking through norms of the school, breaking through social cliques. Self discovery and individual expression aren't necessarily bad things, says Warnic, But for certain troubled young men who harbor deep resentment of the system that rejected them, there's no better way to express their true, tortured selves than through a dramatic act

of violence. And the higher the body count, the more powerful the message be. We also spoke with Cheryl Johnson, a professor of criminal justice at Cincinnati's Xavier University, where she has studied whether increased security measures, namely armed guards on campus, locked down buildings, and metal detectors, are an

effective means of preventing school shootings. She found that although beefed up security made to ter overall crime and violent crime in schools, there's little evidence to show that those measures alone can thwart a mass shooting. First, school shootings are just too statistically rare to gauge the efficacy of different security methods, and second, there's anecdotal evidence that even

the best security methods can fail. There were armed school guards a Columbine, the Sandy Hook shooters shot through glass panes to bypass locked doors, and in two thousand five, a student in Red Lake, Minnesota, passed through his school's metal detector before killing an unarmed guard who tried to stop him, along with seven other people, including himself. There's also concerned that militarizing schools with armed guards and security checkpoints contributes to the idea that the school is an

unsafe place where violence is almost expected. Johnson's seventeen paper, obviously written before the February Parkland incident, pointed out that the raw number of homicides at U schools each year since Columbine in nine had actually decreased or remained stable over the years. One of the best ways to prevent school shootings, both Johnson and Warnick agree is to encourage people to speak up when they suspect that a classmate, friend,

or family member is contemplating something terrible. A day before the Parkland shooting, a grandmother in Washington State called nine one when she found her eighteen year old grandson's handwritten plans for a gruesome school attack involving homemade explosives. Johnson said, that's a school shooting we're not talking about today, citing a report from the Secret Service and the Department of Education that a percent of school shootings at least one

other person knew about the plans. In fifty nine percent, two or more people had information about the attacks before they occurred. Warnick said, usually when school shootings are prevented, it's when students trust the teachers enough to share that information with them. If we could really build up schools as places of trust where children feel like they have adults who care about them, that would facilitate the communication that's been proven to prevent school shootings. Of course, speaking

up hasn't always been fool proof. We now know that the FBI received a tip about the Parkland shooter dating back to September seventeen for making disturbing comments on YouTube, but he was never detained or even questioned. A second person contacted the FBI on January five to report their concerns and to warn them about the shooters guns and desire to kill, but the FBI has admitted that the

proper protocols to follow up were left un followed. Instead of school districts spending money on expensive and unproven security solutions, Brian Warnick suggests they hire more teachers and counselors to shrink class sizes and encourage more meaningful interactions between staff and struggling students. He'd also like to see more creative outlets like art, literature, and music classes, which often get

from type budgets for safe individual expression. Today's episode is based on the article why do mass shootings keep Happening in US Schools? On how stuff Works dot Com written by Dave Rus. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.