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

Beyond the U.S. gun control debate, another question deserves examination: Why are schools so frequently the sites of mass gun violence in America? We explore the psychology and potential solutions in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/why-do-school-shootings-keep-happening-in-us.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey,
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here with a classic episode from
the podcast archives. This is one that we originally ran
in March in the way of the shooting at Marjorie
Stoneman Douglas High School. It's about the prevalence of mass
shootings in schools and what some solutions might be. It's

(00:24):
still relevant today, so I wanted to air it again. Hi,
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum Here, I've got a serious one
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

(00:45):
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

(01:07):
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

(01:29):
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

(01:49):
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

(02:12):
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

(02:36):
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

(02:56):
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

(03:17):
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

(03:40):
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,

(04:04):
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,

(04:24):
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

(04:45):
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

(05:07):
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

(05:31):
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

(05:53):
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

(06:13):
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.