Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here with a classic episode from
Speaker 1: the podcast archives. This is one that we originally ran
Speaker 1: in March in the way of the shooting at Marjorie
Speaker 1: Stoneman Douglas High School. It's about the prevalence of mass
Speaker 1: shootings in schools and what some solutions might be. It's
Speaker 1: still relevant today, so I wanted to air it again. Hi,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum Here, I've got a serious one
Speaker 1: for you today. We're talking about mass shootings in the
Speaker 1: United States and why they seem to be happening so
Speaker 1: frequently at schools. We're not getting graphic, but listener discretion
Speaker 1: is advised. On Valentine's Day this year, seventeen people, including
Speaker 1: students and teachers, were killed by a nineteen year old
Speaker 1: former student at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Speaker 1: This was the tenth mass school shooting in the United
Speaker 1: States in the past five years. A mass shooting is
Speaker 1: generally defined as one where at least four people are
Speaker 1: killed in single incident, and once again Americans are left
Speaker 1: asking ourselves why lost in the noisy debate over gun
Speaker 1: control and mental health screening is another confounding question, why schools.
Speaker 1: Why does so many troubled young men choose schools as
Speaker 1: the place to act out their violent and vengeful fantasies,
Speaker 1: And what, if anything, could schools do to avoid becoming
Speaker 1: the next Columbine Sandy Hook or Stoneman Douglas. We spoke
Speaker 1: with Brian Warnick, a professor of educational ethics and policy
Speaker 1: at the Ohio State University who co authored a paper
Speaker 1: on the meaning and motivations behind targeted school shootings. Even
Speaker 1: though many associate gun violence in America with poor inner
Speaker 1: city communities, mass school shootings almost always occur in upper
Speaker 1: middle class, suburban schools. That's where the status tournament takes place,
Speaker 1: explains Warnick. He said, suburban schools do a lot of
Speaker 1: things to select winners and losers in ways that go
Speaker 1: beyond academics. Think the adelation of athletics and the crowning
Speaker 1: of homecoming kings and queens. He continued, the way we
Speaker 1: see it, when schools set themselves up as judges in
Speaker 1: the social status tournament, the resentment will sometimes be directed
Speaker 1: against the school itself. He notes that in the book
Speaker 1: Hollywood goes to the movies. Sociologist and author Robert Bulman
Speaker 1: says that while Hollywood films set in urban schools focus
Speaker 1: on heroic teachers and academic achievement, films set in suburban
Speaker 1: settings focus on student journeys of self discovery in the
Speaker 1: same vein many suburban school shooters see what they are
Speaker 1: doing is acts of self expression. Warnick said. There's a
Speaker 1: different value system at play in suburban schools. It's called
Speaker 1: expressive individualism. What we see in movies and TV is
Speaker 1: students engaged in this process of self discovery, breaking through
Speaker 1: norms of the school, breaking through social cliques. Self discovery
Speaker 1: and individual expression aren't necessarily bad things, says Warnic, But
Speaker 1: for certain troubled young men who harbor deep resentment of
Speaker 1: the system that rejected them, there's no better way to
Speaker 1: express their true, tortured selves than through a dramatic act
Speaker 1: of violence. And the higher the body count, the more
Speaker 1: powerful the message be. We also spoke with Cheryl Johnson,
Speaker 1: a professor of criminal justice at Cincinnati's Xavier University, where
Speaker 1: she has studied whether increased security measures, namely armed guards
Speaker 1: on campus, locked down buildings, and metal detectors, are an
Speaker 1: effective means of preventing school shootings. She found that although
Speaker 1: beefed up security made to ter overall crime and violent
Speaker 1: crime in schools, there's little evidence to show that those
Speaker 1: measures alone can thwart a mass shooting. First, school shootings
Speaker 1: are just too statistically rare to gauge the efficacy of
Speaker 1: different security methods, and second, there's anecdotal evidence that even
Speaker 1: the best security methods can fail. There were armed school
Speaker 1: guards a Columbine, the Sandy Hook shooters shot through glass
Speaker 1: panes to bypass locked doors, and in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: a student in Red Lake, Minnesota, passed through his school's
Speaker 1: metal detector before killing an unarmed guard who tried to
Speaker 1: stop him, along with seven other people, including himself. There's
Speaker 1: also concerned that militarizing schools with armed guards and security
Speaker 1: checkpoints contributes to the idea that the school is an
Speaker 1: unsafe place where violence is almost expected. Johnson's seventeen paper,
Speaker 1: obviously written before the February Parkland incident, pointed out that
Speaker 1: the raw number of homicides at U schools each year
Speaker 1: since Columbine in nine had actually decreased or remained stable
Speaker 1: over the years. One of the best ways to prevent
Speaker 1: school shootings, both Johnson and Warnick agree is to encourage
Speaker 1: people to speak up when they suspect that a classmate, friend,
Speaker 1: or family member is contemplating something terrible. A day before
Speaker 1: the Parkland shooting, a grandmother in Washington State called nine
Speaker 1: one when she found her eighteen year old grandson's handwritten
Speaker 1: plans for a gruesome school attack involving homemade explosives. Johnson said,
Speaker 1: that's a school shooting we're not talking about today, citing
Speaker 1: a report from the Secret Service and the Department of
Speaker 1: Education that a percent of school shootings at least one
Speaker 1: other person knew about the plans. In fifty nine percent,
Speaker 1: two or more people had information about the attacks before
Speaker 1: they occurred. Warnick said, usually when school shootings are prevented,
Speaker 1: it's when students trust the teachers enough to share that
Speaker 1: information with them. If we could really build up schools
Speaker 1: as places of trust where children feel like they have
Speaker 1: adults who care about them, that would facilitate the communication
Speaker 1: that's been proven to prevent school shootings. Of course, speaking
Speaker 1: up hasn't always been fool proof. We now know that
Speaker 1: the FBI received a tip about the Parkland shooter dating
Speaker 1: back to September seventeen for making disturbing comments on YouTube,
Speaker 1: but he was never detained or even questioned. A second
Speaker 1: person contacted the FBI on January five to report their
Speaker 1: concerns and to warn them about the shooters guns and
Speaker 1: desire to kill, but the FBI has admitted that the
Speaker 1: proper protocols to follow up were left un followed. Instead
Speaker 1: of school districts spending money on expensive and unproven security solutions,
Speaker 1: Brian Warnick suggests they hire more teachers and counselors to
Speaker 1: shrink class sizes and encourage more meaningful interactions between staff
Speaker 1: and struggling students. He'd also like to see more creative
Speaker 1: outlets like art, literature, and music classes, which often get
Speaker 1: from type budgets for safe individual expression. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article why do mass shootings keep Happening
Speaker 1: in US Schools? On how stuff Works dot Com written
Speaker 1: by Dave Rus. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and
Speaker 1: it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.