Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings Books
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 Rating: - On ballistics and sociological bruises
The first thing one has to do, when trying to take a serious look at the subject of school shootings, is to put things in perspective. After all, despite the shocking and graphic images seen during the media frenzies following these events, the actual statistics do not support an epidemic of violence in schools. Less than 1% of homicides and suicides among school-age children actually occur in or around school grounds. 99% of the violence that school-age children are subjected to happens outside of school grounds and outside of school hours. Kids in violent urban neighborhoods are statistically safer in the classroom during school hours than in any waking hours.

That aside, I began working my way through this book, and trying to keep a disciplined perspective on things, on February 13th, a couple weeks ago, the day before the shootings at NIU. Besides the coincidence in the timing, the NIU shooting was the first of its kind where I had to worry about people very close to me being involved. Millions of kids represented statistically mean nothing compared to a single horrific story involving the real people who populate my life. It was a tragic reminder for me that no one is immune to gut reactions.

There is no minimizing the importance of this topic, and not just because we want to avoid future tragedies, but also because the discussion sheds light on themes that affect multiple aspects of our shared culture and our collective quality of life.

The authors here take an interesting approach. The automatic responses from most people, as far as preventative approaches, would be limited access to guns and a greater focus on screening for individuals who are likely to perpetrate these horrendous crimes. But, for a myriad of reasons, not all of which are simply political, neither of these approaches end up being straightforward. I could rant on and on about gun laws, we all have strong opinions, but that would steer me too far off course.

As far as predictive strategies, focused on identifying adolescents likely to commit serious acts of mass violence, you have the same statistical problems you would have trying to screen for a very rare form of a medical illness. The more rare the event, the greater the ratio of false positives versus true positives for any measure. This is not necessarily a problem, if resources are ample, costs of screening are low, and the outcome of being falsely screened in is completely benign. But in the real world, designing an accurate screening tool that is practical and not potentially harmful is not an easy task. Believe me. There are many researchers who have dedicated their entire careers to this without producing a demonstrably valid instrument.

The authors of "Rampage" draw on their extensive fieldwork in the aftermaths of two school shootings, as well as other data in the literature, and come to the conclusion that best solutions will be found in "the insights of sociology over psychology." The authors extensively review the popular explanations that get filtered down to us: mental illness, the "he just snapped" most-proximate-cause explanations, family problems, a culture of violence, bullying, peer influences, changing communities, media violence, the copycat effect, and gun availability. Katherine Newman et al. also report insightfully on the aftermath of these tragedies in their towns. There is an important chapter, "Blame and Forgiveness," which talks about the role faith plays in the public mediation of blame and responsibility. All explanations are explored thoughtfully, nothing is dismissed, but Newman et al. effectively argue that clinging to any one of these over-simplifications may be comforting but ultimately contribute to missing the big picture.

After reviewing the details of two particular school shootings, they tell us "there is nothing spontaneous about a rampage school shooting." School shooters, and the rest of us, inhabit complex and dynamic social and institutional worlds: "There are reasons why the shooters don't go out quietly when they decide to address their social dilemmas. They arrive at these tragic solutions after a period of small trials and big errors." From their perspective, solutions lie not in preventative models as much as in risk management models: "...the best bet we have for prevention lies not in trying to identify the people whoa re going to shoot their teachers and classmates- though preventative mental health measures are good policy across the board- but rather on intercepting the flow of information when the threats fly." Solutions have to do with the organization of schools and the relationships between individuals, families, and our institutions. All of this is handled with appropriate humility. The authors never pretend they have it all figured out. They acknowledge that any intervention will meet resistance and may have unpredictable negative consequences. But they certainly do a lot to advance the discussion.

So, guess what. Zero-tolerance policies that preordain overreaction- such as expelling a student for giving a friend an aspirin, instituting punitive penalties for specific language with no regard to context, or gang-marshalling a kid to the psychiatric emergency room instead of allowing them a minute to take space and collect themselves- are counter-productive. It works against fostering a sense of belonging within the school, and it discourages the flow of important information from students to administrators or counselors. It works against a sense of sharing information in good faith.

Improving the sense of trust and connection between kids, families, schools, and communities sounds like an over-simplistic solution. But it isn't. It's as simple or complex as you want to make it, but ultimately it will prove to be a much more effective way to decrease violence than intensifying efforts to label kids as potential sociopaths.

If I had to pick a beef with the authors, I would say that it would have been nice to see more about mental health services in the schools. The authors do endorse this, but it is a brief discussion. I would have wanted it emphasized that kids with trauma histories typically present with anxiety, hypervigilance, irritability, and a tendency to misinterpret social cues. They may react to perceived bullying or intimidation from peers or staff, and the typical "show of force" response to their behaviors will typically increase oppositionality, ultimately making no one safer.

In a brief summary, I can't do justice to a topic that the authors here spend nearly 400 pages discussing. So get the book and read it. I highly recommend this book for reading that is important and serious, but also written at a very accessible level. It manages to be very compelling reading, a hard book to put down, which is quite an accomplishment for such a heavy and heartrending subject.

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