Fall 2007 |
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Volume 13 No. 1
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Network Home
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The Challenge of School Violence
In this single incident, Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old student at the Institute destroyed more lives than in any other school-based shooting in American history. The shooting was perpetrated, not by a troubled adolescent or teenager in a poverty-stricken public school, but by a young adult in his early 20s enrolled at a prestigious college. The Columbine High School killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, both lived in comfortable middle-class suburban environments. According to the New York Times, both sets of parents paid close attention to their children, offering support and guidance, and disciplining any signs of violent or anti-social behavior. Dylan Klebold's Internet journal was, according to the New York Times, "overflowing with profanity and wild threats against everything and everyone he did not like." In creative writing class, Harris and Klebold, two inseparable friends, sat together and, according to their teacher, wrote "…about killing students and teachers, blowing up the classroom." Both expressed a belief that they were "at war" with their school, their peers, and society at large, and that they needed to take action towards those they hated. Before the massacre, both had been suspended for hacking into their school's mainframe computer and were later arrested for theft. At a subsequent court hearing a judge ruled that the two teenagers lacked moral judgment and needed psychiatric help. Eric Harris was placed on anti-depressants. Both young men attended a psychiatric support group and were released from the program early due to their good behavior. Shortly after being released from psychiatric care, Harris and Klebold began to plan the attacks. Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Polytech killer, was raised by a loving family and qualified for acceptance at a prestigious college. Still, he was "a loner" who spoke to no one and seemed to live in his own world. What drove this promising young man to such extreme measures? As described in a profile of Cho in The New York Times, "his mother agonized over his sullen, brooding behavior and empty face." Cho's sister also reflected his family's concern. ''This is someone that I grew up with and loved,'' she said. ''Now I feel like I didn't know this person.'' When Mr. Cho entered Virginia Tech, his parents hoped that the college environment might solve what they called "the mystery of who he was, extract him from his suffocating cocoon and make him talk." In fact, within months of his arrival at Virginia Tech, Cho's roommates had begun to ignore him because his deep withdrawal prohibited communication. As with Columbine killers Harris and Klebold, students and teachers alike were disturbed by Cho's angry writings. One of his classmates recalls reading Cho's writing and commenting to a friend that "this is the kind of guy who is going to walk into a classroom and start shooting people.'' Repetitive antisocial behavior prompted campus police to detain Cho for school and county psychiatric evaluations. A local court proclaimed him to be mentally ill, in need of hospitalization, and "an imminent danger to himself or others." He was referred to a Virginia psychiatric hospital where a doctor also examined Cho. According to a hospital detention order, he was reassessed as mentally ill but not an immanent threat. He was ordered to undergo outpatient treatment at the Virginia Polytech Counseling Center but, according to The New York Times, "there was no indication that he received the treatment." Shortly after his release, Cho, like Harris and Klebold, began to make elaborate plans for his attack. Obviously, not all young perpetrators of violence are as troubled as were Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, or Cho Seung-Hui. But their crimes--and the fact that their violent tendencies escaped effective scrutiny and protective custody--do suggest that deeply disturbed inner lives, profound alienation, and a feeling of abandonment play a difficult-to-determine but significant role in school violence. Most education theorists and practitioners agree that school violence arises from a complex set of causes and risk factors that are embedded in our culture and economy, our communities, schools, families, and peer groups and within each child's unique set of skills, attitudes, and behaviors. Researchers have identified many such elements--the relatively easy access to weapons, the impact of media-portrayed violence, the significance of school, community, and family environments--as contributors to violent behavior at school.1
Beneath the statistics, studies, and reports, school violence often comes at the hands of individuals who suffer profound alienation that seems to contradict more identifiable risk factors such as broken homes or gang participation. Many educators join psychologists, behavioral researchers, justice professionals, and social-service agencies in the belief that schools are failing their troubled youth. They cite evidence suggesting that young people are often left to their own devices in today's hyperactive, high-stress environment. Rather than taking cues from accessible parents and other adults in the larger community, young people shape pseudo, niche cultures of their own that seem to contain no discernible rationale to guide the structures, goals, behaviors, or values they adopt. They suggest that school violence can, in reality, represent a misdirected cry for help on the part of a young person who feels abandoned, ostracized, or at odds with the school environment. Finger pointing at failed schools does not, however, take into account the reality that few--if any--school districts have the resources to act as surrogate parents, psychiatrists, or social-service or juvenile-justice practitioners. According to the recent "Report to the President on Issues Raised by the Virginia Tech Tragedy," a new study issued by the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and the Justice Department, school safety depends on the cooperation of the entire community. The report recommends:
Clearly, incidents such as the Columbine School killings and the massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute are aberrational. Devastating though they were, they do not represent the types of school violence that most educators and students must contend with. However, these tragedies point to a sobering reality: Regardless of size, location, and the character of the student populations they serve, our educational institutions are vulnerable to violence. Within the school community, how can teachers, administrators, school staff, students, parents, and the larger community address the more frequent violations of school safety, such as bullying, truancy, teacher harassment, and vandalism.
This issue of Service-Learning NETWORK offers resources to help educators respond to the real need for safety in their own schools by applying service learning methods and materials that introduce school safety into the education agenda. Service-Learning NETWORK's "FYI" section discusses the use of service learning as a school violence prevention strategy and offers a list of school-safety project ideas. "Online Lessons and Projects" provides materials and methods for conducting a civil conversation on school-based conflicts and a guide for building a service-learning action project. Three additional project plans provide step-by-step instructions for helping teen victims of crime and conducting teach-ins on bullying and mediation. NETWORK's
"School Violence Links"offer resources,
guidelines, and further methods for educators and students to better
understand the issue and develop school-based projects to promote
safety in their own schools. 1 Beyond identifying the problem of school violence and listing its causes, risk factors, and damaging effects, theorists and practitioners have successfully generated a broad ra nge of programs and procedures to address and prevent school violence and promote school safety. The "School Violence Links" in this issue of Service-Learning NETWORK offer resources, guidelines, and methods for educators and students to better understand the issue and develop school-based projects to promote safety in their own schools. |
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In April, 2007, a lone gunman killed a student
and an adult advisor in a dormitory at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
He then express-mailed a multimedia suicide message to a major
television network, armed himself with a second weapon and hundreds of
rounds of ammunition, and crossed the Institute's campus to kill an
additional 30 students and faculty and wound 15 others in classrooms
before taking his own life. 
