In the journal article, the authors compare attitudes of people towards violence. The attitudes of teenagers who are victims or non-victims of violence are compared. It is found that the attitudes towards violence are different among people of different gender, perpetrator group of violence, type of violence and immigration status. It also wrote that the shooting in the communities with a lot of Caucasians and that were not used to high levels of violence were incredibly receiving more media attention although the violence is few in number comparing to the general scope of school violence in the U.S. As for the psychological features of the doers of violence and school shooters, it is found that symptoms of depression, narcissistic personality traits and lack of empathy are common features of those who may commit the violence.
Schwarz, E. D., & Kowalski, J. M. (1991). Posttraumatic stress disorder after a school shooting: effects of symptom threshold selection and diagnosis by dsm-iii, dsm-iii-r, or proposed dsm-iv. Am J Psychiatry, 148(5), 592-597.
This study was about the effect of violence in terms of medical area and how to determine the rate of different symptoms. The posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be common in adults and children after they experienced a man-made disaster. It is arrived at by them that after an analysis of logistic regression, the experience of targeted mass violence may lead to both acute distress and long-term negative impacts, such as PTSD. In addition, the selection of different symptoms may leads to different results. The liberal, moderate, and conservative symptom thresholds had different effects on rates of diagnoses, in which the liberal thresholds had the highest frequencies of diagnosis.
Lawrence, R. G., & Birkland, T. A. (2004). Guns, hollywood, and school safety: defining the school-shooting problem across public arenas *. Social Science Quarterly, 85(5), 1193–1207.
This article is about the relationship between agenda setting and news events. It is found that there is a close relationship between particular issues and the media and governmental agendas. Therefore, the article mainly used the 1999 Columbine High School shootings as a case study to examine the relationship between particular issues and the media and governmental agendas. The research showed that agendas have similar views in terms of the gun-control aspect of the problem, but they differed a lot in terms of understandings of the specific problem the Columbine shooting stood for and how to solve it. Furthermore, it is the various institutional structure and motivation of the news media and Congress can lead to or prevent interinstitutional good feedback in the process of defining the problem. Especially, this is true when the famous politicians cue the media to pay close attention to specific story lines that is different from actual legislative activity.
Warnick, B. R., Johnson, B. A., & Samuel, R. (2010). Tragedy and the meaning of school shootings. Educ Theory, 60(3), 371-390.
The article is a close examination of the meaning of school shootings. It at first defined the effects of school shootings, which seems to be traumatic events that lead to a community to question itself, its values, and its educational systems. However, there may be more profound meanings of school shootings and school violence. At first, it is necessary to view school shootings as ceremonial rituals. Also, it is key to think about why schools is regarded as a proper place for shootings, and (3) what kinds of advice to educators on school shootings can alter the practice of teaching. Therefore, there are a lot of different ways of understanding school shootings, which can be useful. Also, they focus on the problems, tensions, and contradictions related to each point of view. At last, the contexts on school shootings show that people need the “tragic sense” in education. This need for the tragic sense, while is shown in the various fields of schooling, is shown most clearly in targeted school shootings.
Article review
Warnick, B. R., Johnson, B. A., & Samuel, R. (2010). Tragedy and the meaning of school shootings. Educ Theory, 60(3), 371-390.
This article is quite useful as it examines into the deep meaning of school shooting and school violence. It presents a new perspective to view the issue of school shooting and school violence. It is the lack of moral education and “tragic sense” education that causes the loss of human nature and frequent school shooting and school violence. On this point, the authors think that it is twofold. On the one hand, it is the lack of moral education and “tragic sense” education for offenders, which leads to the deterioration of moral quality and the loss of humanity, making them to carry out the shameful criminals. On the other hand, what they have to put forward is that victims of school shooting and school violence are also victims of the lack of moral education and “tragic sense” education. Therefore, it calls for people to reflect on the system of education in the deep level.
Christopher J. Ferguson, Mark Coulson, & Jane Barnett. (2011). Psychological profiles of school shooters: positive directions and one big wrong turn. Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations, 11(2), 141-158.
The“profile”of school shooters is quite useful for people to find out imminent perpetrators and preventing further incidents, and understand the reasons for school shooting and school violence. It shows that the common views of features of victims of school shootings may be wrong although most politicians, advocates, and some scholars connects both school shootings and less extreme youth violence to those playing violent video games. Therefore, it is dangerous to find a common causes for all the school shooting and school violence. Sometimes, it does not rule out that some of the victims themselves are the ones who leading to such injury. There is no such group of students who tend to make crime. Only by focusing on the root causes, reforming family education, reforming school management, and improving the awareness of prevention and the ability to prevent the targeted groups will it be possible to fundamentally eliminate the continued high incidence of such vic