When a Teen Says, “I‘d Blow Up My School”
When kids threaten to blow up their school that keeps being a source of conflicts, can we help such teenagers by simply trying to keep them safe? Below, you’ll find out why we keep hearing about new school shootings every month.
#1 Modern school fails to resolve conflicts
When you hear about a new school shooting, a similar attack will likely happen soon after the incident. Obviously, kids learn that they “can also do such things” not only from the TV news. But supposing that school shootings are a well-planned chain of attacks organized by online strangers, in my view, is an attempt to find a simple solution to a highly sensitive issue.
One of the main reasons is the teen boy’s inner world. Most school attacks are organized by boys in their teenage years. And mostly all school shooters are involved in a long-term conflict with society.
It’s a well-known fact that the modern school is a territory full of conflicts. Moreover, modern schools are unable to resolve these conflicts. School psychologists are powerless and the kid’s tension and hatred are growing for years. A kind of service for reconciliation is very rare in schools, though it is vitally important.
It’s a social norm to resolve conflicts with aggression and violence. A human usually sees 2 resolutions: either to make the opposite side accept their point of view or to avenge if they fail to prove their opinion.
Solution:
Both at school and at home, adults should explain to kids how to resolve conflicts, teach them to deal with failures, and show that any problem can be resolved without violence and aggression.
#2 Teenagers are left on their own
Social networks are not the reason, in this case, they are the consequence. When a teenager attacks his school, the security forces tend to look for the shooter’s motive in his messengers and social apps. Obviously, children find these unwanted details online. For instance, the Columbine shooting has inspired multiple crimes and some attackers have searched for school shootings on the Net before the attack and even used related nicknames in social networks.
Psychologists know that teens tend to copy one another. Teenagers’ culture is based on imitating somebody cool. When kids are on their own, school shooters seem super cool for them. Such a teen doesn’t feel close to family and friends. He’s alone and keeps immersing himself in bloody fantasies. If he can easily find specific information about school shootings in social networks, he can get involved in a subculture (somebody is interested in Columbine, other teenagers are keen on guns).
Solution:
It’s impossible now to prohibit kids from using social apps and chats since social messengers are now considered to be a part of private space unavailable for parents. However, we still can keep an eye on kids’ social activities with the help of parental control apps. Modern parental control apps help parents track teens’ social activities and prevent unwanted actions and interactions before it becomes a real problem. Some apps like EvaSpy can even spy on life surroundings giving parents a vivid picture of what the child is doing outside.
#3 School security can’t resolve the problem
It’s usually offered to improve the school security system to prevent school shootings. But will metal detectors resolve the problem? Now it’s pretty difficult for any adult to enter a school building without permission. And no doubt that metal detectors will make it harder for teenagers to bring any unwanted tools to school. However, it doesn’t exclude other ways. If a teenager wants to bring guns to school, nothing will stop him even if we start using a security system similar to the airports’ one.
Recently I’ve come across the news telling that when a school shooter’s mother was called after his attack and asked if she was going to visit her son at the hospital, she asked, “And why?”
It’s impossible to identify what was happening in this family but the mother’s answer is clear evidence of the teenager’s inner disadvantage. He doesn’t have family bonds, there’s nobody he can trust and cherish.
Solution:
Since the very childhood, a kid must have strong family bonds.
#4 Teens are not taught to resolve conflicts since their childhood
Unfortunately, schools keep being a source of big conflicts — between kids and teachers, between parents and kids. Taking the edge off at school is vitally important, but how to do it — is a question for separate research.
Further, it is a problem of the whole society because there’s a very high level of aggression among people accompanied by a poor ability to resolve conflicts. Parents enroll their kids in martial arts where kids find out how to protect themselves. And if a teenager feels absolutely helpless when the teacher gives him a bad mark, how will this child protect himself?
Solution:
It’s high time to think about not only patriotic or moral education on the state level but simply about educating people to live peacefully and to resolve conflicts by communicating with the opposite side without using fists.
#5 The society has nothing to offer except the idea of revenge
As I’ve already told you, youth culture is very imitative and teens tend to select their heroes. The fact that Columbine shooters become their heroes is frightening. Modern society and culture lack other behavioral models except for a figure of a destructive avenger who appeared unexpectedly and exterminated everybody.
An idea of revenge mustn’t be the basis of our culture. We, however, have a culture of revenge, the cult of violent conflict resolution, and weapons. But the younger generation should have other role models since more and more boys are choosing avengers as their behavioral model and this is a very big problem.
And the fact that teens don’t have enough ways of acceptable self-realization is also a big problem, though it is a topic for another research.
