A Coleman Approach to Prevention

It is quite interesting that Katherine Newman, in her book “rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings,” suggests an approach to preventing mass school shootings that parallels James Coleman’s “Social Network Approach” to transforming youth educational values. Throughout her first three chapters, she weaves in examples to suggest that youth in their social context, particularly in schools and between their peers, is a major factor that must be studied in order to prevent mass-shootings. She suggests a deeper sociological scheme of using peer group knowledge to manipulate the chances that a rampage shooting might occur. Although this is not a central theme to her first three chapters, she still implies that these incidences can not be reduced to any risk-factor model. In doing so, she supports her claim that a more sociological, peer-context-based course of action makes sense. However, because her approach is at the same time adult-centered, it can unfortunately give credibility to high security systems which are already in place in American schools.

How can we relate Newman and Coleman? At the end of her first chapter, Newman informs the reader that she will “take a close look at the underside of adolescent life, at the pressures teenagers generate in one another to climb atop the social pecking order and stay there, policing the boundaries of popularity against “wannabes” (20-21). She further says that the exclusion and harassment maintained by a social pyramid is the reason why shooters must make a large statement like a rampage on school grounds (21). This is very similar to David Coleman’s stress on youth cliques within schools as an explanation for an individual student’s educational attainment and success. He places more emphasis on peer relationships than on parental guidance because he recognizes the fact that youth spend most of their time at school and with their peers, not at home and with their parents. In the same way, Newman uses the example of Michael Carneal to show that family dynamics at home may only be part of the explanation for a school shooting; parents can not be blamed entirely. In fact, it is at school where Michael is ridiculed, teased, bullied, measured up to his older sister Kelly, and constantly searching for a place to fit in, like with the “goths.” Ironically, his parents made conscious efforts  to treat both siblings equally. Although Newman describes an early schema he had developed which made him fearful of attack, it is apparent that throughout his time in school, his peers worked to aggravate this schema, while adults and administrators did not pay attention. Of a school gossip column which implied that Michael was gay, Newman writes solemnly, “Few people realized what the one-liner in the school paper cost Michael emotionally” (28). Newman highlights the fact that adults don’t know what goes on between youth at school, and I believe that it is suggestive for her prevention theory which relates to Coleman’s solution for improving education.

 
At the very end of her first chapter Newman explains that she will conclude her book with what she believes to be the “best bet” for prevention of rampage school shootings. Contrary to mainstream ideas, she claims that prediction can not be obtained solely  through prevention methods, such as mental health measures, but by “intercepting the flow of information when the threats fly” (21). She believes that is possible for adults to pierce into the “fiercely private world of adolescents” in order to extract the information adults need in order to predict a school shooting before its too late (21). This adult-centered view is just like Coleman in his argument that school administrators have the ability to study youth cliques in order to target opinion leaders who then have the  power to align peer views and values for education with those of adults. What came to mind immediately after this statement, is how today police officers are in schools not only as symbols of crime-fighters, but also to build relationships with youth and extract important information from them in order to prevent crime on (and off) campus.Perhaps this can be an example of what Newman suggests. We saw in Kupchik’s book how some officers genuinely made attempts to go into the adolescent world, either by acting like adolescent themselves or through personal advising. Nonetheless, we must still be wary of adult-centered perspectives such as these, for as the Rand Corporation reports: “the presence of uniformed officers can, in fact, breed a sense of mistrust among students and hence adversely affect school climate” (Jaana Juvonen).

 

Although is is important for administrators to monitor peer relationships, it is equally if not more important for them to respond to youth misbehavior in a way that searches for causes and solutions in order to effectively identify students with problems that could lead up to a mass shooting. Extracting information from peer groups should not necessarily be the end.

Sources:

Newman, Katherine. rampage: The Social Roots Of School Shootings. New York. 2004.  Pages 3-73.

Jaana Juvonen. “School Violence:Prevalence, Fears, and Prevention”. Rand Corporation. 16 April 2014. Web. http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP219/index2.html

Lecture notes on David Coleman 3/6