It's not about bullying: School shooters want notoriety
- Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 31
- 2 min read
Social-emotional learning and anti-bullying programs don't reduce the risk of school violence, says a leading researcher. What's remarkable, writes Hechinger's Jill Barshay, is that Ron Avi Astor, a UCLA professor, spent years advocating for policies he now thinks are ineffective, and is willing to say so. “We were wrong,” he said at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
On the advice of Astor and others, schools have invested heavily "in social-emotional learning, restorative justice, trauma-informed care, counseling and other efforts to make schools safer and more welcoming," Barshay writes. Since the Columbine massacre in 1999, fewer students are bringing weapons to school. But school shootings have increased.
School shooters aren't responding to bullying or trauma, Astor told Barshay. They crave notoriety. “Most of them are suicidal, and they decided to be homicidal so that they would be remembered,” he said.
"The more media attention a shooter gets, the more likely the event will inspire a future mass shooter," warns the National Center for Health Research.
Trying to make schools safe and supportive places is important, Astor says. But preventing school shootings requires working with the media. He hopes to persuade journalists and social media companies to "adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims," writes Barshay.
He's not sure it's possible or that it will work. "But it's worth a try."
My daughter, a high school senior when the Columbine students were killed, interned for the California Education Department a few years later. She created a web page with all the anti-bullying, counseling and other violence-prevention programs, as well as possible funding sources. When she finished, she was asked to post information on what was known about the effectiveness of the programs. There was no evidence of effectiveness for any of them, she discovered. There was no evidence to the contrary either. Just, no evidence.
Colin Gray, who gave his troubled 14-year-old son a rifle, was sentenced to 15 years in prison yesterday for murder and involuntary manslaughter, reports the New York Times. The teenager, who fatally shot four people at his Georgia high school in 2024, was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
There were plenty of warning signs, including a bedroom "shrine" to "the teenager convicted of killing 17 people in Parkland, Fla., in 2018, with photographs and news clippings." Gray's son had violent outbursts and told relatives he was hearing voices in his head. "His parents discussed and researched possible treatment options, but never followed through," said prosecutors.
WH Auden, "September, 1939"
"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return"
Gandhi wrote that parents are the natural teachers of their own children. Conventional school is a highly unnatural environment. All human behavioral traits are heritable. Maybe we cannot do much except incarcerate the monsters that walk among us, but do we have to make more of them?
Some are born sociopathic, some achieve sociopathy, and some have sociopathy thrust upon them.
Social and emotional learning is a term much cited among educators. I would like to see an actual rigorous definition, because I suspect it promotes invasion of the privacy of the families and their children.
"Trying to make schools safe and supportive places is important, Astor says. But preventing school shootings requires working with the media."
Total hogwash. Arm teachers and staff, harden entrances. Put up signs notifying that staff are armed and will use deadly force. Give teachers and staff the OPTION to be armed, and train them.