Peer Rejection And School Shootings
School shootings are a growing problem in America. There are school shootings almost every week, some miner and other kill so many people. School shooters are usually stereotyped as people who don't have friends and there the weirdos at school or other places but anybody can have anger, anybody can have those feelings that they need to take out but they don't know how so they take it out on the people who have hurt them.
Filling schools with metal detectors, surveillance cameras, police officers and gun-wielding teachers tells students that schools are scary, dangerous and violent places – places where violence is expected to occur. The “target hardening” approach also has the potential to change how teachers, students and administrators see one another. How teachers understand the children and youth they teach has important educational consequences. Are students budding citizens or future workers? Are they plants to nourish or clay to mold? The confessed shooter’s inability or unwillingness to accept rejection also appears to have played a role. According to news reports, the confessed shooter in Santa Fe, 17-year-old junior student , shot and killed eight students and two teachers at Santa Fe High School. His victims included Shana Fisher, who “had four months of problems from this boy,” her mother Sadie Rodriguez told the Los Angeles Times in reference to the shooter.
Whenever a school shooting takes place, the focus often turns to the social life of the shooters, and people conclude that they suffered from some type of peer rejection or victimization. For example, in the latest school shooting, reports have surfaced that Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the 17-year old school shooter in Santa Fe, Texas, may have experienced a form of peer rejection. Specifically, in the weeks prior to the shooting, one of his victims, Shana Fisher, publicly rejected his romantic advances in front of peers. The well-known narrative that links school shootings and peer rejection has led to much soul-searching about whether school shootings could be prevented if peers were simply nicer or school climate were improved. But is the answer really this simple? Peer rejection refers to a range of problems that include being disliked and victimized by or isolated from peers. Developmental psychologists have amassed decades of research on peer rejection and its consequences. Those consequences include depression, loneliness, aggressive behaviors and academic problems.
School shootings are an important thing to pay attention to because there are lots of innocent people dying and we can give people who are mad and depressed to let out their feelings in a productive way and have them talk to people instead of having those feelings bottled up inside and them taking it out in violent ways.
