One spring day April 20, 1999 to be exact, a school named Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado was under assault by two of its own students. Within fifteen minutes of the first lunch period, two students carrying weapons killed thirteen and wounded twenty one classmates before they turned the guns on themselves, becoming one of the most disturbing school shooting in U.S. history. This generation comes from aggression, hate, and ignorance, the three principal factors that cause school shootings. High school is a place where bullying, teasing, intimidation, humiliation, disapproval, physical abuse and social isolation are an everyday occurrence.
Had Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris be looked at before the shooting they should have already been
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labeled as extremely deviant figures. These boys continually felt that they were a nuisance to their fellow students. The boys were constantly bullied throughout high school and were exaggeratedly fed up with the perception. It appears that society had a complete lack of social control over the boys. They had no values in their society. Tapes that were found in the basement after the killings, both boys go into immense detail about how much there going to take pleasure in killing students at the school along with a meticulous accounts of killing animals in their area. When students were asked how they viewed the two boys they all replied with comparable answers, such as, outcasts, trash, and nobodies. The two boys felt that because they were different and nobody liked them that they had the right to judge the other student body. Deviance is the recognized violation of a social norm. It could be said both boys were deviant members of our society because of the social norms that they violated. “Like genetic theories, sociological explanations of deviance focus on abnormality in the individual personality. Some personality traits are inherited, but most sociologists think that personality is shaped primarily by social experience. Deviance is viewed as the result of failed socialization. The bad social experiences that these boys had in high school or just being made fun of and ridiculed day in and day out has caused them to act out in society in a very harmful way. Durkheim declared that there is nothing abnormal about deviance but rather it is essential in life to show us right from wrong. Durkheim came up with four basic rules for deviance. The first was “deviance affirms cultural values and norms”. Durkheim states there can’t be evil without good and no justice without crime. The second rule is “responding to deviance classifies moral boundaries”. In this case it is wrong to kill people just because they were cruel or unfair to you. The third rule of deviance is” responding to deviance brings people together”. This rule relates in all probability the most to Columbine because after the shootings people really came together to talk about what was really happened and if and how we can change our school procedures. In addition, the labeling theory seemed to have an enormous impact on why they decided to kill.
The labeling theory refers to data that “individuals become deviant when either a deviant label is placed on them or they adopt the label by exhibiting the behaviors, actions, and attitudes associated with the label”. The labeling theory also states “people become deviant when the identity of the label is placed upon them”. The person being labeled is ensnared within that label, that’s when people that are labeled act out. The boys felt that there was no way out of the labels that the students placed on them so they decided to act out the individuals who placed the labeled them. Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold were both stereotyped after the horrible killing took place. Much of their preceding actions that led up to the shootings had been looked at again and they were labeled as deviants after the …show more content…
shooting. Another critical part of the labeling theory is the idea of a stigma.
A stigma is a forcefully negative label that seriously alters a person’s self concept and social identity. Since high school is such a susceptible part of someone’s life, I wonder if the boys felt that since they weren’t popular in high school they would regard as nothing but trash among their peers. Eric Harris might be described as medically deviant because he was in fact on medication that was mind changing. Harris talked about how he had stopped taking his pills to let the fury build up so it would be easier to murder all his fellow students. Since Harris who had been harassed throughout high school had so much rage built up inside and that he wasn’t taking his prescribed medication didn’t help.
It seemed that both boys felt that they had nothing to lose. Being ridiculed persistently and with no end in sight the boys thought up a plan to end it all. These boys seem to never in control their entire lives. They were always looked at with scorn in school and in their neighborhood so they knew by holding the school prisoner they would at last become in control. People who feel they have little or nothing to lose by deviance are likely to become law breakers. In Hirschi’s Control Theory that if someone lacks control they are able to easily become
deviant. Hirschi’s first principle was attachment. “Strong social attachments encourage conformity”. Both had no social attachments to anyone but themselves. Both of the boys came from domestic violence and even as kids they were treated terrible by their parents and family members. Both felt alone and had no one they felt they could turn too. The second principle was opportunity, “the greater opportunity a person has in their life makes the idea of deviance vanish”. Both boys were part of the middle-income families and had awful grades in school. They knew that a college education was not going to occur and they would be stuck in Littleton Colorado forever. The third principle was involvement, “participating and playing on a sports team or having a job would give a person less time to engage or think about deviant activities”. They never participated in any sports or ever held a job. Hirschi’s final belief was belief, “having a strong belief in moral ethics and respect will make a person not want to commit deviant acts”. In the videos left behind before the killing, called the “basement tapes” both were talking about killing and torturing animals for practice on what they were going to do to their classmates.
"Columbine High School Shootings." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 08 Sept. 2015. Eighteen year old Eric Harris and seventeen year old Dylan Klebold were two boys with a fascination of violent video games and music. These young men were known to be “goth” and were bullied all throughout their high school careers because of their different interest. In 1999, on April 20th these boys went into their high school with mixed emotions and a devious plan to get revenge. The two teens went into the high school with handguns and killed both students and faculty members, before they turned the guns around on themselves. This is a reliable source because it informed us of both previous emotion, and the aftermath of the tragedy with detail about the boys, the school and the lives affected. This source was relevant for me because of how thoroughly it described the shooting, and gave me background information as to why and how it happened.
Hysteria. Terror. Paranoia. All words used to describe feelings after a school disturbance. Reports of such emergencies from mainstream media outlets cause some to conclude extraordinary security breaches happen on an almost daily basis. However, schools are actually safeguarded; in recent years, protocols have been installed in schools across the United States to ensure safety. The catalyst: nationwide panic and suffering after an act of terror at a high school in Littleton, Colorado. Journalist and author Dave Cullen, in his book, Columbine, narrates the horror surrounding this shooting. Cullen’s purpose is to inform readers by captivating their attention utilizing emotional language. He establishes contrasting characters and alludes to significant
Unlike most of the country, I knew about Columbine High School on April 19, 1999. I knew that the Columbine Rebels had a good football team, I remembered how they beat Cherry Creek for the 1999 football championship. I knew what Columbine's building was like from when I was inside it in January for a debate tournament. I had friends that went to CHS. We had gone on a trip to Hawaii together to learn about biology. The rest of the country found out about Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. They didn't hear about their football team, the debate tournament they hosted, or my friends, though; they heard about two angry students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, that went on a killing rampage killing 12 other students, a teacher, and themselves. The nation, the media, the killers, my friends, and me all have their own view of what happened that day. Many people tried to understand how something so terrible could happen, while the killers thought that the killings were a wonderful thing, and still other students were trying to comprehend that this tragedy had actually happened so close to home.
The columbine massacre the day where no one is safe in school or out of school. The columbine massacre is about two students named Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris both seniors 17 years old both two weeks before graduating they killed 12 students, one teacher, and 21 injured to their shooting on April 20, 1999. Both Dylan and Eric were some believe they were bullied by the sport teams in their school so they planned to kill the people who bullied them and other mostly anyone who gets in their way but that wasn’t really why the FBI he said that there target was everyone no one in pacify we will not get in to more details now. Dylan and Eric were both intelligent boys with solid parents and a good home and both had brothers younger than them. They played soccer, baseball, and both enjoyed to work on computers. Both boys were thinking on commit suicide on 1997 but instead started to plan a massacre in 1998 a year before it happened. Then the two boys had got into some trouble for breaking into a van on January 30, 1998 trying to steal some fuses and wires for bombs for them to make, but they got caught in trouble. So the court put them in a program called the juvenile diversion program, but even if they were there they were still planning the massacre and the court also put Eric in some angry management classes and people believe it worked but it didn’t he just did it to look like it work and both boys made it look like they were really sorry but they weren’t. Dylan and Eric both really hated everyone in their school and the court as well after they got caught breaking in to that van that’s when they really started to plan the massacre more and that’s when Harris started he’s journals no one really knows way but they didn’t hate a hand...
School shootings are some of the most horrific incidents that can take a community by storm. It can be hard to fathom how children can be capable of such horrible acts, such as killing their fellow classmates. Many people have tried to come up with explanations on how these terrible acts have occurred. These explanations have ranged to biological factors to how the way our society views violence. In this essay I will explain how some theories could explain these events and how they can help deter it from happening again.
On a sunny spring day in April 1999, a suburban school named Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado found itself under attack by two of its own students. (http://www.knowgangs.com) In less than fifteen minutes of the first lunch period on that Tuesday, two armed students killed thirteen and wounded twenty-one fellow classmates before they turned the guns on themselves - the most devastating school shooting in U.S. history. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only school shooting; about thirty-five students die every year from school shootings. This generation comes from violence, hatred, and ignorance- the three principal factors that cause school shootings.
On April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado at Columbine High School, an horrific event took place. During the hours between ll a.m. and 12 p.m. 15 people, including the two offenders died, and 24 people were wounded. The offenders, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were high school seniors that attended Columbine High School. At 11:19 a.m. the two offenders started shooting students outside of the school. Then the two started shooting inside the school library, where most of the injuries took place. By 11:35 a.m. 12 students and one teacher were killed, and more than 20 people were wounded. The offenders were not caught because at 12:08 p.m. they committed suicide inside the library. There were also 99 explosives inside of the cafeteria. The intentions
The history of school shootings has shown an increase in mass school shooting. The very first known school shooting in the United States occurred on July 26, 1764 in present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania. As part of the Pontiac's Rebellion, four Lenape Native Americans entered the school house and started shooting, killing the schoolmaster Enoch Brown and about nine students. Only two students survived the massacre (“History”). Since the 1700s the United States society has changed in many ways. Schools have become more than just one room school houses and each grade has its own teacher. Furthermore, the problem of school shootings has not decreased but rather increased over the years. On the one hand, reports from the Centers for Disease Control showed that in general school violence decreased from 1992 to 200...
School shootings seemed like a new phenomenon, but they occurred for the majority of American history. The first school shooting occurred On July 26, 1764, when a Lenape Indian shot and killed nine children and the school master of the Greencastle, Pennsylvania school (Galvin): as noted in Appendix A. Since 1764, the number of school shootings rose exponentially. In the 1990’s, eighty-six school shootings occurred and between 2000 and 2014, 110 shootings transpired since 2000 (Killam,2008). The development of semiautomatic weapons lead to an increase in deaths. A study conducted in 1990 found through the years of 1986 to 1990; 71 people died, 201 wounded, and 242 people held hostage by school shooters(Galvin). While the area a school serves as one factor in the number of violent acts committed per year, school shootings have not been connected to this. The schools in Chicago dealt with more violent acts, but Sandy Hook Elementary, a small city school had relatively few violent acts committed by students.
It is a sad time in American history when one can easily recount recent school shootings in their own area. This ease stems from a sharp increase in the number of firearms brought into elementary and middle schools across the country, with an intense focus on the issue beginning after the shooting of 20 children from Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Most school shooters are male, white, and often upper middle class. They are also more, often than not, under some type of mental stress that is causing them to create this type of violence in our communities. In fact, many school shooters are never suspected of doing any harm to their peers and teachers until it is much too late.
On April 20, 1999 in a suburban town called Littleton, Colorado one high school was about to have one of the most tragic and deadly days in US history. Columbine High School was in the forefront of this tragedy. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, opened fire on their fellow classmates and teacher. These two students cut the lives short of thirteen students and one teacher. They then turned their guns onto themselves leaving the nation with no answers as to why? They did leave videotape. This videotape contained Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold planning their attack on Columbine High School. This piece of evidence showed two students that were not part of the "in crowd". They were outsiders, losers, as some would consider them. They were taunted, humiliated, and disrespected by their classmates. But how can two intelligent students do something as deadly as they did. Was it because they had bad parents? Not at all, they even went out of their way to save their parents the blame by repeatedly saying that it was not their fault that they were about to do what they did. So what was the cause of all this tragedy and how can it be stopped so it can never happen again in our middle schools and high schools? Elliot Aronson a social psychologist wrote a book called Nobody Left to Hate, Teaching Compassion After Columbine. This book represents his ideas on how to use certain strategies to have a better school environment that teaches compassion, tolerance while putting education in a winning situation.
In conclusion, School Violence is a widespread issue that must be addressed. School shootings and bullying are some of the biggest issues in today’s school system. Many times the seed of the issue begins with bullying and ends with consequences like suicide and school shootings. They affect people as early as elementary school all the way to the college level, some even ending with death. Only together can we stop school violence if we take a stand and change the world.
School shootings are the leading death by a fire arm in the United States. What motivates these people to want to kill others? Acts of violence at schools is not a new thing. School shootings date back to the 18th century. However, school shootings are growing more common in this day in age. What motivates these people to want to kill others? With social networks more and more people are being bullied, which results in more kids snapping and shooting up their school. Bullying isn’t the only reason for school shooting, now smart kids are snapping under the pressure of unrealistic standards set for them by their honors teachers. In high school teens get the choice to take honors classes, or regular classes. The biggest difference in these classes
On April 20, 1999, within the tiny, suburban city of Littleton, Colorado, two high-school seniors, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, enacted a full-scale assault on columbine high school throughout the middle of the school day. The boys' idea was to kill many of their colleagues. With guns, knives, and a large number of bombs, the two boys walked the hallways and killed. Once the day was done, twelve students, one teacher, as well as the two murderers were dead; and 21 of them were wounded. The haunting question remains: why did they decide to do this?
The Labeling Theory is the view that labels people are given affect their own and others’ perception of them, thus channeling their behavior either into deviance or into conformity. Labels can be positive and/or negative, but I’ll focus on the negative aspects of labeling in high school. Everybody has a label in high school whether it is the “slut”, “pothead”, “freak” or the “jock”; it is one of the most apparent time periods in which individuals get labeled. Students have the mentality that whatever label is placed on them is going to be stuck with them forever, which then leads into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This, I feel, is a fear of being a “loser” that has been instilled throughout years by the principals, teachers, etc. An example of this is the pressure students are given to get a good grade. In order to get into an honors class they need to pass a certain test, should they not get into honors class the following year, then all throughout the rest of their remaining school life, they’ll never be able to be in honors class. They’ll then no longer be seen as the “smart” students they were “before”(even though they still are), they’ll now be labeled as “dumb” and eventually start to believe, and become their label. Another example of this is being labeled a “slut”. When a girl has been labeled a slut, early or in the middle of her school life, the label sticks with her all throughout her remaining school years. At first, she could reject this label, and try to “change”...