Giving Compass' Take:

· The Conversation discusses how policy change or security isn't enough to address school shootings and makes the case that an educational response is needed as well.

· This is, of course, a sensitive topic that deserves a thoughtful response, and the instinct may be to bristle if it appears that blame is being attributed somewhere in particular. But the writer attempts to strike a balance: There is no specific school under scrutiny, rather the institution in general. Does he present a good case?

· Read more about youth activism against school shootings.

To what extent does school — through things like athletics, homecoming royalties, or dances — encourage what some political scientists have called the “status tournament of adolescence” that lurks behind many school shootings?

The question, which my colleagues and I raised earlier this year after the Parkland shooting, takes on added importance in light of the most recent American school massacre in Texas.

As one reads about school shootings such as the May 2018 incident in Santa Fe, Texas, one often senses a feeling of social anxiety on the part of the perpetrator. Americans hold high expectations for schools as places of friendship and romance, yet too often students find alienation, humiliation, and isolation. The frustration at these thwarted expectations at least sometimes seems to turn toward the school community itself.

As a researcher who has written about school shootings, I think this latest school shooting underscores that what is missing from the discussion of school violence prevention is the idea of an educational response.

Current policy responses do not address the fundamental question of why so many mass shootings take place in schools. To answer this question, we need to get to the heart of how students experience school and the meaning that schools have in American life.

An educational response is important because the “target hardening” approach might actually make things worse by changing students’ experience of schools in ways that suggest violence rather than prevent it.

Read the full article about school shootings by Bryan Warnick at The Conversation.