To Prevent Future “Active Shooters,” We Need to go Back to Preschool

by Warren Buckleitner

Being a teacher lets you touch the future. Preschool teachers get a double dose. They have the chance to influence future husbands, wives, presidents, doctors and mass murderers.

When an early childhood educator like me sees the mug shot of a mass murderer, we think about the child behind the crime, and wonder “what went wrong?”

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was nearly a victim himself, wondered the same thing — “how does a 19-year-old have the audacity, the sickness, the hatred to come to a house of worship (or school, or theatre) and do what he did?”

Could the life trajectory of this person have been changed, to prevent such a catastrophe event?

Yes, and therein lies the first step to solving a complicated problem. I’d argue that a quality early education — that is rich in social problem solving, and socio-emotional development, is key.

Nature vs. nurture

The view that humans acquire their behavioral traits from “nurture” was once called tabla rosa (blank slate) by John Locke in 1690. This blank slate view in human developmental psychology assuming that human behavioral traits develop almost exclusively from environmental influences. Today we know that both “nature” and “nurture” factors contribute substantially to behaviors. Given the complicated intertwined contribution of both nature and nurture (Leahy, 1935) early childhood educators are in a rare position to tinker — and perhaps intervene — with the “nurture” makeup of other people’s children.

Five stages of strain

Growing up to become a happy, self actualized human isn’t easy. If enough things go wrong, it is possible to enter a self-propagating loop of despair that can lead to a ruined life.

The five “stages of strain” give us a general map for how a series of unfortunate events can can manifest into a catastrophe as a young adult, according to professor Jack Levin, who has studied the “why” of mass murder (see Mass Murder at School and Cumulative Strain: A Sequential Model.

You’ve probably already noticed the patterns in the resumés of mass shooters — bullying, teasing, rejection, and being ignored by schoolmates.

Failed relationships in one form or another seem to be the leading contributor to moving a child toward catastrophe.

The field of anthropology has something to add to this idea. After a shooter burst into Adam Johnson’s anthropology class at UNC-Charlotte with a gun, Johnson used his anthropology.365 blog to try to understand the “why” behind the student’s action.

He cited contributing factors such as a “a lack of socioeconomic security and the disillusionment that comes with it” and a person’s need to commit “egoistic and anomic suicide” (Durkheim, 2005) due to a prolonged sense of not belonging combined with a lack of moral regulation or shared sense of value.

Scholars understand that this is a complicated, multivariate problem that can’t be solved with single law or weapons ban.

It’s time for a social science moon shot

There’s no quick fix to stop a smart individual who has already suffered from the results of a lifetime of failed relationships.

But it’s not too late for the next generation. Besides making automatic weapons less accessible its time for us to to think about how we can use the lessons offered by educators and anthropologists to ease the strain for these future adults. Our tools are a public school system, libraries, churches and synagogs and better informal social gathering spaces where we can engineer settings that foster relationships to help compensate for crippling feelings of failure associated with the child who might develop into that rare person capable of carrying out a mass shooting.

We used to call it “no child left behind.”

According to Levin and Madfis “It is important to intervene in the lives of desperate students emotionally on the fringe long before they potentially suffer acute strain in the form of a catastrophic event. When such a calamitous occurrence does arise in their lives, they will then have the self-esteem and social support system in place to soften the blow.”

As a former preschool teacher, let me offer some suggestions, with the hope that active shooter drills are not part of the school experience for the next generation.

• Be kind. Political leaders and media makers must remember that there are three ways to ultimate success, according to Fred Rogers: “The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” We all pay the price for belittling television programming. Some well-timed kindness to a troubled stranger just could be the penicillin for the prevention of a future disaster.
• Take away the guns. Make guns and bullets harder for a troubled person to get.
• Revive “no child left behind.” Remember NCLB? A community safety net — in the form of public libraries, after school programs and other social programs can help to spot strain, and get help. If a librarian spots a troubled patron, he or she should be able to call in a social services SWAT team to assess the situation.
• Get to know a stranger. Increase inter-cultural, inter-generational exchanges at all levels of a child’s experience. Integrated school programs that celebrate cultural differences can increase understanding between schoolmates that can reduce the ethnic tensions that can flare up among adults.

It’s chilling to think that the next shooter has already purchased guns and bullets and are among us now … in our classes, and libraries or sitting across from you on the subway. There’s no shortage of relationship-starved people — and it’s no longer a matter of if the next mass shooting will happen. It’s when.

For them — and their unknowing victims, it’s too late. Short term solutions to generational problems don’t tend to give us the results we need.

We need to think in terms of generations; a social science moon shot — to create enough “relationship armor” to protect the next generation against future active shooters. This armor is made up of human kindness, self-esteem and social support systems, and we should start making it today — in preschool.

CITATIONS

Cranston, M. W. (1957). John Locke: a biography (p. 107). London: Longmans.

Durkheim, E. (2005) Suicide: A study in sociology. Routledge.

Johnson, Adam (2019). The Story of a Mass Shooting Survivor and Athropologist. Online at https://anthropology365.com/2019/05/02/the-story-of-a-mass-shooting-survivor-and-anthropologist/

Leahy, A. M. (1935). Nature-nurture and intelligence. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 17, 236–308.

Levin, J., & Madfis, E. (2009). Mass murder at school and cumulative strain: A sequential model. American behavioral scientist, 52(9), 1227–1245.

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Warren Buckleitner is a former preschool teacher. He’s currently an Assistant Professor at The College of New Jersey, and is a Senior Fellow at the Fred Rogers Center.