The Bully Society
School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America’s Schools
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Choice's Outstanding Academic Title list for 2013
In today’s schools, kids bullying kids is not an occasional occurrence but rather an everyday reality where children learn early that being sensitive, respectful, and kind earns them no respect. Jessie Klein makes the provocative argument that the rise of school shootings across America, and childhood aggression more broadly, are the consequences of a society that actually promotes aggressive and competitive behavior. The Bully Society is a call to reclaim America’s schools from the vicious cycle of aggression that threatens our children and our society at large.
Heartbreaking interviews illuminate how both boys and girls obtain status by acting “masculine”—displaying aggression at one another’s expense as both students and adults police one another to uphold gender stereotypes. Klein shows that the aggressive ritual of gender policing in American culture creates emotional damage that perpetuates violence through revenge, and that this cycle is the main cause of not only the many school shootings that have shocked America, but also related problems in schools, manifesting in high rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-cutting, truancy, and substance abuse. After two decades working in schools as a school social worker and professor, Klein proposes ways to transcend these destructive trends—transforming school bully societies into compassionate communities.
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In this thorough examination of the connection between bullying and three decades of school shootings in America, Adelphi University professor Klein pre-sents a compelling case that the strict gender rules by which American children and teenagers are unfairly forced to live are the driving factors in school violence. As Klein writes: "Although the forms of school violence may differ, the same patterns emerge. Boys (and, increasingly, girls) lash out to prove that they can fulfill their narrow gender prescriptions." Boys (and even girls) are increasingly required to show constant proof of their "masculinity" without the slightest hint of weakness, and those who don't succeed in impressing their peers are taunted and bullied, sometimes with extreme and disastrous results. Klein highlights the unfortunate intersections of masculinity, competitiveness, and American culture, demonstrating that these deeply ingrained social rules don't end when students move into adulthood; this isn't a problem just for kids, she argues, but for society at large. Klein's accessible research ranges from statistical analysis to interviews, all applied within a framework of sociological theory. However, Klein makes such a convincing argument that this overmasculinization is an American problem that it's hard (though tempting) to buy her final suggestion that perhaps kids just need to feel more connected at school to avoid the bullying and tragedies that can result.
