Overambitious but challenging condemnation of schools as learning grounds for hatred.
In her first book, Klein (Sociology and Criminal Justice/Adelphi Univ.) presents an exhaustive and sure-to-be-controversial examination of school shootings, and, more broadly, the culture of violence, intimidation and exclusion that typifies the school experience in America.
“[O]ur children,” she writes, “feel terrorized and tormented on a daily basis.” Boys and girls in school, and increasingly out of school through cyberspace, are subject to a rigid and unforgiving hierarchy based on violently enforced norms. Any deviation from these norms—of rigid heterosexuality, of the proper status symbols signifying wealth, of being strong and able-bodied—is met with a barrage of violent and aggressive behavior, ceaseless bullying and ferocious isolation. In what Klein terms a culture of “hypermasculinity,” cruelty is not only expected but deemed necessary—to not bully is to be bullied. In such a context, school shootings are not so much aberrations but the ultimate act of bullying and affirmation of masculinity by students, mostly boys, marginalized beyond endurance. Students learn bullying behavior from adults, who engage in the same type of individualistic status seeking or simply look the other way in tacit approval of bullying as the norm. In turn, the whole of society sanctions such aggression and cruelty as unbridled capitalism makes life a zero-sum game in which the terror of not making it becomes a war of all against all. While we may not be able to transform the overall culture, Klein provides numerous examples in which compassion and cooperation become dominant values. While the author writes with clarity and compassion—this is hardly a dry academic tome—it is a big leap from the murderous actions of a few to the condemnation of an entire economic system. Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss Klein’s thesis out of hand, as she offers an opportunity for us to examine, discuss and consider the world we have created for our children.
Overambitious but challenging condemnation of schools as learning grounds for hatred.Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8147-4888-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Carefully researched and chilling, if somewhat overwritten.
Comprehensive, myth-busting examination of the Colorado high-school massacre.
“We remember Columbine as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping and tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running feud. Almost none of that happened,” writes Cullen, a Denver-based journalist who has spent the past ten years investigating the 1999 attack. In fact, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold conceived of their act not as a targeted school shooting but as an elaborate three-part act of terrorism. First, propane bombs planted in the cafeteria would erupt during lunchtime, indiscriminately slaughtering hundreds of students. The killers, positioned outside the school’s main entrance, would then mow down fleeing survivors. Finally, after the media and rescue workers had arrived, timed bombs in the killers’ cars would explode, wiping out hundreds more. It was only when the bombs in the cafeteria failed to detonate that the killers entered the high school with sawed-off shotguns blazing. Drawing on a wealth of journals, videotapes, police reports and personal interviews, Cullen sketches multifaceted portraits of the killers and the surviving community. He portrays Harris as a calculating, egocentric psychopath, someone who labeled his journal “The Book of God” and harbored fantasies of exterminating the entire human race. In contrast, Klebold was a suicidal depressive, prone to fits of rage and extreme self-loathing. Together they forged a combustible and unequal alliance, with Harris channeling Klebold’s frustration and anger into his sadistic plans. The unnerving narrative is too often undermined by the author’s distracting tendency to weave the killers’ expressions into his sentences—for example, “The boys were shooting off their pipe bombs by then, and, man, were those things badass.” Cullen is better at depicting the attack’s aftermath. Poignant sections devoted to the survivors probe the myriad ways that individuals cope with grief and struggle to interpret and make sense of tragedy.
Carefully researched and chilling, if somewhat overwritten.Pub Date: April 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-54693-5
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Bias notwithstanding, particularly against what's called the "elites" of the legal profession, this is an intriguing look at...
A spirited account of how the relatively recent establishment of the Massachusetts School of Law struggled to survive despite the concentrated opposition of the American Bar Association.
In a style reminiscent of Tracy Kidder, freelance journalist Hagan conjures up a number of the colorful characters who helped launch MSL in the late '80s. Among the more flamboyant actors in this legal drama is Michael Boland, who founded MSL's immediate predecessor, the Commonwealth School of Law. Although it quickly shut down, due to Boland's mismanagement, he made at least one good move in hiring Lawrence Velvel as dean. By Hagan's account, Velvel, who has made a career out of his contrarian positions, was ideally suited to be dean of the fledgling school. After Commonwealth collapsed, Velvel and a cadre of motivated students formed MSL to take its place, offering a new model of legal education that targeted older, working-class students, offering them a practical education in the nuts-and-bolts of practice. With Boland out of the picture, Velvel and his partners still encountered opposition from the ABA, which refused to accredit the school. The central charge here against the ABA is that it seeks to maintain the status quo of the legal profession by stifling innovation and denying an affordable legal education to non-traditional students. Although MSL went as far as bringing an antitrust suit against the organization, it never received the accreditation it needed for perceived legitimacy. Nonetheless, Hagan, whose subjective viewpoint should be assumed, highlights what she considers the school's successes. (MSL, not Hagan, holds the copyright to the book–it's certainly a good piece of recruitment material.)
Bias notwithstanding, particularly against what's called the "elites" of the legal profession, this is an intriguing look at the near-insurmountable hurdles in creating a new breed of law school.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7618-2838-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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