One way to foil school shootings

More educators find teaching empathy can enable students to help prevent gun violence rather than be caught in the crossfire.

The Monitor's View

After the school shooting in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday, much of the attention has been on what failed. Most of all, federal and local officials acknowledge they knew about the troubled teen, who is accused of killing four people, and had questioned him a year earlier. At the time, they said, they could not definitively connect him to threats posted online.

Yet this focus on how to better predict violence may mask a simpler approach to preventing it. A growing body of evidence shows that teaching empathy toward people who are troubled is more effective in curbing gun violence than trying to profile would-be assailants. And it taps into resources already at hand – neighbors, community leaders, and students.

“We don’t have to leave it up to the police to make sure our people are all right,” said Jahsani Peters, a high school senior in New York City who has worked at a community-based program countering violence. “We just try to help people see the good in life. That there are other ways to handle problems without violence or having to raise your voice and get crazy with somebody,” he told Chalkbeat, an education journal.

While still rare, school shootings have risen sharply in recent years, but so have two other trends. Forty-one U.S. states now fund violence intervention programs. They rely on people within communities – often former perpetrators of gun violence and those directly affected by it – to defuse conflict through presence and listening. Such intervention has reduced gun violence by as much as 60%, according to the Center for American Progress.

A similar emphasis is finding its way into classrooms. A curriculum developed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, for example, includes teaching caring and compassion starting in elementary school. Two recent international studies measured the social benefits of such learning.

One, a University of Galway study published in June, concluded that teaching empathy “enables individuals to relate to one another in ways that promote trust, care, and cooperation.” The other, in China, found that early lessons in empathy result in “mindfulness and caring for others.” One lasting effect from that, it noted, was a greater sensitivity toward people who appear to be isolated or outcast.

Predicting the next school shooting or identifying the next potential shooter may never be completely possible. But one strong defense is already plain. It involves seeing students, not as targets or vulnerable, but as able to help create a welcoming and safe environment in schools.