Failure to hold: An analysis of school violence

Julie Ann Webber, Purdue University

Abstract

This work examines the public reaction to school violence in the United States in the late 1990s in an attempt to locate the disavowed aspects of democratic political culture. Repression is located at the heart of many explanations for youth violence that are central to understanding the American political imaginary as it relates to issues of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, family, human nature, reason, and psychiatric disorder and, the nature and conduct of democracy itself. Using the work of John Dewey and D. W. Winnicott, the first section examines alternative solutions to the present democratic situation in both schools and society. Next we look at three popular explanations—gun control, the effect of media violence and psychiatric illness—in an attempt to articulate the ideas they disregard and uses of culture that they deny. Finally, the work examines the school and the society's reaction to school violence as an example of containment culture, a public disposition that is motivated by fear and denial that presents itself throughout public policy and media framing towards school violence. The work underscores the impossible mission that containment culture seeks to effect: to repress the anger and rage that students feel towards the school and the society. The work cautions against the continued application of this containment policy as students will become indoctrinated into less tolerant, more censoring citizens. Democracy is at risk.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Weinstein, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Educational psychology|Political science|Philosophy

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