Marx Lecturer Addresses Bullying, Emotional Violence, and Alienation at School
Advance copies of James Garbarino’s book, Lost Boys: Why Sons Turn Violent, arrived on the desks of journalists on the same day as the school shootings at Columbine High School. Consequently, Garbarino and his book received a great deal of attention.
Advance copies of James Garbarino's book, Lost Boys: Why Sons Turn
Violent, arrived on the desks of journalists on the same day as the
school shootings at Columbine High School. Consequently, Garbarino and
his book received a great deal of attention.The 2003 Virginia
and Leonard Marx Lecturer told of how, in the wake of the Columbine
killings, the parents of Dylan Klebold-one of the boys who killed his
fellow students, and then himself-contacted Garbarino to ask him to
serve as an expert witness in lawsuits that had been filed against
them. They also expressed a deep desire to understand how Dylan, for
whom they tried to provide the best upbringing they could, had become a
murderer in a nightmarish scene viewed by the whole world. After
conducting what he called a "psychological autopsy" on the Klebolds'
son, Garbarino concluded that there was no simple causal line that
could be drawn from Dylan's parents to his role as a mass murderer. "It
was impossible to understand Dylan as a killer without understanding
Dylan as a student at Columbine High School," Garbarino said. "Without
what happened at school, you still might have had a troubled boy, but I
don't think you would have had a killer." It is the toxic atmosphere at
schools, he added, that contributes to the downfall of kids like
Dylan. "The school as a social system can breed violence,
alienation and depression or hope, good feeling and character," he
explained. While schools often deny that bullying and harassment
are problems, research on boys indicates that one-third of them are
involved in bullying at any particular time-either as bullies or as
victims. The same behaviors, if experienced in the business world,
would be addressed quite differently. "[Businesses] say, ‘We are going
to do something about this,' because they are liable to protect your
human rights," Garbarino noted. "These things happen to kids in school
every day. They arrive at school exhausted after being harassed or in
fear of it." Garbarino stressed the importance of intervention
and suggested that creating a positive environment would make bullying
antithetical. "Most people base their behavior on becoming congruent
with what the setting encourages," he said. "The whole system can be
set up to promote harmony so that bullying and harassment are the
aberration."
Published Saturday, Apr. 2, 2005
