Students at one New Hampshire university are getting a lesson in the myths behind school shootings, examining the misconceptions encompassing such tragedies and looking into the minds of the dangerous criminals who carry them out.
Taught by Donna Decker, an English professor at Franklin Pierce University, the course, titled “Intentional Venom: Making Meaning of School Shootings,” seeks to examine the meanings behind school shootings. Decker has taught the class two times, and students work to not only debunk the myths surrounding such tragedies but also those associated with the killers who execute them, USA Today reported.
“School shootings raise all kinds of questions about our communities and our values, … and I think it’s [these] questions that primarily draw the students in,” Decker told USA Today. “It’s a provocative topic.”
The English professor, who also teaches a course titled “Banned Books,” developed the course after conducting research for her upcoming book, titled Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You: A Novel About the 1989 Montreal Massacre.
“As I was doing [my research], I thought students would be very interested in this material,” Decker said.
She began teaching the class in fall 2011.
During “Intentional Venom,” students examine various mediums from fiction and nonfiction books to a play to a movie to see “how people make art from [school shootings],” Decker said. Additionally, students attempt to sift through stereotypes attached to the criminals who execute school shootings in an effort to debunk the myths often times perpetuated by the media.
The class, Decker said, learns “that these stereotypes got attached to certain groups of students, and then got hooked in with the killers. None of it bore out, in fact, once the drama of the shooting faded, and you could really get at the information.”
Peter Langman, author of Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, told USA Today the media often perpetuates stereotypes of school shooters despite the facts. And Decker concurred.
“People are desperate to know why these things happen, and you really want to know that it won’t happen again, and it won’t happen to you,” Decker said.
Tim Armstrong, who took the course, said he was intrigued by the possibility of exploring school shootings, and said other students registered because they thought it would be interesting as well.
“The class discussions [were always] lively and fun,” Armstrong told USA Today.
And Decker teaches her students to look for patterns among shooters, though they often only find one commonality: they’re all male.
“[It’s] interesting because students resist that initially,” she said. “They don’t want to buy that…”
