Schools Foment Shootings by Undermining Self-Esteem

I don’t recall what exactly he said—I just remember throwing my inch-thick biology book end-over-end at the back of his head. It had been weeks of relentless “your mom” jokes and the like, but what I felt as the book thudded against his skull was not righteousness but helplessness. And that feeling only intensified when he—twice my size—picked me up by the throat and held me there in front of my ninth-grade science class. I’m not proud of having resorted to violence, but I felt cornered, out of options.

Thankfully, my sense of helplessness was not generalized but delimited to dealing with bullies. Many young people today are not so fortunate, flooded with debilitating, all-encompassing doubt. As the nation struggles to understand why schools have become killing grounds, this fact gets buried under debates about mental illness, the so-called news contagion effect (whereby news of a shooting inspires copycats), and of course, access to guns.¹

Certainly, these are factors to consider. But they don’t change the simple fact that kids with a healthy sense of self-esteem do not kill other kids, regardless of what they see on the news or how easily they can access firearms. . . .

About Jon Hersey

Jon Hersey (@revivingreason) is managing editor of The Objective Standard and holds fellowships at Foundation for Economic Education, where he writes in defense of freedom, and at Objective Standard Institute, where he teaches courses and hosts the podcast “Philosophy for Flourishing.”

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