Evidence Is In; Corporal Punishment Should Be Banned!

We're using children in an undeclared research project to find out how much it teaches violence; the results of this research project have been in for years, but the mainstream media isn't reporting it to the public to let them know how much damage it's doing.

As a result of this we're ensuring that corporal punishment continues in some parts of the country even though overwhelming evidence shows it's a major contributing factor to escalating violence later in life, including higher murder rates, on average, in the states still allowing it in schools, and presumably using it more at home as well.

In a previous article, Research On Preventing Violence Absent From National Media, I calculated the average murder rates for the states still allowing corporal punishment in schools and found that for the past twelve years, with complete data, from 2007 to 2018, the states still allowing corporal punishment in schools, and presumably using it more at home as well, had between 22% and 32.1% higher murder rates than the states that don't allow it in in schools; and this difference has been growing for the most part going back as far as I could find dates in 1991. The year with the biggest difference was 2018, with 2017 being the third biggest difference, 2016, the fourth, and 2014 the second. The states allowing corporal punishment in schools have never had lower murder rates, on average, than those banning it, but the closest they came in the years that I checked was in 1992, when the difference was only 2.26%.

The longer after states ban corporal punishment in schools, and presumably cut back on it significantly at home as well, the bigger the difference is. Between 1983 and 1994 twenty-two states banned corporal punishment, including California, which had the fifth highest murder rates in 1991, but dropped down to twenty-seventh by 2017. Murder rates have been dropping across the country for the past twenty years; however, they're dropping significantly faster in states that banned corporal punishment in schools. Those still allowing it have mostly cut back on it, which is, no doubt, part of the reason why their murder rates are going down as well, but they're not dropping nearly as much.

A comparison of the murder rates in Europe and their corporal punishment policies also confirms this conclusion; they all ban corporal punishment in schools, and a growing number of these countries also ban it in the home. Europe, overall, has a murder rate of 3 per 100,000 compared to about 5 in the United States; however, the only reason their rate is so high is because of a few Eastern European countries, especially Russia and Ukraine, that are much worse, higher even than the United States. If not for this their rate would be below 2 and in many countries, often the same countries banning corporal punishment in the home as well as in schools, it's below 1.

When they banned corporal punishment in homes as well as in schools, most, if not all of these countries didn't rely on punitive policies to enforce it; instead, they implemented it by educating parents about more effective ways to raise their children and the research that shows why they're more effective. They also do better to address other contributing factors of violence including better child care policies, fewer if any abandoned inner cities, which in the United States often have outrageously high murder rates, income inequality, improved education of all kinds, and other policies that have a smaller indirect impact like better health care.

There's plenty of additional research available showing how much social problems it causes, most of which has been peer reviewed better than my own statistics, although the numbers I reviewed are straight forward and easy to confirm. And the vast majority of researchers agree, with those still opposing it, often having serious problems with their credibility. Yet the mainstream media provides little or no coverage of this research.

When they do cover it at all, it's almost always in very low profile articles that are only read by a small number of people in local regions, and they rarely cover the best research. This includes the following article, which is far better than the vast majority of reporting in the mainstream media:

Countries that ban corporal punishment have lower rates of teen fighting, study finds 10/22/2018

Societies that do not permit parents or teachers to spank or slap children as punishment for unwanted behavior have less youth violence, according to a study published recently in the journal BMJ Open.

For the study, researchers at McGill University in Canada analyzed global data collected on more than 400,000 adolescents (aged 13 to 17) in 88 countries. The data included findings from a survey that asked young people of varying ages how often they had gotten into fights during the previous 12 months.

According to the survey, frequent fighting was three times more common in teenage boys (9.9 percent) then in teenage girls (2.8 percent). It also varied widely among countries, from less than 1 percent in Costa Rican teenage girls to almost 35 percent in Somoan teenage boys.

The researchers then compared that data with information regarding the prohibition of corporal punishment in the countries where those children lived. Thirty of the 88 countries banned corporal punishment at school and at home, while 38 had bans only for schools and 20 had no bans at all. Complete article

This article goes on to say "Proof of correlation, not causation," as many good researchers often do, making sure the evidence is hard before they come to final conclusions; however, there's an enormous amount of additional research that I'm sure would, in this case, show proof of causation as well. I've cited a lot of this research in past articles, and I'll post additional sources below, although some of it is extensive. Ensuring there's adequate peer review before coming to final conclusions is appropriate; however, sometimes they take this too far, and in this case, I think those familiar with the research should be able to come to the conclusion that corporal punishment teaches violence, and many of them do. A lot of this research shows that there's often a slippery slope from what advocates of corporal punishment consider controlled discipline and child abuse.

However, even if you don't agree that causation is conclusive, as I and many others do, there's still an overwhelming amount of evidence showing that ending corporal punishment, cutting down on bullying and as much child abuse as possible leads to much less violence and many other social problems, even though most people can't keep up with the best research. The sad truth is that there's virtually no good educational coverage on this subject in mainstream media, although there are some efforts, often pushed at the Grassroots level. It's been about nine years since the thirty-first state banned corporal punishment in schools.

Fortunately there are several additional states seriously considering it, and there's a strong movement at least two of those states, Kentucky and Colorado. The legislatures have responded with some attempts to pass legislation, and the media has given them credit for taking the lead; however, this is misleading since they were under a lot of grassroots pressure, especially in Kentucky which just passed a bill a couple months ago in the state house and it's up to the Senate to vote on it. Both the state House and Senate are controlled by Republicans, which are usually less likely to oppose corporal punishment; however the house passed it by a large margin anyway. If it passes the Senate and goes to the Democratic Governor it's almost certain that he'll sign it.

Yes, Corporal Punishment Is Still Legal In Ky. Schools. But Maybe Not For Long 02/07/2020

Corporal punishment would be outlawed in the state’s public and private schools under a measure passed in the Kentucky House Friday morning.

Kentucky is one of 19 states where it’s still legal for school staff to inflict pain on students as a form of discipline – usually with a wooden paddle to the behind.

“A child learns what he lives,” Rep. Maria Sorolis (D-Louisville) said on the floor, speaking in support of the ban. “If a child learns with violence, he will learn to fight. We are sophisticated enough now that we can teach and discipline to disciple, rather than to merely punish.”

State records show each year hundreds of Kentucky students are struck by school staff – mostly in southeastern Kentucky.

“My experience as a longtime educator and others is that this is not an effective form of discipline,” Rep. Steve Riley (R-Glasgow) said, who is sponsoring the legislation. He pointed to research showing corporal punishment has negative outcomes on student well-being and academic achievement. National research also shows students of color and students with disabilities are more likely to be subjected to corporal punishment than their peers. Complete article

Kentucky House passes bill to ban spanking, paddling in schools 02/07/2020 FRANKFORT, Ky. — A bill that would ban spanking, paddling and other forms of corporal punishment in public schools passed 65-17 Friday in the Kentucky House of Representatives. .......

The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees and has agreed since at least 2000, when members argued that corporal punishment in public schools should be illegal in the United States. According to one study, using violence as discipline damages children’s self-esteem, their relationships with authority figures and their functioning later in life.

“It not only impacts their ability to learn but frankly can impact their personality,” Hammons said. “It doesn’t work. Help the child understand what their strengths are and help a child understand the importance of self-regulation and using their words and not acting out.”

Kentucky legislators were under a lot of pressure from the grassroots in the past few years, including a lot of young people protesting against it, which is virtually guaranteed to be the reason why this bill got this far; however, they may have to keep up the pressure to ensure it gets through the Senate. Colorado also recently tried to pass a bill which failed almost entirely on Party lines in 2017; however, the Democrats now have control of both houses, and the governors office.

Corporal punishment bill goes down in Colorado Senate committee 03/13/2017

A Republican-controlled state Senate committee Monday killed a bill that would have prohibited corporal punishment in Colorado’s public schools and day care centers that receive state funding.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, on a party-line vote, defeated House Bill 1038, sponsored by state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, an Arvada Democrat.

Republican members didn’t explain their vote. However, during witness testimony, state Sen. Bob Gardner, a Colorado Springs Republican, suggested school districts were already in front of the issue.

“I’m disappointed, to say the least,” Zenzinger said in a statement. “This practice has no place in a modern nation that prides itself on decades of advancement in the areas of human rights and racial equality. It’s a black mark on our reputation and really defies logic.” Complete article

The Democratic Party expressed a lot of disappointment when this was defeated; however, they've been in power for fifteen months and I haven't been able to find any news on them passing this bill again, which would be virtually guaranteed to succeed, so now “I’m disappointed, to say the least,” in the Democrats for not doing anything yet. They have been busy with other bills; but, it looks as if it might be necessary to pressure them from the grassroots as well.

If the grassroots can pressure the Republicans in Kentucky to respond to this issue, they can pressure the Democrats in Colorado; the fact that they haven't acted yet raises doubts about their leadership.

Since I first posted this I found a bill at the national level that would ban corporal punishment in schools, H.R.727 - Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act of 2019 Rep. Hastings, Alcee L. [D-FL-20], unfortunately it's been well over a year and little or no action has been taken on it. The following article is about another bill to ban it that has also been introduced in North Carolina, although little action has been taken on this either:

Corporal punishment in schools would be banned in NC with bill 03/19/2019

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Spanking and other forms of corporal punishment would be permanently barred in North Carolina’s public schools in legislation receiving bipartisan support on Tuesday now that the final two districts still allowing them have ended the practice.

A House education committee voted to approve a statewide prohibition starting this fall, which also would apply to public charter schools.

For nearly 30 years, the General Assembly has given local school boards — currently at 115 — the option to decide whether to allow principals or teachers to use physical punishment upon students. The number of districts allowing the practice has fallen over time as society and researchers have discouraged it. Still, it was used nearly 900 times in 17 districts as recently as the 2010-11 school year, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. There were just 60 incidents during the 2017-18 school year, and the Graham and Robeson county school boards were the last to bar corporal punishment last year.

“I think the overwhelmingly opinion is ... that educating should be left up to the schools, and discipline should be left up to the parents,” said Rep. Susan Fisher, a Buncombe County Democrat and chief bill sponsor with GOP Rep. Linda Johnson of Cabarrus County. The bill passed with no voices or votes in opposition.

Under current law, school boards could reverse their decisions and reinstitute corporal punishment. The law says districts had to set policies that made clear a spanking or other physical penalty couldn’t be performed in front of other children. Parents had to be notified of why it happened and the names of the person giving the punishment and a witness.

The legislation, which now goes to another House committee before reaching the House floor, wouldn’t allow districts to revert to the policy. The bill also would have to pass the Senate.

Tom Vitaglione, a senior fellow at the NC Child advocacy organization, has participated in repeated news conferences over the years pushing for a statewide ban on corporal punishment. In the early 1990s, he said, the legislature decided instead to make clear each district could make the decision on whether to allow or ban the practice.

Now, Vitaglione said, “we’re hoping that the General Assembly will affirm the decisions that have been made by 115 school districts.”

Vitaglione said there’s more research showing there’s no link between corporal punishment and academic improvement. Instead, he said, it can harm the relationship between students and teachers, reduce academic performance and encourage more aggressive behavior.

Physical punishment, he said, leaves the impression that “getting hit — that’s the way to resolve things.” Complete article

As the article indicates they've been cutting back on the use of corporal punishment over the years, and within the past few years voted at the local level to ban it in all public schools, but it's still unclear if it's allowed in Charter schools or other religious or private schools. Up until the year 2008, North Carolina was almost always either in the top ten for murder rates, or very close; it's unclear, if this can be connected to their reduction in the use of corporal punishment in schools, at this point but it's a reasonable possibility. Since then their murder rates have gone down signifficantly, except for the years 2016 and 2018, when they came close to climbing back into the top ten, but didn't quite make it.

Even Mississippi has introduced a bill to ban corporal punishment in schools, where there's almost certainly much less support for it. However that's almost certainly because they're badly misinformed about it, and the media is doing little or nothing to correct superstitions or religious reasons for supporting corporal punishment. Mississippi is one of the states that uses it the most so I'm not optimistic they'll pass a statewide ban; but, even in Mississippi there's some evidence indicating they're cutting back on it.

Unfortunately there's a limited amount of information that I could find discussing the ban in Mississippi and the little coverage on the internet I did find doesn't include the best research on the subject including this article which argues that even if it's a good idea, it shouldn't be a high priority,

SALTER: Is corporal punishment really the greatest problem facing Noxubee County schools? 02/12/2020 Rep. Mickens introduced House Bill 12 during the 2020 regular legislative session, a bill intended to ban corporal punishment or “paddling” in Mississippi public and charter schools and “provide that any (school) employee who violates the corporal punishment prohibition shall be held liable for civil damages suffered by a student as a result of the administration of corporal punishment.”

This article Ingraham v. Wright but he doesn't go into the vast majority of the background on it which is covered much better by Philip J. Greven in "Spare the Child" which explains how badly this child was abused, and if you go to the court decisions (links provided in the excepts from this book) they provide additional information about the serious abuse this child and many others are subject to as well as strong dissents by several justices, including Thurgood Marshall, explaining how abusive it was, yet this if virtually forgotten history to the vast majority of the public who haven't heard of this decision any more than they've heard of the best research on the subject.

Fortunately there's additional evidence showing that even Mississippi is cutting down on use of corporal punishment including banning it recently in Lafayette County School District and Greenville School District; however, it's still allowed in 80% to 85% of their school districts.

The vast majority of changes in policy to use of corporal punishment is towards deceasing it; however, there are still efforts to reinstate it including a Texas School District Brings Back Paddling or corporal punishment 02/25/2020 This article says "It is usually the parents who use paddling themselves at home who agree to the practice at school. They believe that it creates consistency that will encourage children to behave;" which adds to the evidence that the states allowing it in schools are more likely to use it at home.

Even more outrageous is trying to profit out of by selling ridiculously priced paddles and turning it into a bad joke as this article shows Sales of 'Make Kids Great Again' spanking paddles draw criticism, praise 02/19/2020 Like the vast majority of mainstream media this article makes no attempt to cover the best research on this subject. They do cite M.J. Mouton and another critic, who do make good points, but the vast majority of good research is absent from this article and the majority of those they do cite seem to support it with incredibly bad arguments, acting as if it's a joke. Some of these people are profiting by selling these outrageous paddles so they have an obvious conflict of interests, yet the article doesn't try to make that clear.

M.J. Mouton "So here is a paddle for whipping kids. It says 'Make Kids Great Again.' With Conservatives, even child abuse is marketable."

Passing legislation to ban corporal punishment in schools is an important part of the solution, but perhaps not as important as good education on the subject, which is absent from the traditional media. There's no shortage of good research in the academic world or in libraries; however few people know what to look for and the media doesn't promote any of the best research. Project Project No Spank provides hundreds of articles or academic research papers on the subject as well as at least two good complete books with excepts from dozens more; Barbara Coloroso wrote several good books including "Kids Are Worth It"

We have the research available to show how to greatly reduce violence, but there's little or no effort by powerful institutions to get this educational material to the majority of the public. The same argument could be made for many other contributing causes of violence, including abandoned inner cities.

Our political and economic system has shipped jobs overseas and suppressed educational opportunities in many of the most violent cities in the country, some having at least double our national average murder rates, and a few of the worst abandoned inner cities have six to ten times our national murder rates. The media routinely demonizes many of these killers, but by refusing to provide educational coverage of the leading causes of this violence the media is far worse than these murderers, since they ensure that a system constantly creating unnecessary violence stays in place. If the media was willing and able to do their job educating the public about leading causes of violence we wouldn't have nearly as much of it.

Europe has already shown they can do a far better job reducing violence than we do, if we learn from their example we can get out rates of violence down as low as theirs if not lower.

Project No Spank

"Kids Are Worth It"

Murray A. Straus "The Primordial Violence" excerpts

Murray A. Straus Web page with dozens of papers on Corporal punishment retrieved from Wayback Machine.

Murray A. Straus three complete books retrieved from Wayback Machine.

Books by Professor James Garbarino

James Garbarino: "Listening to Killers" 03/02/2015 one hour video

Dr. James Garbarino on socially toxic environments on children 01/17/2014 five minute video

James Garbarino: "Why Giving Teenage Killers a Second Chance Matters for All of Us" 03/28/2018 One and a quarter hour video

Global Initiative To End All Corporal Punishment Of Children 04/0/2020

School spankings are banned just about everywhere around the world except in US 07/31/2019 States prohibiting all corporal punishment of children, including in the home:

The following are additional articles on the subject:

Ohio Mother charged with murder in son’s death 03/07/2020 The permitting child-abuse charge alleges she caused serious physical harm or death to the boy “as a proximate result of permitting the child to be abused, to be tortured, to be administered corporal punishment or other physical disciplinary measure, or to be physically restrained in a cruel manner or for a prolonged period.”

Florida public school officials are still allowed to paddle little kids and teens 06/20/2019 That said, corporal punishment in Florida has declined dramatically over the years, from 84,495 incidents in 1987-88, to 4,869 in 2007-08, to 1,352 in 2017-18, according to the Florida Department of Education. Sen. Taddeo, however, believes the number of corporal punishment incidents may be underreported. ...... When Sen. Taddeo tried to convince colleagues on the state Legislature’s Senate Education Committee this spring to ban corporal punishment in Florida, she was met with resistance. At the time, State Sen. Bill Montford, a former school superintendent, said he couldn’t vote for a ban on corporal punishment, saying local school boards should be the ones deciding whether or not to use the practice.

Teacher accused of spanking 5-year-old boy with autism at Arkansas school 02/25/2019 Multiple staff members claim they heard Wortham call Kemauri a “bad boy,” followed by an audible hit and crying, according to a police report. The school principal told police Wortham admitted to the hit, so she was put on administrative leave.

Sales of 'Make Kids Great Again' spanking paddles draw criticism, praise 02/19/2020

Texas School District Brings Back Paddling or corporal punishment 02/25/2020 It is usually the parents who use paddling themselves at home who agree to the practice at school. They believe that it creates consistency that will encourage children to behave.

Paddling kids in school does the opposite of building resilient kids. It should be banned. 03/13/2020

Pampa ISD votes to bring back corporal punishment next school year 03/10/2020

100 years ago in Spokane: Corporal punishment discredited, Chronicle says 04/02/2020

The Coercive Cycle: A School to Prison Pipeline? 03/25/2020 Harsh discipline with children—whether it is corporal punishment by parents or overly punitive practices in schools—has long been established as ineffective and counter-productive, yet it remains a common practice.8

Banishing corporal punishment 03/15/2020

Make corporal punishment costly for the perpetrators 03/21/2020 The incident involving a Top Class pupil at Home Kindergarten in Najeera Township, a Kampala, Uganda suburb, is very unfortunate and regrettable. A teacher in an early learning centre allegedly beat up a six-year-old child, who later died from her injuries.

Kumamoto Japan teacher suspended for slapping student on the head and kicking him for 35 minutes 04/03/2020

Violent behavior shows up at primary school – and can end there too 03/15/2020

In Kentucky Schools, Hundreds Of Students Are Struck By Staff Each Year. And It’s Legal. 02/20/2020

Perhaps corporal punishment in schools is an answer 11/24/2020

Is it time to end corporal punishment in schools? 07/27/2018

Violence against children and children’s rights April 2017

Council of Europe: Corporal punishment

Progress towards prohibiting all corporal punishment of children in EU member states

NASSP affirms its opposition to the practice of corporal punishment in schools and its support for alternative forms of discipline.

Countries Where Child Corporal Punishment Is Illegal

Has anyone ever died from corporal punishment? 04/0/2020

Wikipedia: Murder of Laree Slack in 2001

Corporal punishment to a child leads to death – Experts warn 02/15/2017

Teacher from hell? Student dies after caning incident 01/21/2020

A Girl is Punished to Death in Alabama: Does Running Count as Corporal Punishment? 02/24/2012

Tragic Death of 13 Year Old Triggers Child Discipline Debate: Where Do We Draw the Line? 11/19/2013

Extremists' Discipline Teachings Connected with Child Abuse and Deaths 04/0/2020

Special Report: Corporal punishment in Mississippi schools 02/20/2019

Mississippi School District Stops Using Corporal Punishment 08/12/2019

Mississippi school district votes to ban corporal punishment, bucking statewide trend 01/29/2018

Must We Hate? Must We Beat Children?

"Must We hate," is of course something people have been asking for decades, especially when they recognize that the reasons for hatred is typically so irrational and senseless and it often does as much damage to those hating as it does to their victims, perhaps depending on who has the more political power. But if the racists do have the political power, as they often have, in Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa and the Segregated South then everyone pays the price.

One of the most famous articles about this was by Archibald Macleish who wrote "I had always thought of this hatred as something exceptional, something transient, something which would disappear with the illiteracy and poverty and ignorance out of which it came." Must We Hate? February 1963 This is true, as far as it goes; however I suspect the most important contributing cause or two wasn't recognized by most people at that time, and still isn't today.

There has been a growing amount of research, since then, showing that one of the leading long term causes of violence is almost certainly early child abuse leading to escalating violence later in life including bullying, hazing, racism, domestic violence, even murder and support for wars based on lies! However, even though this is widely known within the academic community little has been done to educate the majority of the public about it.

Perhaps another leading contributing factor is class conflict, since another leading cause of violence is abandoned inner cities, and wealthy people control the resources to deal with this, including providing much more funds for upper class students for education than for lower classes, especially minorities, and also make decisions about shipping jobs overseas so working class people have their wages suppressed, which is a major contributing cause of poverty and violence. And part of the way they get away with this is by blaming immigrants or minorities for stealing peoples jobs using them as scapegoats in a rigged economy.

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If we can reduce or stop child abuse, poverty, excessive income inequality and other contributing factors of violence and racism there should be little or no doubt that the answer is, no, we don't have to hate each other, eliminating many wars based on lies and racial struggles within our own country!

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I went into some of this in several previous articles including Cause and Effect of Hatred and Dobson’s Indoctrination Machine which explains how early child abuse is part of the indoctrination process that teaches children to blindly obey orders and adopt the beliefs of their parents from an early age without developing critical thinking skills to correct mistakes. Some of the sources I used for past articles include Alice Miller, Philip Greven, Murray Straus, James Garbarino, Barbara Coloroso and more; however none of these good academics get much if any media coverage, and there're are plenty more where they came from. If the media was willing to give a reasonable amount of time to some of the best researchers on this subject then the public would be much better educated on this subject and we could do much more to reduce violence but most of this research only read in the academic world and a small percentage of the public that seeks out the best research from libraries or alternative media.

Some of the lowest rates of violence in the country are in New England, including four states that routinely make it into the bottom ten for murder rates for the past seven or eight years at least, if not much longer, the other two states have occasionally also made it into the bottom ten, and aren't far above when they don't make it. This now includes Massachusetts which has been in the bottom ten for six of the last seven years, (on the seventh year it only missed the bottom ten by less than one tenth of one murder per hundred thousand and came in eleventh) and is the only state, with the possible exception of Minnesota to regularly make it into the bottom ten for murder states that has large abandoned inner cities with well above average murder rates.

One of the academic researchers almost never mentioned by the mainstream media is Charles Appelstein who has worked with troubled kids in foster homes or reform schools and has advised foster parents, teachers, social workers and other people that have worked with troubled youth, to help reform them before it's too late. There's good reason to believe that the tactics that he recommends are different from those used in other parts of the country including the South, for example, he opposes both corporal punishment and boot camp reform programs that use authoritarian methods to teach children to behave, both of which are much more common in the South, which includes the majority of the nineteen states that still allow corporal punishment in schools and as I have pointed out previously in Research On Preventing Violence Absent From National Media these nineteen states had, on average, between 22% and 31% higher murder rates than the other thirty-one states that no longer allow corporal punishment, for the past ten or eleven years.

Charles Appelstein is a leading educator of reformers in New England and they've taken very different tactics from other part of the country, even if the media doesn't report on this. When dealing with troubled youth he advises taking into consideration the abuse that many of them almost certainly went through previously, even is they can't track the experiences of each troubled child. Some of his methods are described in the following except from his book:

Charles Appelstein "No such thing As A Bad Kid" 1998

The Way of Empathy

Would you be terribly upset with a disruptive child if you knew he had been picked on unmercifully at school that day, or denied dinner the night before? Probably not. You would most likely respond empathically to his side of the situation — and rightly so. As important as it is to be in touch with our own emotions, we need to empathize with what is going on for the child and, if only for a moment, walk in his shoes.

I then present the following scenario: "Say that tomorrow morning when you arrive at work, you go directly to the office to watch a video from the worst ten minutes of the child's life. You see him being neglected and abused, and crying out for help. after viewing this tape, how do you think you would respond to the kid as the day unfolds?"

"With a lot more compassion," some will say, or "I don't think I'd be as rough on him," or "I probably wouldn't be able to yell at him." p.17

Suppose you are deciding between two children who are on a waiting list for admission to your group. The first child has lived in four foster homes and has burn marks on his hands, which have been traced to abuses by his father; he is portrayed as a sad and lonely boy who has never had a friend and does not trust adults. the second youngster is described as self-absorbed, manipulative, incapable of following directions, in constant need of attention, and willing to do anything to get it. Which child would you choose? Most people I ask select number one.

In actuality, these description are from two profiles of the same child; only the wording is different. Describe a child's personal history and people want to reach out to him; label his annoying behaviors and people are less willing to help. p.19

When yelling is reduced, children's behavior improves. In one residential program in Massachusetts where the staff significantly reduced their yelling, the use of physical restraints reportedly decreased by more than 50 percent. In other group situations in which yelling has been reduced adults say they are relieved to spend their time listening to the children rather than forcing the children to listen to them. A five-minute time-out, they note, has more impact when it is announced in a calm, supportive tone of voice than when it is ordered in an angry "Sit down for five minutes!" command.

.... How would you feel if you were late handing in a report to your boss and he suddenly spanked you? No adult would tolerate such an gregarious act; it is too demeaning and disrespectful. Imagine, then, what it is like for a child.

Spanking — including swatting, hitting, and tapping — is a maneuver in power and intimidation. Physically, it hurts. Emotionally, it makes a kid angry. The reason we get away with it that the children we spank are small, powerless, and unable to strike us back.

Not only do we save spanking for the young and defenseless but we often fail to see how counterproductive this angry, desperate act usually is. Spanking informs children that physical violence is an appropriate response to frustration. p.24 Charles Appelstein "No such thing As A Bad Kid" 1998 Published by the Gifford School in Weston Massachusetts

Taking into consideration previous abuse when trying to reform troubled children is vital to reform, especially since many boot camp reform programs often escalate previous abuse or intimidation instead of reversing it. there's been an enormous amount of political support for boot camp rehabilitation for decades because it teaches blind obedience; however this is a continuation of abusive child rearing tactics teaching blind obedience under the threat of violence in the form of corporal punishment or other abusive intimidating tactics that impair development of critical thinking skills, leads to blind obedience to authorities or those that are most powerful often other peers, and increased violence.

This teaches kids to blindly go along with the crowd especially if it happens to be a racist crowd.

But, of course what's far more important is preventing children from being abused in the first place and opposition to corporal punishment both at home and in schools is an important part of that; but there has to be some effort to teach at risk parents how counterproductive it is since they were raised to believe it is appropriate. Even though at risk parents were often abused as children they may not have learned how much damage it does, and often resort to the same tactics when raising their own children. I went into this previously in Burying Solutions to Prevent Gilroy, Dayton and El Paso Shootings (Includes excerpt about home-visiting program from "Lost Boys: Why our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them") where I cited Professor James Garbarino's recommendations to educate at risk parents; one of the most effective programs that he recommends is a "home visitor program" for at risk parents which I first heard about in an article in the Boston Globe in the nineties, when it was a relatively new program that was started in Hawaii and Massachusetts was one of the next states to adopt it. At that time the studies from Hawaii showed that it was very effective, since then they've confirmed this repeatedly and the program is now used in almost every state, if not every state, although some may use it more than others.

Apparently the Affordable Care Act expanded funds for this program significantly, which is good since it's far more const effective than ignoring the problem until it gets worse and they have to spend much more money dealing with high court costs for troubled kids. One of the studies James Garbarino cites says that "Babies in a comparison group of 'unvisited' families among an identified high-risk population had four times as much child maltreatment in the first two years of life."

To the best of my knowledge this didn't become a national program in almost every state if not every state until the ACA, and the states that did implement it for years, if not decades, before that have much lower murder rates than average including Massachusetts and Hawaii, as well as Connecticut, although I'm not sure how long they've had it, but a recent study New Evidence Suggests Home Visiting Can Prevent Child Neglect 04/26/2018 show's that it's worked very well and implies that it's not one of the new states that implemented it since the ACA. New Hampshire, which has been at the bottom of the FBI statistics for murder for at least six or seven years, before getting bumped to second last in 2018, also has been implementing it for years, but one local advocate is arguing for more, justifiably so, base don the evidence.

Both these articles and many more studies all agree that this is a very successful program that is helping reduce child abuse and neglect; and there are many other studies that show that child abuse and neglect are major contributing causes to longer term violence including murder, so it's reasonable to assume that this will also help reduce that as well. The New Hampshire article points out that only about 12% of the children that could benefit from this program are enrolled due to N.H. Medicaid requirements which only allow mothers under 21 that enroll their child within two weeks of being born and she argues this should be changed. The study from Connecticut refers to enrolled mothers instead of children, but if they're based on one mother per child then they actually have slightly less per capita, and even if there are many mothers with two or three children enrolled they probably could benefit from expansion.

Another program started in North Carolina in 2008 which was a few years before the ACA enabled a significant expansion in the program according to Durham NC program making a huge difference for families with newborns 12/02/2019 I also found additional articles about new home visiting programs from Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Alaska and Chicago Illinois, all that started since the North Carolina program in 2008, most after the ACA went into effect and a few that were only begun in the last few years; Pennsylvania apparently had some programs since 1989, however they were expanded significantly in recent years and may not have been widely available prior to that. These are all areas with above average murder rates, implying that the programs that were begun years if not decades might be mostly in states that currently have below average murder rates, often in the bottom ten. This isn't enough for a statistical analysis; however the research that is available shows that this could improve things significantly helping bring down long term violence and delinquency, although it's still not getting nearly as much attention as it should.

I haven't always been a big fan of the Affordable Care Act, since it was written with cooperation from insurance companies far more concerned with protecting their own profits than with the most cost effective way to provide health care; but, there should be little doubt that this is a worthwhile, long overdue program, and can go a long way to reduce many social problems including child abuse, violence and racism that are often much more common with abused children especially if they raised by racist parents.

Some of these articles clearly indicate that they're targeting low income at risk parents, often that may have come from abused households themselves. These parents have always needed the best services to overcome their problems but have almost always gotten the worst, since they haven't got the money to pay for them or the educational background to understand how much they might help. Apparently many of these at risk parents have been reluctant to accept help from this program, perhaps because their past experiences with social workers or other government officials including police have often been antagonistic, often treating them as if they've done something wrong and are suspect in some kind of wrong doing or charity cases, while ignoring how the economic system is rigged against the poor and increasingly the middle class as well.

This has been even worse when it comes to rehabilitation of children once they've already begun to have problems with the law, often promoting boot camp reform movements despite evidence of their abuses, and I suspect there is still some indication of class bias, even in programs like those supported by Charles Appelstein, although his recommendations aren't the cause of it, if this is the case. There's certainly no reason to suspect that he might be bigoted or anything like that and he's clearly trying to reduce abuse of children not make it worse but he's not the one making the policy decisions and has to deal with politicians and business people that are constantly trying to cut finds for programs like this, especially for low income people.

One thing that surprised me about the Gifford School, which is for foster children from troubled families, is that it's in Weston Massachusetts, one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest suburb west of Boston.

This made the marbles roll around in my head.

Are they enrolling foster children from Roxbury, Dorchester or Mattapan? How about Chelsea, Everett or Somerville? I have no way for knowing for certain but my best guess is no. Who's going to pay for foster care in such a high priced neighborhood? would there be political opposition? This is supposed to be one of the most liberal areas in the country, and in many ways it probably is but I seriously doubt if they would welcome a school for foster children from some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Eastern Massachusetts.

I wouldn't even be surprised if they were reluctant to accept troubled children from Waltham which is right next to them. There web page says that they only have about a hundred students and that they accept children withing a fifty mile radius, which would include all of these areas. But the areas that you might expect the most foster children to come from are probably the poorest areas that also have the highest rates of violence, and it's highly unlikely that a suburb with a median household income over $200,000 is going to want to take a risk by accepting what might be some of the most violent children.

This doesn't mean of course that all the children that Charles Appelstein worked with were from wealthy families; his book, which was written almost twenty years ago refers to numerous different schools throughout Massachusetts, and perhaps New Hampshire, although he doesn't specify the location of the income from typical foster children; and apparently he has since become a national adviser on the subject, perhaps doing more to teach other child care workers than working directly with kids now.

But the funds and political decisions are often controlled by the wealthy and historically their own prejudices have often been passed down to lower income people, often intentionally, especially in the South. Machiavelli recommended that governments keep the masses poor so they could easily control them; and even though modern politicians aren't nearly as authoritarian, or at least they do a better job pretending otherwise, there are still a lot of them that are clearly trying to rig the economic system. Income inequality and poverty is a major contributing cause of violence and when it's combined with subtle or sometimes more obvious ways to encourage racism as a divide and rule tactic it also leads to racism.

Howard Zinn once wrote about how some of the early slaves in America cooperated with white indentured servants while trying to escape together; the slave owners responded by punishing the African Americans more harshly and encouraging a racial divide telling the white servants that they were from a superior race and, lather encouraging them to blame the Africans Americans for stealing their jobs, a practice which continues today often blaming illegal immigrants or who ever some people might be prejudiced against.

More recently Jonathan Kozol reported about how they used corporal punishment in Roxbury against African Americans that they would never have done to white children; Michael Patrick MacDonald, from South Boston, reported about the treatment his older brother, who eventually committed suicide, went through in juvenile reform school including shock treatment and other abusive methods that were thought to teach people to behave and there are many other stories about abusive rehabilitation methods that are used much more often on lower income people, especially minorities.

These were decades ago, and the tactics used to rehabilitate or rear children have been changing dramatically since then but they're all being done at the local level and the vast majority of the public isn't aware of it. we have good research on the most effective methods to reduce violence but the vast majority of the public is unaware of it. The leading reason for this is that both the media and the political establishment is controlled by a small fraction of the wealthiest people and they control the information we use to make political decisions. Instead of educating the public about the most effective ways to reduce violence they provide repetitive propaganda that enables them to rig the economy which often makes things worse in areas where they don't do their own independent research.

The advantage of this, intentionally or not, is that it provides enormous amount of research opportunities by comparing areas using more effective methods to educate their kids and when necessary reform those that don't get the early care they need to those that don't do this so well. But of course, the bigger problem is that the media is still controlled by the wealthy and they have an unfair advantage when it comes to deciding which programs get funded.

In order for a democracy to function properly we have to allow all people access to a good education and the best research about every given subject, especially when it comes to reducing violence or fraudulent ways that wealthy people rig the economy in their own favor, which is essentially white collar crime and indirectly contributes to other types of crime endangering everyone.

At the end of his book Charles Appellstein writes, "It's too bad kids at risk can't vote, because if they could, increased assistance would win hands down. But today's sober reality is that many troubled kids and the adults who care for them are grossly under-supported," which is close to the truth but it's not good enough. Furthermore, funding good programs, with reasonable oversight, would save much more than it costs, since it's far cheaper than ignoring problems until they get much worse and we have to deal with high crime rates and prison populations, which current polices often create. They also need to have access to accurate information to make those decisions as well, which means that the best researchers needs a fair opportunity to inform the public about their work, without middlemen or reporters hired by wealthy people with a fiscal ideology.

Edit 12/21/2019: Prior to writing this I sent an E-mail to Charles Appellstein and a second one after I completed it, he probably didn't have time to respond earlier but sent the following reply afterward:

I was hired to provide training and consultation, many years ago, on behalf of the Gifford School. I never actually worked there. I think they welcomed kids from Boston. And because it's a day school, I don't believe the neighbors had much influence in who they accepted. Residential programs often have more tension with NIMBY (not in my backyard).

Sadly, Cambridge and Boston schools have a large number of kids who need special ed services. As a result, they often try and educate these kids in-house rather than spending big bucks sending them to private schools like Gifford.

Home visiting is certainly an effective intervention in preventing abuse and neglect.

Years ago I read a book that changed my life...written by 3 authors including James Garbarino, called Social Support Networks.

In it, they basically state that lack of support leads people to make bad decisions - such as abusive behavior.

Take a look at my handout. Look at the Eco Map. This is a very important tool. You can put a kid and/or family in the middle and then rate their support networks from -3 (significant lack of support in this area) to +3 (lots of support in this area). People who abuse their kids often have minimal support in their lives (e.g. few friends, few meaningful members, terrible financial resources, schools who are at times adversarial since their kids are problematic, lack of counseling/parenting/psychological support, no recreational opportunities, etc.)

Home visiting is a good intervention but it should be one of many that help connect at-risk family members to more sources of support.

Any time I work with a troubled family (or kid) my number one job is to raise numbers on their eco map by improving family connections, helping with job possibilities, getting them to attend church, providing parent training, encouraging recreational pursuits, helping them connect with neighbors, etc.

Every number that is raised on an eco map increases the odds for better behavior and higher functioning.

At every training I do, I ask the following question: Why do we have so many troubled kids and families?

I then say: "Here's my take...How many of you know the neighbors on your street where you live now just like you did when you were young?" Few hands go up. "How many of you see your immediate family (brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.) like you did when you were younger" Few hands go up. That's why we have so much abuse and neglect. The people who commit these atrocious acts are often isolated and, many times, also victims of abuse themselves and require psychological support.

To prevent hatred and violence, we need to systemically help people forge more meaningful and plentiful connections.

Human beings function better when they are happy. And when they are happy they use more parts of their brain. And what makes people happy: Meaningful social connections and support.

A good home visitor should, as part of their role, help family members to enhance and broaden their support networks.

This isn't the first time I received responses from academic researchers studying how to reduce violence, in addition to Charles Appellstein, James Garbarino, Murray Straus, Sherry Hamby, Susan Linn, and a few other academics have also replied, yet I'm sure many of these researchers are very busy. These researchers almost certainly didn't go into their careers to make as much money as they can, although I'm sure that's one factor, they did it because they wanted to address social problems.

If they can find the time to help someone like me, with a small following, that pokes through non-fiction books and asks a few questions, I have no doubt that they would be willing to help good reporters from mainstream media report on the most effective solutions to social problems, and some of them have come right out and said so, I think including Dorothy Otnow Lewis, who did get a little coverage at least once, but indicated that she would like to draw much more attention to this research.

Politicians and national media pundits almost certainly get paid much more than these researchers and they have the ability to do far more to educate the public about this research so that they could drive up popular support for programs that work, instead of relying almost exclusively on punishment as a deterrent, which is almost the only thing we hear from the traditional media, yet they choose not to.

The parts of the country that have the least amount of violence often have the most progressive, and perhaps best educated people willing to support good programs that stop social problems before they escalate and that may not rely solely on mainstream media for their information. The parts of the country, mainly the South, that rely almost exclusively in punishment as a deterrent are the ones that usually do have the highest rates of violence. Fortunately, while checking on the home visitor program I found that now it's even expanding in the South or the states with the highest murder rates. I didn't find much on Louisiana, which consistently has the highest murder rates for years if not decades, but they do have some programs, but Missouri, Maryland, Alabama and South Carolina have more news stories about expanding these programs.

Both Professor Garbarino and Charles Appellstein recommend community involvement including from churches; however they don't support some of the most extreme beliefs about strict use of corporal punishment that James Dobson recommends. This is part of the reason why some of the most religious areas in the Bible Belt are also some of the most violent; community involvement from churches can be helpful, but not if it's from extremist churches or cults.

If we can reduce violence as much as we have over the past twenty to thirty years without much help from the media and political establishment we can do much better with their help if they were reformed; some countries in Europe have already done this, and they have murder rates that are a fraction of ours often under 1 per 100,000 while ours is about 5.

These are my views and I don't expect some of these academics to agree completely with them, perhaps, since they have to be tactful if they want to get more media attention in the future. But if we can reform the political establishment at the grassroots and perhaps either create new media that does a better job or reform them as well, including the way they're financed, then we could solve many of these problems much more effectively.



The following are some additional sources on the subject:

"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was 'illegal.' It was 'illegal' to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws." Letter From a Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King Jr. 16 April 1963

"'Rights' were something enjoyed by decent folk, and perhaps also by the serious professional criminal, who avoided violence and could afford a lawyer." Broken Windows James Wilson George Kelling March 1982

Zimbabwe bans the beating of children 03/02/2017

Zimbabwe caning: Court bans 'inhuman' juvenile punishment 04/04/2019

Disabled boy who murdered abusive neo-Nazi dad at age 10 to stay locked up until 23 after court decision 10/06/2016

The Hate Report: The Nazis are coming for your children 01/19/2018

This Is What Happens When You Hit Your Kids 09/19/2014

8 Ways You Can Stop Child Abuse Today! 02/07/2017

New Evidence Suggests Home Visiting Can Prevent Child Neglect 04/26/2018

Home Visiting in Maryland: Opportunities & Challenges for Sustainability 07/17/2012 There has been an infusion of federal grant funds under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act1 (ACA; “health care reform”) which is driving interest in expanding and sustaining Home Visiting programs. The ACA established the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program as part of Title V-Section 511 of the Social Security Act.

My Turn: Data shows that children need home visiting 04/15/2019

Home Visiting for South Carolina

Home Visiting In Idaho

Statewide Overview of Home Visiting Services in Alabama 09/20/2016

Missouri Home Visiting Programs

Parents as Teachers

Home Visiting and Maternal Mental Health

Which home visiting programs are effective in reducing child maltreatment? 05/29/2018

Pew's home visiting project

In Houston County, Georgia, nurses visit some new parents in the comfort of their homes – for free 01/16/2019

Home visiting program sends nurses into homes of new moms 01/25/2019

Free nurse visits for new parents in Pennsylvania 01/03/2019

Home-visit care for newborns helps allay parents' fears 06/18/2012

Chicago to Offer Free Home Nursing Services to Families with Newborns 11/19/2019

Nurses Bring In-Home Care, Connections in North Carolina 11/12/2019

Program offers free home visits from nurses for first-time, low-income mothers 12/04/2017

How Universal Home Visiting Models Can Support Newborns and Their Families 09/26/2019

Life and Death in a Troubled Teen Boot Camp 11/12/2015 In between, boys were made to do up-downs, scissor kicks, push-ups and wall sits until their legs burned and their lungs were on fire. “The bigger you were and the stronger you were and the more you liked fucking up the little guys, the more powerful you were,” says Hatton.

When Wilderness Boot Camps Take Tough Love Too Far 08/12/2014 Troubled teens are occasionally sent to corrective outdoor programs, where they hike for days or perform manual labor. But some parents are saying the physical exertion verges on abuse.

BOOT CAMP FOR KIDS: Torturing Teens for Fun and Profit

Report Recounts Horrors of Youth Boot Camps 10/11/2007 WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — Reports of abuse of troubled young people in privately run boot camps and other residential treatment centers are widespread, with examples numbering in the thousands, according to a federal report released Wednesday. The report also found that managers of these programs, which are largely unregulated, faced little or no punishment for their actions.

Children in boot camp abuse investigation suffer lasting damage, lawyer says 08/06/2015 The solution, it declared, could be a police-sponsored boot camp for southeast Los Angeles County youth held at a military base in the mountains of San Luis Obispo. There, children would be inculcated with the three pillars of the LEAD program: Leadership, Empowerment and Discipline. Instead, authorities contend that the camp became a breeding ground for vicious assaults and physical and emotional abuse. A two-month investigation that included searching the cellphones, computers, vehicles, photos and belongings of camp leaders.

8 Charged In Teen's Boot Camp Death 11/28/2006

Feds: No civil right charges in teen's Florida boot camp death 04/17/2010

States Pressed As 3 Boys Die At Boot Camps 07/15/2001 The death of Tony Haynes, a 14-year-old, in the Arizona desert this month is increasing calls for stronger regulation of outdoor camps for troubled youths, an industry that has grown substantially over the last 20 years. At least 31 teenagers in 11 states have died at these camps since 1980, including 3 this year, in widely diverse circumstances. In Arizona, investigators said they were told that before Tony Haynes died counselors physically abused him and forced him to eat dirt.

Camp Fear November/December 2000 ISSUE Gina Score was the latest teenager to die at a juvenile boot camp. Why do so many states still insist that humiliation and abuse will straighten out troubled kids?

Wilderness therapy programs claim they'll straighten out your troubled teen with tough love and survival training. Some kids never come back. 12/0/2019

When tough love becomes brutal 10/14/2007

Prevention of violence has to address all causes, not just Guns!

The BBC initially reported on the Parkland School shooting, within hours of when it happened, by describing the standard operating procedure that we go through after each of these shootings declaring that we'll go through the same exact ritual without even changing it or recognizing how absurd it was. There was at least one other pundit that provided the same bleak description in one of the most recent other mass shootings and he turned out to be right.

You might get the impression that there is nothing that can be done about this and that we should simply accept it as a fact of life that is unavoidable!

That would be totally false!

There's plenty of good research on the causes of violence and, contrary to the coverage from the mainstream media, the only contributing factor is not gun control, although there is evidence to indicate that there are less gun deaths in states with more reasonable gun control laws. Nor is it mental illness, although there's significant evidence that this is also a major contributing cause; however, even though it is a major contributing cause the coverage about it provided by the mainstream media is almost useless, explaining little or nothing about how to treat it, or more important, to prevent it from happening in the first place!

I've gone into a series of articles, listed below, a few years ago with numerous contributing causes of escalating violence and it should be clear that they all need to be dressed which would dramatically reduce all violence, not just school shootings.

Reasonable gun control is one of those issues that should be addressed; however I doubt if it's the most important one, although when it comes to the biggest mass shootings, it may be, or at least it may appear to be. The most important contributing cause of violence, including mass shootings in schools or elsewhere, and perhaps even wars based on lies, is almost certainly early child abuse that escalates to bullying, hazing, more domestic abuse and other forms of violence including war and mass shootings. The second most important contributing factor is almost certainly abandoned inner cities where they have highly dysfunctional education and economic systems about a hundred and twenty-five of them throughout the country have more than double the national murder rate, which is already higher than the murder rates in countries like Canada and many European countries.



Two or three dozen countries, mostly in Europe, have murder rates less than 1 per 100,000 people, while the United States has a rate of above 5, which recently dipped below 5 briefly before climbing back up. Most of these countries probably do the best job providing child care and education; and as I have reported previously the majority of them have banned the use of corporal punishment either in home or in schools.

Some of the best researchers, including child psychologist James Garbarino and child rearing and bullying expert Barbara Coloroso, pictured above, have explained how abusing children at an early age teaches them to deal with their problems through violence. They've also explained how to deal with bullying and to prevent it from leading to escalating violence, like Columbine, which happened in Barbara Coloroso's home town of Littleton Colorado. This is also the same general area where James Dobson and his organization "Focus on the Family" is based, which has a very different view about early child rearing.

Unlike Barbara Coloroso he recommends use of corporal punishment starting as early as eighteen months with babies before they even learn how to talk completely or develop critical thinking skills. In addition to evidence from the European states that have banned the use of corporal punishment in both the home and schools, and have murder rates below one, less than a fifth of U.S. rates, additional evidence shows that the nineteen states that still allow it in the schools also have among the highest murder rates in the country. At least six or seven of those nineteen states make it into the top ten every year and until 2016 the only one in the bottom ten was Idaho, with Wyoming coming close, but they're the two states that have it on the books but almost never use it. The states that use it the most are the ones consistently in the top ten, and they also have the most abandoned inner cities where they don't provide adequate education or child care to children.

Early investigation into the causes of violence is almost always incomplete, especially when a large percentage of the public is often in denial about attributing the cause of violence to abuse that the perpetrator might have been subject to. The typical response might be "THAT'S NOT AN EXCUSE!," or "yea but I was spanked or abused and I didn't turn into a mass murderer." This is often accompanied by a desire to get angry at the perpetrator, which is obviously understandable; but this anger often leads people to go into denial about contributing causes if it could be interpreted as an "excuse" or mitigating circumstances.

However, research into many of the worst mass murderers, including from psychologist Dorothy Otnow Lewis, who said that she has always found evidence of major abuse, often including hospital records or police records, and it is almost always much worse than what most people coming from strict authoritarian homes have to deal with. Furthermore, when it comes to preventing violence from escalating wee need to recognize the causes and prevent them from happen before it escalates. When Dylann Roof went on his shooting spree as I reported previously in The Media Is Following The Wrong Script Ignoring Solutions Again he was badly abused long before he became a mass murderer, and this is common among racist people who are often raised by racist and abusive parents that teach their own beliefs using coercive violence. If an abused child blames the minorities whether it's blacks or Jews that the abusive parent says is responsible for problems they don't get abused, if they point out flaws in the logic they know they're be beat, so after repeating lies to themselves long enough people like Dylann adopt the same racists beliefs as their parents.

There isn't as much evidence to indicate the same problems, at least that I know of, with Nikolas Cruz, but there is already some, although the media rarely repeats anything that might be considered as mitigating circumstances or and "excuse" as indicated in the following excerpts:

State investigated shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz after self-harm 02/17/2018

The agency was called to investigate. Cruz, then 18, was listed as an “alleged victim” of medical neglect and inadequate supervision; his adoptive mother, then-68-year-old Lynda Cruz, the “alleged perpetrator.”

“Mr. Cruz was on Snapchat cutting both of his arms,” the Florida DCF abuse hotline was told in August 2016. “Mr. Cruz has fresh cuts on both his arms. Mr. Cruz stated he plans to go out and buy a gun.”

According to the paper, DCF’s investigation was completed that Nov. 12. The agency concluded that Cruz had not been mistreated by his mother, was receiving adequate care from a mental health counselor and was attending school. Complete article Nikolas Cruz, Florida Shooting Suspect, Showed ‘Every Red Flag’ 02/15/2018

He said that Mr. Cruz at one point had gone to a school for students with special needs. “Kids were really picking on him and would gang up on him and beat him up a little,” Mr. Gold said. “They ostracized him. He didn’t have many friends.”

He said that Mr. Cruz’s mother had done what she could to take care of him, and that the two had an extremely strong bond.

“His mother was his entire life and when he lost her, I believe that was it for the boy’s peace of mind,” he said. Complete article

Like Columbine there is apparently evidence to indicate that bullying might have been a contributing factor, however it wasn't reported nearly as widely. When Columbine happened they reported much more on the culture in their school exposing the bullying that was going on and one of the students that helped expose this was Brooks Brown and as he described in his book he was also ostracized for speaking out against it. Barbara Coloroso also investigated this and tried to point out that this was a contributing cause in her book “The Bullied, the Bully and the Bystander” where she wrote, ‘After the video tapes shot by Dylan and Eric were made public well over a year after the shootings, there was still a sense of entitlement and superiority expressed by at least one member of the Columbine football team. In his mind, he had a right to taunt and torment anyone who was “different,” anyone for whom he had contempt: “Columbine is a good, clean place except for those rejects. Most kids don’t want them here. They were into witchcraft. They were into voodoo. Sure we teased them. But what do you expect with kids who come to school with weird hairdos and horns on their hats? It’s not just jocks; the whole schools disgusted with them. They’re a bunch of homos…If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease ‘em. So the whole school would call them homos….”'

Unfortunately the media didn't report the bullying that Nikolas Cruz nearly as widely, nor, as far as I can tell did they provide much if any opportunity for good researchers like Barbara Coloroso or James Garbarino however they did invite David Cullen, who the media portrays as an expert on Columbine to come on TV at least a couple times, as they often do after more school shootings happen, even though he has demonstrated that he's in denial about how bullying leads to escalating violence as I found out about seven years ago when I encountered him on Open Salon and had this conversation with him and after I pointed out the above quote from Barbara Coloroso, instead of addressing it he said, "for those just tuning in, one flaw in zach's logic: he's citing researchers who DID NOT research columbine, but relied on conclusions about the data they read in the media," and stopped responding to my comments. I accepted his claim that they weren't direct researchers at the time but later found out that Barbara Coloroso lived in that city and was much closer to it and did research it directly. He also relied on Robert Hare as one of his experts who I read up on more after that conversation and found out that he was incredibly incompetent, as I pointed out in the article about that conversation.

Apparently the conservative ideology may have also enabled one of the survivors of the Columbine massacre to get elected to the local legislature according to Colorado state rep, Columbine survivor, pushes to end gun-free zones in schools 02/20/2018 As I indicated previously gun control is almost certainly not as important as important a contributing factor as stopping early abuse or abandoned inner cities, but as one of the articles listed below indicates the evidence does seem to indicate that there is less gun violence in states with more reasonable gun control, and much fewer suicides, not to mention that it would also make it much less likely that a shooting turned into a mass murder if the shooter couldn't get military style assault rifles, which apparently was easier for him to get than a handgun which he couldn't have bought until he was twenty-one.

This same legislature apparently voted to kill a bill, last year that would have banned corporal punishment in Colorado, which is one of the nineteen states that still allows it. A 2002 study, "School Shooting Fatalities and School Corporal Punishment: A Look at the States," reported in The Psychology of Child Torture 01/18/2018 also showed that school shootings and deaths were more common in the states that still allowed corporal punishment at that time, when it was still twenty-three. The surge in shootings this year also indicates that, at least this year they're much more common in the nineteen states that still allow corporal punishment with five out of seven of the school shootings and all twenty of the deaths, as of this writing, in states that allow corporal punishment. However, in the years in between it hasn't been quite as clear, and there seem to have been some odd statistical swings including a surge from only seven incidents in 2011 to thirty-six incidents in 2014 when it peaked before declining to only nine last year, seeming to indicate that it the problem might be getting better for one reason or another, until this year with seven in only seven or eight weeks.

The peak for deaths was in 2012 when the Newtown shooting took place, with an exceptionally high number. However last year only one of the nine shootings took place in schools still allowing corporal punishment. And even though the total number of shootings in between the 2002 study and this year has as many if not more shootings in states that still allow corporal punishment the total number of deaths seems to have been in states that have banned it thanks to a small number of high profile shootings that killed a large number of people.

No doubt the gun control conspiracy theorists might claim that this is part of the conspiracy to advance gun control by using this as an excuse; however since the number of deaths is still very small compared to the total number of murders each year which is usually about fifteen thousand, and they're a result of a small number of big shootings rational skeptics might justifiable claim that this is a statistical anomaly which is more common without a large enough representation, which we shouldn't want, of course. Furthermore the gun rights advocates pushing these conspiracy theories ignore the fact that if that was the objective they probably would have done a far more effective job passing laws to restrict guns than they have; and there's little or no doubt that behind the scenes lobbying by the NRA, as well as their public activity is the real reason why gun control laws are so arbitrary and irrational that they make it easier to get a military style assault rifle that enabled this shooting to kill so many in this shooting.



We may not have enough research to explain all these bizarre swings in gun violence but there is enough to indicate that the media isn't covering the best research and that if they did that we could dramatically reduce violence like Europe does, where many of their countries have less than one murder per hundred thousand people.

Some things should be so incredibly obvious that everyone should understand them like if we spend an enormous amount of money trying to justify cuts to education and child care and more on the military so we can fight wars based on lies that it is bound to backfire one way or another. It shouldn't be hard to figure out that one of the ways this is happening is high violence in abandoned inner cities and occasionally there are even mass shootings in wealthier communities that aren't accustomed to this violence. It should also be clear that if major economic inequality is a major part of the problem, which one of my previous articles listed below indicated it is, that an economic system that rewards professions that are more concerned with deceiving the public like advertising, lobbying, union busting, and other profession that are more concerned about shifting wealth to the rich than providing a service for the public is also a major contributing cause of violence, although it might require a closer look at some of the research assuming people actually want to learn the truth.

The protests demanding gun control resulting from this shooting seems to be building faster than most, and if they get some results that is great but if they only address part of the causes, and not the most important parts then it's not going to help much.

We shouldn't be just trying to eliminate gun violence when it finally hits a wealthy community but protect all of us.

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Edit 02/23/2018: Alisyn Camerota got in a debate with Dana Loesch, who said, "many in legacy media love mass shootings," at a CPAC speech; and she was outraged that Loesch would even suggest such a thing saying, "How Dare You!?" and that it's not "helpful" to even suggest such a thing or "have this conversation." Perhaps it's not helpful to put to much of a priority on this conversation, but as long as they refuse to discuss many of the most important contributing causes of violence, and they continue to provide an enormous amount of hype creating more ads trying to present themselves as a reliable sources, I don't think we should completely rule it out.

However it's not just the people in the media providing an enormous amount of hype, including some of whom do seem to enjoy debating around in circles without accomplishing anything, it's also the spokespeople from the NRA. People from both sides of the argument are resorting to demagoguery and demonstrating with their actions that they seem more interested in winning debate points or getting gotcha moments than they are in educating the public about the most important contributing causes.

Their town hall meeting looked more like a prepared cult cheering squad where the crowd was more concerned about humiliating Marco Rubio, than they were discussing the most important contributing causes of violence or accomplishing anything. I don't want to jump on the bandwagon of people saying this is all staged, but some degree of planning must be involved to set the atmosphere for the discussion and they have demonstrated far better skills in the past instead of constantly cheering like it's a foot ball game. I'm not fan of Marco Rubio or obsessive gun rights, and by caving to the NRA so badly he helped set himself up, but reporting to the same demagoguery as the NRA instead of educating the public on all contributing causes of violence, not just access to guns, they're playing into their hands an ensuring that little or nothing will get done!

If Alisyn Camerota thinks it's not helpful to have this debate, then she shouldn't have put it front and center, and she should have discussed, in a calm rational manner, many other issues. This is a classic propaganda tactic repeating the same things over and over with appeals to emotion, ensuring that little or no education takes place!

Alisyn Camerota Confronts Dana Loesch For Saying Media ‘Loves’ Mass Shootings: ‘How Dare You!?’ 02/2/2018

CNN anchor to NRA spokesperson: How dare you 02/23/2018



Edit 02/27/2018: The bickering and scapegoating is going on non-stop but still there's no effort to discuss the most important contributing factors leading up to escalating violence. Trump's claim that he would have gone in even without a gun is so laughable that it's hard to imagine how he could possibly not predict how much he would be ridiculed for it. But even the more serious claims avoids any discussion about how to prevent violence from escalating, instead focusing on how to stop the shootings at the last minute, often in a possible shoot out, blaming each other without providing any rational discussions.

According to Armed Parkland officer believed shots came from outside school, attorney says 02/2/2018, before making that laughable claim that he would have gone in even without a gun Trump said that Peterson was a "coward;" however that alleged "coward" previously won the award for "School Resource Deputy of the Year" for what it's worth. This should be a clear indication that the great and glorious people that they train to save us in a dramatic manner aren't quite as foolish as the media tries to make them appear, nor are they as glorious as they were portrayed before declining to go in.

I can't keep track of all the senseless bickering, but would you go in with guns blazing if you heard an AR-15 going of in the school?

I certainly wouldn't!

You might get the impression that there's no other solution but to wait to the last minute and that we have to accept the fact that school shootings are a fact of life if you rely solely on the traditional media, but once you look at alternative media outlets, if you sort through the best of them there are others that do a much better job reviewing the causes, including Mike Klonsky who speculated about school size in a couple articles including Another look at school size and the Parkland shooting. This is relatively small example, however I've spot checked his articles from time to time and I'm also sure that he supports smaller class room size, not just the schools and opposes privitization of education that is being pushed by the entire political establishment and media along with Diane Ravitch and other good researchers. Given time I could find a lot more of them, but tehy get little or no coverage from the traditional media which only covers hype and distracts the public from the most effective solutions.

After everyone lined up to demonize Scott Peterson, Jake Tapper did the same to Scott Israel, without discussing the best research. I'm no fan of most of these people they're demonizing, since they also ignore the most effective research, but the worst of them are the ones that should be covering the good research including Jake Tapper.



Edit: 03/01/2018: Since this shooting in addition to the bickering on TV without discussing the most rational research they have apparently also tried to start censoring Wikipedia, which isn't the first time. When writing this article I noticed that they broke their list up into separate tables for each year and added a summation so that people could recognize how much it is rising or declining each year, and although I didn't realize it until I went through the history, there was another shooting four days after it which was added to the list but then retracted because it was an attempted suicide. An article circulating on Twitter also reported another one which is not on the list Reported in 3rd-grader accidentally discharges officer's gun 02/05/2018

I haven't joined in the discussion on Wikipedia, although have been a regular cotributor there at one point, which is how I found out about how at some times they have censored things and favored the NRA while pretending to be neutral. An older version that shows the improved organization which has now been retracted is listed here along with the listing about the attempted suicide before it was withdrawn There was also one more school Shooting yesterday, Cops: Teacher who fired shot in classroom once tried confess to murder 03/01/2018 which as of this writing it hasn't been added to Wikipedia, although I'm reasonably certain that it will soon and won't fit the criteria they use to suppress other stories about shootings happening in schools.

I went through similar problems in 2009 when I attempted to write an article about preventing school violence, which they claimed didn't meet the criteria for Wikipedia's neutrality policies; however they did allow obvious biased discussion from supporters of gun rights organizations including discussions about arming teachers and input from Ted Nugent, yet they refused to allow discussion about gun control or input from researchers, including psychologists and child rearing experts, that supported solving problems about child abuse and bullying leading to escalating violence. One of the editors at Wikipedia who was also an administrator there was an admitted member of the NRA and clearly demonstrating his bias in their favor, suppressing any discussion of gun control, and leading the opposition to providing input from academic experts, yet instead of calling him out for his obvious bias most of the other editors supported him. The conspiracy theories that they seem to support about false flags to take away their guns, lack much if any credible evidence, and the fact that there is no success for even the minimal attempts at reasonable gun control implies that is such a conspiracy exists it's incredibly ineffective, yet their bias strongly implies that if there's a conspiracy, with rational and credible evidence, it's to prevent reasonable gun control or other discussion of effective solutions to violence.

I described these problems in two articles at that time one on a Wikipedia user page of my own, User:Zacherystaylor/preventing school violence and a second on a separate page off Wikipedia now re-posted on Blogspot about Wikipedia Censorship (The original article of this is still on Tripod and cited in the Wikipedia User page).



The following are additional sources on the subject:

School shooter showed violence and mental instability at home, police reports reveal 02/17/2018

Florida shooting suspect was adopted and both of his parents recently died 02/15/2018

Florida High School Killing Suspect Nikolas Cruz Vented Racist and Violent Fantasies Against Black, Gay and Hispanic People in Online Group Chat 12/17/2017

White Supremacists Claim Nikolas Cruz Trained With Them; Students Say He Wore Trump Hat in School 12/15/2017

Killer in a Trump hat: Shirtless Florida gunman does backyard target practice wearing one of the President's Make America Great Again baseball caps before murdering 17 children in school massacre 12/16/2017

Snopes: Did the Florida Shooter's Instagram Profile Picture Feature a MAGA Hat? True 12/1/2017

No, Lax Parenting Is Not to Blame for School Shootings 02/16/2018

Alabama school board members take steps to finally get rid of corporal punishment 12/09/2017

Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid 09/01/2005 Adapted excerpt from "The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America"

“The Bullied, the Bully and the Bystander” by Barbara Coloroso.

Analysis: Bullying expert Barbara Coloroso provides tips for parents, educators 11/22/2010

National anti-bullying expert defines the problem — and the solutions 09/28/2016

Max Hayman Award 2011 James Garbarino, PhD

The far-right smear campaign against students who survived the Parkland massacre 02/19/2018

School shootings in the United States

List of school shootings in the United States organized by state

Wikipedia: United States presidential election, 2016



The following are my past articles on numerous contributing causes to escalating violence:

Ignored evidence linking corporal punishment, poverty and crime grows

Does lack of education increase violent crime? Religion?

Media is aiding and abetting in Televangelist Fraud

Apartheid States of America

Megalithic Churches correlated with local murder rates

How much does Income Inequality Affects Crime Rates?

States with high murder rates have larger veteran populations

Teach a soldier to kill and he just might

The tragedy of gambling politics in United States

How does gambling and gun control impact violent crime?

Politics, not technology, caused botched executions

Troy, Cameron, Gary all innocent? And executed?

Democrats do a bad job on crime; Republicans and the Media are worse!!

Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit

Life Insurance and media companies are encouraging lots of murders

Union Busting adds to corrupt bureaucracy and incites crime