School Shootings And Bullying: A Sociological Analysis

The structure of society influences the options available to the people living in the society. School shootings and bullying are executed because of how society’s institutions, such as small town schools, are structured. This structure influences and limits our agency to act. In order to understand school shootings and bullying, you need to first understand the social structure of small town schools. This understanding will assist in looking at school shooting and bullying with a sociological imagination. Sociology can help us to understand why school shootings happen and why they happen more often in rural communities. This is because sociologists believe that our lives are shaped by the social structure, which is the way society

Sociologists look at the world through a sociological imagination. C. Wright Mills (2012: 15) states “the sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals.” Using our sociological imagination we can examine school shootings in depth. If school shootings and bullying are examined without using a sociological imagination, all we can identify, as the problem behind the incidents, are the flaws of the individual. This is an insufficient way to view these incidents. If we examine school shootings and bullying with a sociological imagination, we can identify that the social structure of society make these incidents possible. Having a sociological imagination allows us to understand the shooter’s or bully’s perspective as well as the victim’s perspective. School shootings and bullying are not just personal troubles caused by the flaws of the individuals; they are public issues that are caused or influenced by the flaws in society, social structure, or social institutions. As shown in Rampage,

The institutional arrangements in small town schools is where the majority of the flaws are. One institutional arrangement in small town schools that is a major flaw, is that the horizontal and vertical exchange of information is blocked. Vertical exchange of information is when information is passed from the student, to the teacher, and then to the principal or vice principal. A good example of a block on vertical exchange of information is the space shuttle Challenger. The working engineers found a fatal flaw in the shuttle and told their superiors. The information moved up the hierarchy but never reached the executives that could change the launch date. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if the information reaches the individual who could make the changing decision. In the film Bully, the parents, of some kids that were being bullied, went to the principle of the school to address the bullying issue. The principle said that they would do everything that they could but nothing ever changed for their kid. Horizontal exchange of information, is the information exchanged between teachers, or between students, or between teachers and the guidance counselor. The most common horizontal exchange of information in small town schools, is the clean slate policy. The clean slate policy is that the students’ old teachers are not allowed to share information with the