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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.23083
EAN num: 9780609606131
ISBN number: 0609606131
Label: Crown
Manufacturer: Crown
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 208
Printing Date: October 05, 1999
Publishing house: Crown
Release Date: October 05, 1999
Sale Popularity Level: 157902
Studio: Crown
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There is perhaps no bigger or more important issue in America at present than youth violence. Jonesboro; Paducah; Pearl, Mississippi; Stamps, Arkansas; Conyers, Georgia; and, of course, Littleton, Colorado. We know them all too well, and for all the wrong reasons: kids, some as young as eleven years old, taking up arms and, with deadly, frightening accuracy, murdering anyone in their paths. What is going on? According to the authors of Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill, there is blame to be laid right at the feet of the makers of violent video games (called 'murder trainers' by one expert), the TV networks, and the Hollywood movie studios--the people responsible for the fact that children witness literally thousands of violent images a day.
Authors Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano offer incontrovertible evidence, much of it based on recent major scientific studies and empirical research, that movies, TV, and video games are not just conditioning children to be violent--and unaware of the consequences of that violence--but are teaching the very mechanics of killing. Their book is a much-needed call to action for every parent, teacher, and citizen to help our children and stop the wave of killing and violence gripping America's youth. And, most important, it is a blueprint for us all on how that can be achieved.
In Paducah, Kentucky, Michael Carneal, a fourteen-year-old boy who stole a gun from a neighbor's house, brought it to school and fired eight shots at a student prayer group as they were breaking up. Prior to this event, he had never shot a real gun before. Of the eight shots he fired, he had eight hits on eight different kids. Five were head shots, the other three upper torso. The result was three dead, one paralyzed for life. The FBI says that the average, experienced, qualified law enforcement officer, in the average shootout, at an average range of seven yards, hits with less than one bullet in five. How does a child acquire such killing ability? What would lead him to go out and commit such a horrific act?
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Rated by buyers 
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Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill, A Call To Action Against TV, Movie, & Video Game Violence, written by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano. The book is well written and has very good intentions. I also admired the research collected and shown throughout the book. They make many good points that in some ways are hard to argue and I agree with a lot of what they say. Yet despite this I find myself strongly disagreeing with the polemic stance they take against media, specifically video games. Hasty generalizations of the industry and the viewers and consumers of media plague the book and give it a strong sense of heavily biased propaganda. Yes, tragic events like the Columbine High School massacre are horrible and should be prevented. Yet, is media the sole cause of such actions perpetuated by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? Grossman and DeGaetano believe so, even going so far as to claim that video games are murder simulators. Claims like these made by the authors are ridiculously out of touch with reality and are only employed by the authors to get an emotional response of fear from their readers. Unlike Grossman and DeGeatano, I hope to explore this topic of media violence and the effects of it without the use of fear based tactics and polemics. I plan on going through points made by Grossman and DeGeatano and refute and explore them further. By doing so, I believe we can come to a conclusion that is actually valid and productive in helping society handle these forms of media.
Over the past century moral crusaders, like Grossman and DeGaetano, and politicians have protested that cars, radio, movies, rock music, and even comic books cause youth immorality, violence, and crime. These fears were usually accompanied by calls for control and censorship. In the wake of school shootings during the 90s, like the Columbine High School massacre, video games were now put in the hot seat. People were understandably concerned with what was going on with the country's youth. Were their own kids safe?
What would make kid turn into a cold-blooded murder? More importantly, what was the cause and how can it be prevented? "In 2000 the FBI issued a report on school rampage shootings, finding that their rarity prohibits the construction of a useful profile of a "typical" shooter." (Sternheimer) The results from the FBI report are surprisingly different from the conclusions of mainstream media and Grossman and DeGaetano. Why is that? "In the absence of a simple explanation, public symbolically linked these rare and complex events to the shooters' alleged interest in video games, finding in them a catchall explanation for what seemed unexplainable." (Sternheimer) This was the mindset of the general public towards media and video games. It was also the conclusion Grossman and DeGaetano came to and the very idea that fuelled their moral crusade.
Why is it that the FBI can't create of profile of a shooter but the media and people like Grossman and DeGaetano can? Well it's just the same thing that has happened throughout this century with earlier forms of entertainment. "Politicians and other moral crusaders frequently create "folk devils," individuals or groups defined as evil and immoral. Folk devils allow us to channel our blame and fear, offering a clear course of action to remedy what many believe to be a growing problem. Video games, those who play them, and those who create them have become contemporary folk devils because they seem to pose a threat to children." (Sternheimer) Like cars, radio, movies, rock music, and comic books before it, video games have been cast as the main folk devil of our time. Is the concern about video games proportionate to their actual threat? Grossman and DeGaetano think so, and they zero in on this in their book Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill. While the authors give blame to media in general as sources of violence in youth, they hold video games as the most dangerous form of media. Again, I have to ask. Is the concern about video games proportionate to their actual threat? Do Grossman and DeGaetano really have backing to support their view? Let's begin looking into that now.
The title of Grossman's and DeGeatano's book, Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill, is the very first big indicator of the authors not looking at the big picture of the issues at hand. Their title implies that creators of movies, TV, and video games are creating violent media to teach kids to kill. The authors feel there is no debate left when it comes to this subject; they state that "Scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports media violence as a major, significant factor contributing violence in our society." (Grossman) Therefore, according to the authors, it is beyond a shadow of a doubt what causes violent behavior in children and it should be considered criminal that the creators of violent media are allowed to still create it. ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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"I watched all those shows and I'm not VIOLENT" is often the retort. A sandwich is mine. Violent behavior results from a stacking effect per endless studies. Whoever is saying "they are not violent" probably didn't have an additional ingredient of home violence and neighborhood violence or an aggressive goading friend,or violent big brother reverence or later, constant road rage or was really unjustly fired or cheated on in their personal lives. Out comes are a result of the stacking of ingredients. We do not know what futures hold for kids so why stack on another heavy ingredient to clog the veins just hoping.
Rated by buyers -
This book hits upon a topic that has become severe in this country; youth violence. It discusses many avenues that contribute to our youth using violence against each other. It brings to light numerous strategies that parents, teachers, and other adult agencies can use to decrease, if not completely vanish, the violence seen in our youth. Fantastically written, this book is a must read for anyone who has kids, deals with kids, or is just a member of our society.
Rated by buyers -
Lt Col Grossman spent a lifetime studying what made soldiers more efficient killers in combat and able to survive. His work extended in to the world of police officers. With a worldwide reputation Grossman is the goto guy.
And then Grossman turned his focus on the army of deadly young killers. Killers who achieve far better performance than police officers in combat. Somewhere in their "training" was a mechanism that turned off the moral control system and honed their responses. As one young killer explained why he very first killed his enemies and then his friends, he was on a roll.
Bound to be opposed by Hollywood, the electronic games folks and others, Grossman has the credentials that demand attention from balanced readers.
Grossman documents the effectiveness of "games" which give potential killers the motor skills, training and discipline to be cold blooded mass killers, without any training whatsoever on real firearms. Games, TV and the movies have sanitized shooting and death. The very first bullet ever fired by the youngster is a head shot and just like he has done in thousands of games he quickly turns to make the subsequent shot , the subsequent and the subsequent , just as he has been so well trained to do.
In contrast the young person familiar with firearms is far more likely to stop after one shot, devastated by what they have done.
One of the truly worrisome details highlighted by the book is that the only reason murders and murder rates have declined is the higher quality of emergency medicine available in most areas of the country. Without these improvements in emergency medicine the murder rate would have increased significantly.
Today April 16, 2006 his message is more relevant than ever before. Give knowledge a chance. The pattern of the Virginia school shootings follows the warning pattern described by Grossman. If we fail to heed the message we condemn hundreds to their deaths at the hands of these killers we have raised in our communities.
Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
This book approaches the phenomenon of media violence in three parts. First, it points to the rising crime rate in America, during a period of declining racial violence, soaring incarceration rate, terrific advances in police technology, advanced medical technology, faster first-response medical help, and an increasingly educated populace. Yet violent crime has skyrocketed (Aggravated assault, to take one example, was 80/100,000 in 1960, and is about 400/100,000 today), and the muder rate has remained level. To see how far medical advances have come and to illustrate how the murder rate should be declining, the authors point out that that a wound that 9 times out of 10 killed in WWII was survived 9 times out of 10 in Vietnam.
The relationship between these trends and violent media is not one of pure speculation, but of methodical study. There have been thousands of studies on the relation, virtually all of which have concluded a link between violent media and violent behavior. One of the most interesting studies related took place in an area where there were four villages, all without television. Researches went in and observed for two weeks children on the playgrounds in these villages, and recorded all instances of physical aggression. Then televisions were brought into two of the villages. New researchers, unaware of the goal of their research, were brought in to again observe the children. Levels of aggression remained constant in the villages without television, and increased 160% in the villages with television.
The second part of this book talks about how watching violent media actually affects us. It does so in 3 ways:
1. It incites fear in us. Violent crimes are much, much more common in TV-world than in the real world. We subconsciously internalize this danger, and become more fearful of others than we would be if we weren't so hyperaware of violence, and didn't expect violence to be so common.
2. It desensitizes us. The more violence we watch, the less is affects us physically. The level of violence that excites a person's body to a certain point must continually increase to keep effecting the same reaction. As we become hardened to violence and horror on the screen, we also become jaded, without realizing it, to real-life violence.
3. It makes us more aggressive. A person who watches violent media, when presented with a conflict situation, is more liable to think of a violent solution as a viable one, and quicker to resort to such a solution
The third part of this book deals with video games, which have much the same effect as violent TV and movies. Further, however:
1. They train players to kill. Michael Carneal, a 14 year old kid who had never fired a gun before, went on a spree one day. 8 shots to 8 people, all in the head or upper torso. This inexperienced kid killed like a Special Forces vet. Video games didn't make him kill, but he (and many others) could never have been so deadly without them.
2. Video Games lower the resistence to killing. One of the greatest innovations in military technology between WWII (where on average 15% of soldiers actually fired at the enemy) and Vietnam (90% fire rate) was the movement from bulleyes to silouhettes in targeting practice. Video games are even better. Playing them, one becomes used to shooting at human figures. A very first person shooter player just doesn't have same the resistence to shooting another human as a non-player.
In sum, video games don't make people kill, but they do make them damn good at it, and they do lower internal resistences which might otherwise prevent someone from killing.
I said that there were three parts in this book, but there is actually a fourth. Both authors are parents, and end the book in practical advice about how to talk to kids about simulated violence.
If you watch a lot of violent media or play a lot of violent video games, this book does call for some self-examination. It is difficult, however. How can you tell if you are desensitized? How can you tell if you are fearful, or aggressive? I can only say that I have, long before reading this book, been finding myself more senstive to violence, less aggressive, and less fearful of other's aggression since I have stopped watching TV and stopped playing video games.
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