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Online Course on SCHOOL Instructor: Dr. Stuart Henry |
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AGS 4760 Senior Seminar I (3cr. hr.)
Sec 984 Call #: 95202
Winter 2002
The recent spate of school violence
began on October 1st, 1997, in Pearl, Mississippi when 16 year-old Luke
Woodham, after killing his mother at their home, went to school and shot to
death three of his classmates, injuring another seven. Just two months later,
on December 1st, 1997, 14 year-old Michael Carneal of West Paducah, Kentucky
killed three fellow students while they were in a prayer meeting at his high
school. Jonesboro, Arkansas, March 24, 1998: 13 year-old Mitchell Johnson and
11 year-old Andrew Golden open fire on their school yard, killing a teacher and
four classmates. Precisely one month later, on April 24, 1998, 14 year-old
Andrew Wurst killed a teacher at a high school dance in Edinboro, Pennsylvania.
And the next month on May 21, we heard of the massacre in Springfield, Oregon
in which 15 year-old Kip Kinkel shot twenty four
fellow students in the school cafeteria, after first killing both parents at
his home.
Neither academic conferences, nor
former President Clinton's nationwide teleconferences, nor public outrage and
accusations against "gun laws," "toxic culture" or the
"death of the family" made a difference to the subsequent events; not
least to the massacre by 17 year-olds Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of 12
students, a teacher and themselves, on April 21, 1999, at Columbine High School
in Littleton, Colorado. The American school system has witnessed the most
profound shock since its foundations in the 1800s: 25 dead in 1997, 42 dead in
1998, and by 1999, 24 more, making 211 in all between 1992 and 1999. American
education will never be the same. What is school violence? What causes youth to
kill fellow school students, teachers and themselves, as in Columbine? Are
there parallels between this form of school violence and recent suicide
terrorist attacks on the United States? What do we need to understand about
school violence in order to prevent it? These are the key questions addressed
in this course.
About the Course:
This fully-online course is
designed to bring academic research together and explore what we know about the
nature, scope, causes and policy implications of the growing trend of high
profile school violence. These three broad dimensions: (1) the nature, scope
and extent of the problem, (2) its source, including micro-level psychological
and interactional causes, meso-level (mid-level) organizational causes, and
macro-level cultural and structural causes, and (3) the policy and practice
implications of these causes.
The course aims to explain why it
was that since 1989, while crime both in society and in schools is declining, violent crime by school-aged children has
increased. The trend toward increased student violence and violence using
terrorist and suicidal tactics is seen as the outcome of a combination of
multiple interrelated causes and is ripe for an interdisciplinary analysis.
The course is offered as a senior
seminar, and as a graduate class.
Dates and Place
Because the class is offered
online, there will be no formal class meetings. However, students registering
for the class and who live within commutable distance from WSU will be
encouraged to attend the online orientation session on Friday January 11,
2002 from 6-8pm, 128 Cohn Building, main campus, where you will be informed
about using the Blackboard system for online classes. If you are unable to
attend this session email me at Stuart.Henry@wayne.edu
to find out how to sign up for the class.
Sign up Early
Class is limited to 15
undergraduates and 5 graduates, so make sure you sign up early for this class.
Course Books:
Our book on School Violence can be
ordered through Sage Publications by phone at 1.800 818 7243 for $32.00
including shipping and you’ll need to pay buy credit card. Please specify
the ANNALS issue 567. The other books below will be ordered online at either http://Amazon.com or http://BarnesandNoble.com
William G. Hinkle
and Stuart Henry (Eds.), School Violence. The Annals of the American
Academy of
Political and Social Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000.
Delbert S.
Elliot, Beatrix A. Hamburg and Kirk R. Williams (Eds.), Violence in American
Schools. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Richard Lawrence,
School Crime and Juvenile Justice.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
James Garbarino, Lost Boys:
Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them. New York: The Free
Press, 1999.
About the Instructor:
Dr. Henry is an internationally
recognized criminologist with 20 books and over 100 articles in professional
journals. Among his books are Essential Criminology (Westview, 1998),
Degrees of Deviance (Sheffield, 1999), The Criminological Theory Reader
(New York University Press, 1998) Criminological Theory (Harcourt Brace
and Co, 1995), The Deviance Process (Aldine de Gruyter, 1993). For more
see Stuart Henry’s bio: http://www.cll.wayne.edu/isp/ISPHOTOS/IsphotosFaculty.htm