Discussion #3: Are we socializing our kids to be violent? Why or Why not? Due Sept 17th – zoom discussion
How are we socializing the next generation of children? Look around your environment and discuss whether we are over socializing our children to be violent people? How are we taught to solve our problems? How do our heroes solve their problems?
We have a culture of violence. Our games/play are/is violent, our stories are violent, our media is violent. OUR HISTORY IS VIOLENT. Here are some theories of why people become violence. ‘A 2009 DOJ study showed that more than 60 percent of the children surveyed were exposed to violence within the past year either directly or indirectly. Children’s exposure to violence, whether as victims or witnesses, is often associated with long-term physical, psychological, and emotional harm. Children exposed to violence are also at a higher risk of engaging in criminal behavior later in life and becoming part of a cycle of violence.” Dept. of Justice.
Albert Bandura (1970’s 80’s) We get our repertoire of aggressive behavior from three sources, Biological factors, Observation/modeling, Direct experience
Social Learning theory- Differential AssociationEdwin Sutherland argued that all behavior is the result of socialization through interaction. That is, how we act depends how those around us act.” (Stark, pg. 188).
Frustration Aggression – Dollard et al 1939 – Interference with goal seeking behavior generates latent frustration and latent aggression.
Violence as American as Apple Pie. –Normative theory- social norms
The blood flows freely in America’s cities. But Hispanics and African Americans’ blowing away themselves and their neighbors, mass murderers, children killing each other with Dad’s gun, and other casual gun use will not affect the Republic – no matter how horrific. Much as the killings in the saloons of mining towns of the Wild West had no long-term effect other than giving us pulp westerns and B-movies.
But a different kind of gun use shaped the American West during the late 19th century. Violence against Indians. Violence against blacks. Against workers (early unions). Against small ranchers. This was terrorism by armed men for political purposes, directed at Americans, in an early America riven – to an extent easy for us to imagine today – by fissures of race, ethnicity, class, and geography.
