This week, media reported that a teenager was being detained who was preparing a massacre in a school in the Kirov region due to a conflict with peers.
Inna Krotova, associate professor at the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy of Special Education, IPO KFU, named the reasons why the child can get to the “Columbine” and explained why teens make a cult of American shooters.
Recall that on April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and his friend Eric Harris staged a mass execution of their classmates and teachers at Columbine School in Colorado. They injured 37 people, 13 of whom died. After that, the teenagers committed suicide.
This tragedy received wide resonance, and for a long time in the US there were disputes about tightening control over the Internet, arms sales, as well as the possible harm of psychotropic substances, computer games and rock music. The nationwide attention to the incident has led adolescent aggressors to have followers. They began to call themselves “columbiners.”
Fans of American shooters appeared in Russia.
Vladimir Makarov, deputy head of the department for countering extremism of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, said that since the beginning of this year, minors who have identified themselves as “columbainers” have been identified in Adygea, Tatarstan, Zabaykalsky, Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk territories, the Nenets Autonomous District, Kirov, Smolensk and Sverdlovsk Regions.
It is worth noting that last year in Russia there were several resonant cases of attacks on schoolchildren, college students and teachers in the walls of educational institutions. The attacks were carried out by their peers. We are talking about attacks in Perm, Ulan-Ude, Volsk, Sterlitamak, Samara, Kazan. The worst tragedy occurred on October 17, 2018 at the Kerch Polytechnic College, where an 18-year-old fourth-year student blew up a makeshift bomb in the cafeteria of the school and shot students and teachers.
The fact that such as the “Kerch shooter” have their fans among peers is explained simply, says a KFU psychologist:
– They personify for minors the image of some rebels, fighters with the system, those who dare to repulse their offenders. School for many is a source of stress: a teenager faces problems with relationships with classmates, finding his place and some kind of positioning himself in society.
Adolescence is associated with difficulties – young people are drawn to forbidden and vibrant topics. Teenagers are most influenced, so they often do things similar to those that were read in a book or magazine, learned from the Internet. There is a loud, egregious, unusual murder or suicide, and Werther’s Syndrome triggers immediately, which causes a wave of imitative actions among peers. Among the “copy-paste” one more phenomenon – cheloching.
– Schooling (an armed attack by a student or an outsider against schoolchildren inside an educational institution) becomes a vivid demonstration of their intentions to solve the problems a teenager has, this is a manifestation of the permissibility of what is considered inadmissible and inadmissible in society.
What happens to the children, why do they pick up weapons and go to shoot classmates?
– In order for a person to commit an illegal action directed against the life and health of himself or others, he must be in a special state, which is due to the influence of external and internal factors. Any distortion can become a catalyst – stress of any kind.
But only teenagers with an undeveloped emotional-volitional sphere become imitators.
– At one of the stages of ontogenesis, the child must understand who is stronger: he or the environment. Therefore, if a three-year-old child runs away at the mother’s request to stop, this is normal. If at this stage of his development the child does not see his power over the situation, over the decision-making, then he will prove this to himself all his life, for example, doing extreme sports – at best.
Another reason that can push a teenager to become a “columbainer”, according to the psychologist, is the “Overton window” – a mechanism that allows you to change social consciousness: that is, you can put any idea into the consciousness of the highest moral society and change the framework of normality.
– Even at the time of the “Kazan Syndrome”, in the turbulent 80-90s, not even the most desperate gopnik would ever have attacked teachers, shot his classmates, or prepared for a terrorist attack at school. No matter how bully teenagers grow up in the years 80-90, such an idea would never occur! It was a taboo! Because there were moral and ethical standards, there was a line that you should never cross.
