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Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence | 
| Authors: Dave Grossman, Gloria Degaetano
Publisher: Crown
List Price: $22.95
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Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 4.9 x 0.6
ISBN: 0609606131
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.23083
EAN: 9780609606131
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Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 78 more reviews...
 "I watched all those shows and I'm not VIOLENT" rethought . . . December 29, 2007
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
"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.
 The new plague that has swept America. July 31, 2007
8 out of 14 found this review helpful
I've often found it fascinating whenever the media is blamed for the violence that happens in the world. This is yet another pretentious, self-righteous individual who offers the media as the problem. The finger-pointing concept is one that is oh so tedious and moronic. No one is responsible for their own actions anymore. This kid killed himself, oh he was listening to heavy metal. This kid killed another kid, oh he was playing violent video games, let's go sue them. There is always a scapegoat. The very thought that the media is this powerful entity that controls the minds of millions of people is absurdly childish and idiotic. I find it extremely hard to take people who like that seriously.
As children, we are taught to take responsibility for our choices. Somewhere along the line, this excellent, reasonable concept got lost and forgotten. And oh how pathetic it is when we can't live up to those ideals, not to mention when the people that teach this to us can't live up to it. It's sad, really.
Movies, music, and video games are made for entertainment. Did you read that? Here, I'll re-type that. Movies, music, and video games are made for ENTERTAINMENT. They are not designed to teach people how to kill, like the author of this ridiculous book insists. I have seen lots of violent films, and I listen to a lot of music that deals with dark themes such as depression, death, loss of loved ones, tragedies, etc. I have yet to be warped by any of it. Whoah, trippy isn't it? I stand in awe and bewilderment in the presence of the idiots who are too stupid to look for a problem beyond the media.
To say that the media is the cause of violence says much more than it seems. It means that people expect every aspect of TV, music, and video games to be educational and "happy." My point is that if you expect these 3 things to be teachers, well... no comment. The responsibility lies with the parents or guardians. If you expect something like TV babysit your kid, you need your head examined. It will most likely fail, but that is YOUR fault, because you choose to do something that TV in no way could control. It's something that you just can't expect. I'm not even thinking that deep here. It's basic logic.
If we continue to go down this road of "Poor me I am the victim of my own environment", then we had better buckle up for a bumpy ride. It would be nice if everyone could just wake up and realize that we control our own actions. That is the simple, logical, and basic truth. It is something that we used to know, but is now forgotten. Eventually, the media will be blamed for every bad thing that happens in the world, and we will never have to feel bad for or do anything ever again.
*Raises flame shield*
 Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill May 17, 2007
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
Important as Today's Headlines March 18, 2007
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
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 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 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 next shot , the next and the next , 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.
This book should be widely read December 6, 2005
11 out of 26 found this review helpful
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 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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