Published Online: April 28, 1999
Published in Print: April 28, 1999

Rejection and Rage Increasingly Turn Into Violence

As the country sought answers last week to the many "whys" at the heart of the mayhem on a Colorado high school campus, researchers who have studied the rise in youth violence over recent decades gave voice to a puzzling paradox: Even as young Americans face more opportunities for productive lives than ever before, their culture is providing a rich soil for destructive behavior.

Some experts called the homicidal rage exhibited by two teenage gunmen at Jefferson County's Columbine High School part of an epidemic of violence among boys that has soared since the 1960s and now has spread from society's most vulnerable--in the inner cities and among minority groups--to infect its most privileged.

"We want to treat these murders as isolated incidents," said Thomas Armstrong, a psychologist and a former teacher. "But the fact is we are swimming in violence."

Though the overall youth-homicide rate dropped in 1997, the rate among small-town and rural boys increased by almost 40 percent, writes James Garbarino, a co-director of the Family Life Development Center at Cornell University, in his just-published book Lost Boys.

Vol. 18, Issue 33, Page 18

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