Abstract
School shootings are traumatic events that cause a community to question itself, its values, and its educational systems. In this article Bryan Warnick, Benjamin Johnson, and Samuel Rocha explore the meanings of school shootings by examining three recent books on school violence. Topics that grow out of these books include (1) how school shootings might be seen as ceremonial rituals, (2) how schools come to be seen as appropriate places for shootings, and (3) how advice to educators relating to school shootings might change the practice of teaching. The authors present various ways of understanding school shootings that may eventually prove helpful, but they also highlight the problems, tensions, and contradictions associated with each position. In the end, the authors argue, the circumstances surrounding school shootings demonstrate the need for the "tragic sense" in education. This need for the tragic sense, while manifest in many different areas of schooling, is exemplified most clearly in targeted school shootings.
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