THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGY
Another pupil trait that’s been found to predict academic success accu-
rately is self-discipline. Angela Duckworth, working with Martin Seligman,
asked 140 children (average age thirteen), their parents and teachers to
rate their self-discipline one autumn and then looked to see how well
they did in their exams at the end of the year. The children with more
self-discipline scored higher grades and were more likely to get into High
School. A follow-up study was similar, but recorded pupils’ IQ scores in the
autumn as well as their self-discipline – the latter was found to account for
twice as much of the variation in their subsequent academic performance
as IQ. Consistent with this, when Walter Mischel tracked down the kids
School shootings
A tragic reason for psychologists’ involvement in schools in recent
years has been the occurrence of school shootings in which one or
more pupils have gone on the rampage against their teachers and
classmates. These include the Columbine High School massacre in
1999 and the Virginia Tech Massacre of 2007 – the latter leaving 32
people dead. Such events aren’t confined to the US. In Winnenden in
Germany in 2009, for example, Tim Kretschmer killed fifteen people
including pupils and teachers. The challenge for psychologists is to
discern identifiable patterns in these incidents even though they
remain, thankfully, relatively rare.
Despite the scant evidence-base, the psychologists Traci Wike and
Mark Fraser at the University of North Carolina, writing in 2009, said
there were some clear lessons to be learned from past incidents. For
example, in nearly all previous school-shootings, the killers lacked
attachment to their school, suggesting schools should have proce-
dures in place for increasing pupil attachment and sense of belonging.
Another finding is that 71 percent of attackers have experienced
bullying and harassment, suggesting that it’s vital for schools to have
resources available to help troubled and rejected students. Other
recommendations proposed by Wike and Fraser include reducing
levels of social aggression, for example through conflict-resolution
programmes; breaking down codes of silence, in which pupils have an
implicit agreement not to share information with teachers and parents;
and bolstering communication between school and community
agencies, thus allowing the rapid review of pupils whose essays and
compositions betray signs of mental distress.
Other experts have accused the media of irresponsible coverage of
school shootings. Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz at the UCLA School
of Medicine, for example, has advised the media not to broadcast
images of school-shooting perpetrators and not to represent them as
anti-heroes in a way that could incite copycat incidents.