Bridgewater Review

Volume 18 | Issue 2 Article 15

Dec-1999 Book Review: The ulturC e of Charles F. Angell Bridgewater State College, [email protected]

Recommended Citation Angell, Charles F. (1999). Book Review: The ulturC e of Fear. Bridgewater Review, 18(2), 31-32. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol18/iss2/15

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. bringing concealed weapons to school but which at some point during the Maine autumn will greatly increase tile risk ofhypothermia. Each ofthe students quoted showed greater perception and clear-headedness than did those police offi­ cials and school administrators who formulated the safety policies. The students from Maine and Atlanta observed, albeit in different contexts, that most students confronted far greater risks in the school parking lots where school officials exercised virtually no supervision. The Berkeley student pointed to how the policies placed increased stress on stu­ dents, most ofwhom would rather see the resources allocated to additional counselors and teachers than to increased police and surveillance presence. THE CULTURE Regardless, news feature after news feature throughout the summer and into the new school year has detailed the repres­ sive measures school officials have imposed in manydistricts OF FEAR to guarantee school safety. The efforts have resulted in mak­ ing schools very much like prisons, tile difference being that BY CHARLES F. ANGELL unlike prisoners whose rights are removed in the interest of public safety, students' rights are removed in the interest of arry Glassner's The Culture ofFear appeared in bookstores at tlleir own safety. Add to these policies those that are designed an opportune moment. The study is sub-titled "why to make schools improved places to learn-dress codes, cur­ mAmericans are afraid ofthe wrong things: crime, drugs, fews, and similar regimentations-and the consequences to minorities, teen moms, killer kids, mutant microbes, plane students' attitudes toward learning aren't all that difficult to crashes, road rage, & so much more." Glassner examines each figure out. Prisoners, most oftllem, don't learn much in ofthese topics and more to document that all too often as a prison that benefits society. To foster a pervasive feeling nation, we respond to a problem with " driven public among young people that without constant surveillance they spending" which "we fritter away on our compulsions" leav­ risk becoming victims or victimizers hardly seems the way to ing fewer resources "available for our real needs." In no small develop the social, political, or intellectual values American measure Glassner documents Shakespeare's words that"our society requires. Rather, young people who suffer such do make us traitors." governmental disregard oftheir rights as is now occurring I say opportune because The Culture ofFear was published may become filled with the resentment and toward the just before last May's Columbine High School shootings, but government that provokes the very disturbances the policies tllat unfortunate event, linked as it was with school shootings have been designed to prevent. in other states, has shaped the nation's political response to making schools safe places to learn. Students returning to Young people who suffer such governmental some schools this fall found themselves having to sign in and disregard oftheir rights as is now occurring out; in others underwent searches oftheir clothes and pos­ sessions (even ordered in some schools to bring only trans­ may become filled with the resentment and parent plastic book bags and backpacks); in still others found anger toward the government thatprovokes themselves under camera surveillance or required to pass through metal detectors; and in yet otllers had to endure the very disturbances the policies have been police details patrolling school corridors. Early in September designed to prevent. PBS's Morning Edition broadcast the reaction ofstudents in Atlanta, Maine, and Berkeley to these intrusions into their Our national legislature responded to the Columbine school day. The young woman from Atlanta complained that shootings by ignoring the real issue-gun control-and as a consequence ofthe required search procedures, entering promoting a wholly useless-and wholly cynical-solution: tile school building"took hours." The Berkeley student place the Ten Commandments in every public school. They described how, in the weeks prior to school's opening, her followed this spineless act by recessing to allow installation school had been "crawling with police" training to respond to ofbulletproofchair backs to ensure safety in their legislative a potential Columbine and going so far as to simulate remov­ chambers. Preventing public school students from worship­ ing bodies from the building. The Maine student reported ing false idols is no a worthy aim, perhaps too worthy that Maine State Police had had to admit that Maine schools to reside in the hands ofmost politicians. were "pretty safe"; his school, nevertheless, had prohibited hats and long coats, a ban which may prevent students from

BRIDGEWATER REVIEW 31 Regrettably, I rant rather than review. Glassner documents Glassner's second explanation for what underlies ilie cul­ that schools are still the safest places to send children and that ture offear strikes closer to lived experience, namely that TV most accidents at school take the form ofsports injuries. But, news broadcasts and their"ifit bleeds, it leads" ethos pro­ he says, "municipalities do not raise taxes ...to buy state-of­ duces disproportionate coverage ofcrime, drugs, diseases, the-art safety equipment for student athletes. They raise and the other social pathologies. This failure ofproportion them to buy more surveillance cameras and metal detectors, extends even to the weather reports where reporters are sta­ and to station more police officers in schools." Glassner con­ tioned on expressway overpasses or storm-washed beaches to cludes his chapter on "Youth at Risk" with the comment that inform us up close and personal how devastatingly Nature is "throughout the 1980's and 1990's Americans welcomed about to disrupt our lives. Hurricane Floyd offers a textbook every permissible excuse to avoid case. There, Friday morning after the storm, was a channel 4 facing up to our collective lack of reporter on Scituate beach telling her videocam operator to responsibility toward our show the viewers "how angry the ocean was" and treating the nation's children:' audience to pictures oftwo foot seas scarcely threatening to Glassner tries to provide rea­ any local resident who might have seen the real power ofilie sons for why we avoid our social North Atlantic. This ongoing diet ofthe horrific and cata­ and political responsibilities; strophic, as Glassner observes, "routinelylet[s] emotional we prefer all too frequently, accounts trump objective information." More often than I he writes, to heed the cries of think we'd like to admit, this emotionalism leads to dire con­ alarmists aboutcrime waves, sequences. The scare a few years ago over silicon breast crack babies, and killer viruses implants cost Dow Corning millions in legal penalties and rather than to take account of brought renewed pain to large numbers ofwomen, many of more reasoned and moderate them recovering from breast cancer. Itwas, as Glassner says, voices who, with the support of "one ofthe greatest triumphs ofanecdotes over science" scientific and factual studies, which led the FDA to ban implants on the basis ofemotional demonstrate that crime has talk show accounts and congressional hearings rather than diminished, crack babies show on the foundation ofscientific evidence provided by the no long term effects from their AMA which opposed the ban. Subsequent reports in tl1e mothers' addiction, and killer monilis that followed showed how ungrounded the fears had viruses only rarely afflict the gen­ been. Today, as I write, the West Nile Disease stands ready to eral population. He suggests as an underlying reason for our serve as the epidemic ofthe month. Newsweek has perceived hysteria that"pre-millennial tensions ... provoke mass anxi­ its fear monger potential; the networks, absorbed at the ety and ill reasoning.... So momentous does the calendric moment with the exhumation ofDr. Sam Shepherd's change seem:' Glassner writes, "the populace cannotkeep its remains, won't lag far behind. wits about it." When I first read The Culture ofFear early in The Culture ofFear provides a helpful antidote to such hys­ June, I considered this rationale pretty tl1in, even knowing as teria. I suspect the study won't receive ilie large audience it I did ofthe religious hysteria that swept across parts of deserves. Though his examples are distressingly numerous, Europe as the year 1000 approached. Many believed the mil­ Glassner's message is simple: somehowAmericans have lennium would bring eiilier a catastrophic apocalypse or the come to prefer hysteria to facing our true obligations. In this second coming ofChrist. But then, as the summer newscasts regard, Coleridge's words ring as true today as they did in reported story after story about the "Y2K crisis:' I began to 1830: "In politics:' he wrote, "whatbegins in fear usually ends reconsider. The fear that, as the ball dropped in Tin1es in folly:' Square, power plants might shut down, air traffic control Our national legislature responded to the Columbine shootings by ignoring the real Charles F Angell is Professor ofEnglish. issue-gun control. might cease functioning, and America's nuclear missile arse­ nal might suddenly blast offand detonate pervaded news­ casts even when those same newscasts interviewed experts who pooh-poohed the likelihood that any such events would or could occur. The god is in the machine, or so seemed the attitude, and it waits to spring Armageddon on us.

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