Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill Reviewed by Frank Houde
Journal for Living
No. 22, 2001

If you want to stay in denial about the influence of violent TV and video games on our children and our society, by all means don't read this book! True, the causes of increased violence among our youth and in our schools are multifaceted, but as the authors point out, media violence plays a significant part in this grave problem. By giving our children access to the wrong TV and video games, we approximate the same methods used by our Armed Forces to desensitize recruits to violence and turn them into efficient killers.

Co-authors Grossman and DeGaetano are well aware not everybody agrees that media violence and youth violence are related. Their response to the naysayers:
"In 1969 Senator John Pastore from Rhode Island, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, held a hearing to which he invited the usual group of parents, teachers, social scientists and network executives. He also invited the Surgeon General of the United States, something that had never been done before. The Surgeon General had just concluded the first report on smoking and health, which caused quite a stir because it indicated a link between smoking and lung cancer. When the Surgeon General subsequently commented on TV violence, he put the issue in the same context as the smoking controversy--as a public health issue. This said a lot.
"Much of the American public is unaware that many experts have thought of media violence in this context since the late 1960s. The stonewalling of information about the negative effects of media violence has been so great that even today many physicians, psychologists and media literacy advocates are under the impression that referring to media violence as a public health concern is a new way to frame the issue. If nothing else, it demonstrates how buried these vital reports have been over the years."

They cite study after scientific study to document the assertion that media violence is indeed related to youth violence and is a public health concern. Some 3,500 of these studies have been done since 1950. In a random sample of 1,000 of these, only eighteen did not establish the link between media violence and youth violence. Twelve of those eighteen studies were funded by the TV industry.

The co-authors are eminently qualified. Lt. Col. David Grossman (US Army, Retired) was a professor of psychology at the US Military Academy at West Point and was directly involved in developing the programs currently used to train combat troops. Gloria DeGaetano is a media literacy consultant to corporations, school districts, parent groups and social service agencies. She is a nationally recognized educator in the field of media violence.

Many books that deal with the social problems spell out their nature with care, then fail to present possible solutions. The authors of Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill avoid that error. Grossman and DeGaetano, knowing their subject as they do, have taken care to provide an accurate, well-documented history of the origins of media violence and its negative effects. That done, they have made sound, practical recommendations for dealing with these negative effects both at home and at the level of public policy.

Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill is factual, clear, concise and complete. It empowers parents to take the steps needed to minimize their children's exposure to media violence. It is an encyclopedia for social activists.