On Tuesday, May 26, 1998, while reading the Eugene Register Guard Web site, I happened onto a written account of an interview between Jeff Wright, reporter for the Guard, and Lt. Col. Grossman. Here is a reprint of Mr. Wright's article:
CHILDREN TAUGHT TO KILL, AUTHOR SAYS
By JEFF WRIGHT, The Register-Guard
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman was an expert on killing even before two young boys fired their weapons on a group of classmates in Grossman's hometown of Jonesboro, Ark., this March.
Grossman was on the scene at Westside Middle School within an hour of the shootings - and saw a horror that not even 25 years of military life could prepare him for. But even amid the shock, Grossman says he wasn't surprised. "There is a virus that's spreading across this country - a black plague," he said in a Memorial Day telephone interview. "So, no, I wasn't surprised when this happened in my town, and I wasn't surprised when it happened in Springfield."
Grossman, a West Point graduate who now teaches psychology and military science at Arkansas State University, has attracted considerable attention with his assertion that American society conditions its young people to kill in much the same way that the military conditions soldiers to kill.
The "rampant carcinogen" that he speaks of? In Grossman's view, it's television.
"The data linking TV violence and violent crime is more scientifically sound than the data linking tobacco and cancer," he said. "The debate is over."
Grossman's theories about TV violence could apply to Kip Kinkel, the 15-year-old suspect in Thursday's shootings at Thurston High School. A longtime family friend said earlier this week that Bill and Faith Kinkel were concerned enough about their son's TV viewing habits that they disconnected their television service for a time. The boy seemed obsessed with portrayals of violence, the friend said.
Grossman sees a future where litigation has banished most TV violence and legislation prohibits young people from playing violent video games.
His ideas may seem outlandish, but Grossman brings a certain credibility to the topic - thanks to the success of "On Killing," his 1996 book on the psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society.
Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and the subject of several documentaries, the book is in its fifth paperback edition and about to be published in Japanese and Italian. Most of the book is devoted to Grossman's premise that humans, including soldiers, have an aversion to killing.
Grossman identifies four steps that the military takes to teach soldiers to overcome that aversion and then draws parallels to argue that U.S. society essentially does the same thing to its children.
The military's first step, he said, is to "traumatize and brutalize" the new recruit - the classic boot camp experience designed to teach neophytes to accept authority without question. Through TV and other means, we are doing the same thing to our children, but without the safeguards that come with age, Grossman said.
"Some people ask how dare we take tender 18-year-olds and throw them in boot camp," he said. "But we take very young children - who are literally unable to discern the difference between fantasy and real life - and inflict an average of 27 hours of TV on them each week."
Pornography on TV means nothing to young children who have no context for the images. "But TV violence rivets their attention," Grossman said. "It's electronic crack cocaine - it actually creates a hormonal and neurological response in the child's mind."
The second step in teaching soldiers to kill is classical conditioning. Soldiers are taught to laugh and cheer in response to violence and are praised for their ferocity. Children see violence on TV and "associate it with their favorite candy bar, soft drink or girlfriend's perfume," Grossman said.
On the day of the shootings in Jonesboro, Grossman said, he spoke with a high school teacher who was dumbfounded by her students' initial reaction when she told them that someone had just fired shots at the middle school. They laughed.
The reaction, while dismaying, did not surprise Grossman. "We've raised a generation of barbarians who've learned to associate violence with pleasure," he said.
"Operant conditioning" is the third step in teaching soldiers to kill, Grossman said. The military does it on the firing range, he said, by training soldiers to fire at man-shaped silhouettes as soon as they pop into view. "It makes killing a conditioned response."
Violent video games such as "Doom" and "Mortal Kombat" teach young people the same kind of conditioned response, Grossman said. It's the reason that young killers typically have a confused look on their face when asked why they pulled the trigger.
"They'll say, `I don't know, it was an accident, it wasn't supposed to happen,' " he said. "They're just doing what they were conditioned to do."
Role modeling is the fourth step in the art of killing, Grossman said. For soldiers, that means the no-nonsense drill sergeant. But for many troubled youth, it means the young criminals they see on TV.
"To be on TV is the ultimate achievement for a significant slice of our society," he said. "When criminal role models are seen as a way to get on TV, you know that somewhere in America there's some little kid who's going to take the challenge."
There are plenty of reasons besides TV - the availability of guns, divorce rates and other societal factors - that contribute to our violent nature, Grossman acknowledged. "But the fact remains that the average American child gets more one-on-one communication from TV than from all teachers and parents combined."
Grossman charged that TV executives are well aware of the medium's harm but won't admit it publicly. For example, he said he welcomed a "bigshot" TV producer into his house for an interview shortly after the Jonesboro shooting.
"He told me that he's not going to let his 2-year-old daughter watch any TV until she's able to read - and then only age-appropriate videos."
Grossman said he's encouraged by the growing public awareness of TV's impact on society - even President Clinton spoke out about the negative influence of TV violence and video games in the aftermath of what happened at Thurston.
People must resist the idea that nothing can be done to change America's violent ways, Grossman said. The key is education, he said. "And if we can get educated about seat belts and cigarettes and drunk driving, we can get educated about this."
Epilogue: Yes, but first, people, as a society, must accept this is a social problem, global in scope, effecting everyone; not just a parenting, government, education, ecumenical or gun problem. Once that is done, the rest will be easy. The alternative; epitaph.