It's time to ask deeper questions about school shootings

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(THE CONVERSATION) To what extent does school – through things like athletics, homecoming royalties or dances – encourage what some political scientists have called the “status tournament of adolescence” that lurks behind many school shootings?

The question – which my colleagues and I raised earlier this year after the Parkland shooting – takes on added importance in light of the most recent American school massacre in Texas.

As one reads about school shootings such as the latest i...