When the world was young, I often engaged in a schoolyard game that now is seen by some educators as being so detrimental to young people's mental health that it must be abolished. Its essence is the same. Children form a circle and throw a ball at a child inside the circle. Neil Williams is, in fact, serious.
Educators are worried that one thing leads to another.
Such actions, they're worried, can lead to homicidal thoughts, arsenal-building and schoolyard massacres. That theory, or one much like it, is nothing new. The week of the Columbine High School killings two years ago, there were reports the homicides were prompted by the killers' disdain for the school's athletes. Though those reports turned out to be untrue, that explanation of the killers' behavior is yet an underpinning of the argument made by the Connecticut professor. That's one ton of bullfeathers.