A Summary of Dudley Erskine Devlin’s Article ‘’Children and Violence in America’’

Dudley Erskine Devlin was born in Syracuse, New York and he teaches English at Colorado and writes articles regarding important issues that concerns the community, his essay ‘’Children and Violence in America’’ talks about the rising violence among children and points out that children are more and more often "both the victims and perpetrators" of violence. Devlin begins his article with various examples of kids shooting each other and killing themselves in acts of desperation. Then he questions the audience as to what is the underlying cause of this type of violence among children. He argues two main causes that either the cause underlies in violent TV programs that teach kids violent situations or the instability and economic issues in the kids’ families. Devlin suggest another third cause to the violence that kids are exposed too, the liberal media. Newspapers and network TV shows launch all sort of wild statics about children and teenage violence that argue that children confuse the violent images seen on TV and associate them with what can be done in real life. Going back his other argument that suggest that this type of violent behavior is associated with drug abuse, economic problems and instability within the household, Devlin argues that the best evidence for this argument is that the children and teenagers are already exposed to violence in their schools. Devlin goes back and states that there is truth in both of arguments, that TV and movies add violence to the American culture and that it is true that there is a place for violence in schools, but then again he suggests that newspaper media and network news explode dramatically y every kind of news that involves children and teenage violence. Devlin then argues that at the same time there are some un-harmful movies that do not get as much publicity as other harmful movies like Robocop or Terminator. Devlin finishes his essay by saying that the next time we read in our newspaper about a kid shot at a zoo should not makes us believe we have a huge crisis of violence in our society, that even infant comic books like ‘’Peanuts’’ have more truth in them.