Nicholas Cruz
On the 14th February, 2018, an armed man fired with a semi-automatic rifle openly at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. That is in Parkland, Florida. He killed seventeen people, while seventeen others were injured. Nikolas Cruz, now 21-years-old who is a former student of the school, was identified as the assailant by witnesses. Nicholas fled from the scene by blending in with the other students. Cruz was later arrested. He was charged after confessing to be the shooter of premeditated seventeen counts of murder and the same counts of attempted murder.
Taking a psychological view on this case. Looking at the theories of human growth and development, we can understand what was going on in Cruz’s head. The method of cognitive development elaborates how a child builds the world in the head. (Piaget, 1936). Piaget did not agree that intelligence is a permanent trait instead that development is a process that occurs due to biological maturation and how a child relates to his or her surrounding environment. According to jean, children have a very simple mental structure that is born with them that evolves and is genetically inherited from the parents. All subsequent knowledge and learning are based on it. In simple terms, according to Piaget development is a reorganization of mental processes progressively that results from environmental experience and biological maturation. Children build understanding from the environment around them. They then gain experience between what they discover from the environment and what they already know. If we relate this theory to Nicholas Cruz, from his history, we find that he was adopted. His adoptive mother was disciplined and thoughtful, but Cruz was violent and abusive. His mother introduced him to weapons and video games to help him cool his temper. He was obsessed with guns and seemed to enjoy torturing animals. His parents later died while he was still young. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
We also discover that his birth mother had a substantial criminal record where she had beaten a companion using a tire iron; she had also threatened her friend by saying she would burn to burn her house down. Nicholas also had a half-sister who was serving her sentence in prison for attempted murder. This history clearly supports jean Piaget’s theory that most probably Nicholas inherited his traits of violence and crime from his birth mother despite the fact that he did not know her. This urge increased when his biological mother introduced him to weapons and games.
Secondly, we look at Freud theory of development. He says that psychological development during childhood do take place in 5 psychosexual phases: anal, phallic, oral, genital, and latency. These he called stages of development and that each stage involves libido fixation or simply explained as sexual instincts or drives. Freud said that as a child grows physically, some areas of their body tend to become essential and turn to be sources of frustration and pleasure (Freud 1905). He also believed life is built surrounded by pleasure and tension. All this he believed was brought about by the buildup of libido in the body.
When describing the personality of a person and development as psychosexual, he meant to explain that sexual energy develops in a way that pleasure accumulates and is only discharged during body biological maturity. Freud generally meant one reacts to action, pleasure, and thoughts as we grow. According to history, Nicholas Cruz was violent and abusive according is mother’s observation, but her way of helping him deal with his temper only enhanced the violent traits in him to develop deeper. As he matured, the details of his stormy adolescence and difficult childhood emerged evidently supporting Freud’s theory of development.
John Bowlby discussed attachment theory. He says it is an enduring deep emotional bond connecting one individual to another passing across space and time (Bowlby, 1969). A person’s attachment to the other individual doesn’t necessarily have to be shared. Affection is portrayed by characters or behaviors. The behavior in adults to show attachment towards their children may include response to a child’s needs. This theory elaborates how parent and child relationships emerge and influence development. This explains why Cruz behaved the way he did. Nicholas had an attachment to both his mothers. To his biological mother, he was attached through DNA the crime link was in it as seen even with the stepsister. For his adoptive mother, he got attached to even the weapons and games his mother introduced to him unknowingly. This is how her stepson got attached to arms. We see from his Instagram page that portrays a picture of a young man with an obsession for knives and guns. In one of his posts, he shows when he is on target practice. Nicholas’s page posts him posing with weapons that include knives and pistols; he even asks his followers to advise him on a gun model he seems interested in.His selfies show how he kills a toad proof enough of how he was obsessed in torturing animals. A post retrieved from his social media page saying he wants to buy a shotgun, but he needs advice on the price. His former school mates prove that it was his page. Nicholas also shows attachment with time since his social media account is active in this error of social media connect.
Lev Vygotsky would have defined Nicholas as a man involved in a bad of friends since his theory insists that the society has fundamental role in an individual’s development of cognition (Vygotsky, 1978). Lev strongly felt that community has a major impact in making meaning in the process of growth. Vygotsky mentions that cognitive development comes from one’s social interactions or even the guidelines you receive in your process within proximal development when, at a young age, like how parents enact knowledge to their children who are their partners in growth. This is because children are obviously cooperative with parents. In his research, he analyzes that children want to understand the instructions and actions provided to them, which they later internalize this information. They will use this information to guide them in their life performances. We learn about Nikolas Cruz’s social life from his social media pages. He was not a peaceful youth. We see that he was connected with the white supremacists. A group of people with a racist belief. They believe that the whites are superior to the other groups of people or the other races. Making it clear that they are dominant over them. It is obvious that this group had great influence on Nicholas Cruz thus leading to his words and actions like how he hurled slurs at Muslims and blacks and how he would shoot people for revenge.
Albert Bandura is closely related to that of Vygotsky on social interactions. He emphasizes of how important it is to observe and model the attitude, emotional reactions and behavior of others. Bandura makes us understand that we can’t solely rely on Learning which is laborious and hazardous. People should also depend on their own actions. However people’s behaviors are learnt from observation and modeling what they see from others. This is how one models an idea of how perform a new behavior. (Bandura, 1977 p22). His theory is on learning socially where human behavior is continuous reciprocal to interact to environmental influences. Common examples where people learn are commercials in televisions. In this case Nicholas learnt from the video games introduced tyro him by his adoptive mother. This is the same as Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Development Theory. His framework of growth is organized in the stages of life. He enhances the same case as Lev that the results of a child’s growth are influenced by experience in the process of growth and social.
Skinner philosophy of radical behaviorism suggests that life does revolve around the concept of free will where a person has the ability to make a choice and differentiate between causes of their actions or its simply illusion. He diligently believed that every human behavior, is an ultimate result of a condition. Human beings actions are consequences of their previous actions. Bad consequences do have a great chance of the act not repeating itself while in the case of good consequences, probability of repetition of the action are very high. This is called principle of reinforcement according to Skinner’s theory. This is exactly happened to Nicholas Cruz. His mother conditioned to the life of weapons and video games influencing him even more to be violent.
The fact that Nicholas lost his parents at an early age could have led him behaving the way he did. From Lev Vygotsky’s theory on cognitive development the community greatly influences the growth and development. We could say that Nicholas was a broken child. Considering he was adopted at a young age and then his adoptive parents also die he must have been suffering mentally. He must at some point found no reason for living. Additionally psychologists research shows that there are a lot of negative outcomes that relate with orphans and children that are separated from their parents. They suffer cognitive, emotional, traumatic grief and compromised development. They lack proper education and chances of exploitation.
After his mother died he became rebellious even in school leading to him being expelled from troubled Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. His schoolmates said he was an “evil kid”. The family that took him in after his mothers death said they saw signs of depression. But thought this would go away with time.
Another issue is how he lost a father. This always has a huge biological effect even to other kids. Especialy with boys this is a big blow. We can imagine Cruz lost his father when he was around five years. A teenager who has no manly figure would understand what he was going through during adolescence. Despite having a mother whom he was so attached to she can not wear the shoe of a man like his father.
Psychologist David Popenoe talks about the father and son relationships. Fathers act or play the very important part of being role models to their sons. They also for maintaining discipline and authority in their sons lives. Fathers help to have self-control and develop empathy feelings towards other people. This traits are not seen in Nicholas Cruz since his father left him at a very early age being the reason he was abusive and violent despite the efforts of his widowed mother.
It’s not easy to say to what extent his neighbours and schoolmates tried to be his friend probably so much but there efforts couldn’t last long due to his violent outbursts as mentioned by a classmate. We should give gratitude to his mothers friends who took him in.
Am left wondering if the teachers and subordinate staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School did anything to assist Cruz. Maybe they did their level best to the extent of expelling him. A psychologist said that educators have the obligation of observing students behavior and emotional development everyday. They are at the best position to note a troubled child and intervene since they spend most time with this kids and not the parents. Apart from that they should also teach social, emotional skill and either hire counsellors and resource officers once in a while. This way Cruz could have received help before it was too late.
On this day that Nicholas refused to attend vocational training note it was valentines day and the same day he carried on with killings. And also the fight that led him to being expelled, may be had lost his girlfriend. Suggesting that he was suffering from humiliation or lack of romance all this could have made behave the way he did. Bottom-line is he is not justified, he could have received help and avoid such tragedy.
References
Schacter, Daniel L., and Gilbert Daniel. (2011). Psychology. (2 ed.). New York, 2011. Web. March 22, 2013
Maier, H. W. (1969). Three theories of child development: the contributions of Erik H. Erikson, Jean Piaget, and Robert R. Sears, and their applications. New York: Harper & Row.
Berk, L. E., & Winsler, A. (1995). Scaffolding Children’s Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education. NAEYC Research into Practice Series. Volume 7. National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1509 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036-1426 (NAEYC catalog# 146)..