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Are Kids Turning Your Kids Into Killers?
from the -the-other-side-of-the-story- dept.
What makes big news -- and what doesn't -- is always telling. We hear a lot about kids who get gunned down in schools by their peers. We usually hear even more about the evil influences on their lives, from gaming to violent TV and movies to the Net. Yet a vastly greater number kill themselves because of their peers. That doesn't draw many headlines or stories on the evening news, or denunciations from the President.
In the past 15 months, four students have been killed and a more than a score wounded in a series of U.S. school shootings, the most recent in Santee, California, where 15-year-old Charles Andrew Williams allegedly opened fire from a bathroom in Santana High, killing two and wounding 13.
As usual, the government has tended to blame video games and violent movies and TV shows. Aschroft said "the entertainment industry, with it's video games and the like, which sometimes literally teach shooting and all, we've got to ask ourselves, how do we as a culture ... be more responsible."
It's a good question, but not in the way Ashcroft means. Many kids, like Tempest Smith of Lincoln Park, Michigan, simply couldn't take being teased and bullied any longer
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 2,000 school-age children aged 19 or younger take their own lives each year. The rise in suicides by children ages 10 to 14 is especially alarming, say CDC officials.
Psychologists and researchers report that bullying, taunting or constant ridicule by peers is often a major factor in these suicides, as well as a constant thread running through the horrific series of school shootings.
The Detroit News recently told the story of 12-year-old Smith, who hung herself from her bunk bed in February, leaving behind diaries describing the continuous harassment she faced daily about her shyness, her clothing and religious beliefs. She wrote that these taunts made life unbearable. And hers is not an isolated case. In recent months, I've gotten e-mail from the parents and friends of an Ohio hacker who shot himself at 14 after continuous jeering about his gaming. He was suspended for writing an enraged essay criticizing the values of his school, a piece that contained threats to retaliate against kids who had been bullying him for years. I've also heard from the parents of a 15-year-old Goth in Pennsylvania who slashed her wrists and died after years of teasing from classmates. Kids who are non-conformist, rebellious, individualistic or different in other ways are routinely subjected to harassment all kinds, as well as life in schools that cling to outdated curriculums, punish non-conformity and isolate individuals.
"Everyone is against me," Tempest Smith wrote in her diary. "Will I ever have friends again? ... Will I ever live in peace?"
More than 90 percent of people who commit suicide suffer from clinical depression, according to studies by the American Association of Suicidology in Washington, D.C. "Often, it's these mental conditions that cause children to be teased in the first place," an association official told the Detroit News. Taunting also is cited as a factor in many of the cases -- including the horror at Columbine -- in which kids kill other kids. Yet 81 percent of Americans told the Gallup they blame the Internet for Columbine.
A handful of schools have instituted anti-bullying and harrassment programs, but the popular media and most politicians seem much more interested in kids who go over the edge and shoot others than in the many more who are driven over the edge and kill themselves. Maybe it's time to shift focus.
I think quote fits here... (Score:3)
"A child's character education should take priority over his academic education. All educational efforts are basically meaningless unless build on the solid foundation of good character" --Menachem Mendel Schneerson The Lubavitcher Rebbe
Re:Lay the blame where it should be. (Score:3)
My experience is that the preachers' kids were half the time the ones doing the bulling. If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to say the Christian ethic is one of intolerance towards anyone or anything different.
Children need to be taught the difference between fantasy and reality.
Then we agree on something. The first fantasy I'd eliminate is the one that says all morality must derive from Christianity. Even Wicca (witchcraft) has a moral code - you can interpret "do as you wilt an no harm done" in ways far stricter than the Ten Commandments, indeed the Commandments FIT neatly inside the concept of "no harm done" once you notice that lying, stealing, killing, coveting, cheating, disrespecting are all harmful things.
Morality is a natural outgrowth of people living in groups - if you're greedy, the group may suffer because you're hoarding resources, if you're violent, the group may suffer because you're breaking everybody's belongings or limbs. If you're unfaithful, the group may suffer because the next generation may be entirely your offspring (not a problem for far-ranging animals in the wild, but in closed social groups this is a problem) - in two generations the whole group is inbred. If you fail to acknowledge the group's authority (in the Ten Commandments' case, the authority was God) the group may be unable to achieve its goals. (Of course, this assumes the group is to be preserved - sometimes revolution is necessary, but anyway these are the means by which a group protects itself.) There is nothing supernatural in the origins of these laws. Which is why atheists, more often than not, DON'T go around killing people. (And why there are so many people who DO go around killing people for religious reasons.)
In other words, God's signature on your moral doctrine means NOTHING unless you're trying to get into your specific religion's afterlife. Ever notice how people who DON'T believe in an afterlife still do nice things for other people?
The REAL problem, the one you miss in your high-speed race to make sure God gets in your message, isn't that people have the WRONG moral code - it's that people haven't bothered to find a moral code at all, perhaps because they've lived isolated, temptation-free lives where they've simply never needed one. Even many Christians I've known have a nasty tendency not to know what they REALLY consider right and wrong until after they've done something (even if they can justify it with the Bible!) and can't sleep on it afterwards. We now have a world full of adults who don't know what they believe (even if they have the words memorized), and kids who haven't even had a chance to figure out what's important. Bullies by definition have an incomplete moral code because so far they haven't needed one (I think it's because their emotional development is stunted, so they can't perceive when others are in pain - they apparently don't think funny-looking kids are really human!). Kids who go postal on their school have probably been too busy getting the shit pounded out of them to develop a moral code, or else have inherited one from their parents (in words only) and never bothered to figure out what it actually means or how it should apply to them (Harris and Klebold fall in this category - they "knew" better but didn't KNOW better).
I think the most important thing anyone needs to know is oneself. Know one's own limits. Know how one would feel if one caused pain to another person. Know why one feels pain in the first place. Know the range of one's emotions (or at least the general flavor of them) so one's not so easily confused. That way, when the depression hits and you feel like the only thing you can do is eat a grenade, when you hear the voice saying "there must be another way" (and we all hear that voice) you'll recognize it as your own and you'll trust it.
Oog say "what an editor?" (Score:3)
I applaud the kid with the ingenuity to kill others after he has killed himself.
Culture of Supernatural Violence ... (Score:3)
Of course Ashcroft doesn't want to acknowledge this fact. This would bring down his entire religious belief system. Anybody who can kill others after they have killed themselves would be stepping on God's toes ... unless they were aligned with Satan, in such case the ethic of violence would make sense.
It's a common mistake, most likely a typ-o, should have been than instead of then. But it sure does conjure up a funny image of ghosts wandering through the halls with shotguns.
Re:bumper stickers (Score:3)
Now that I have kids, I want to make a "Proud Parent of Another Brick in the Wall" bumper sticker, with two walking red hammers to one side. ROTFLMAO!!! Let me know if you make them, I want one!
Re:DUH! (Score:3)
Similarly, not every bullied teen turns killer, but when a teen turns killer we can attribute that partly to the bullying. It's not the only cause, but it's silly to deny that it is a cause.
Re:Guns (Score:3)
Density?
Right...high density....like Littleton?
As was mentioned elsewhere, high density areas have been around for a much longer time than the school shootings.
Maybe I'm stupid and Canadian, but in an urban population with a decent sized police force, there should be no good reason for people to have to carry around weapons.
Damn I wish I were you. To have that much faith in your govt. Wow.
The reason American's, when setting up their own government, decided to let every law-abiding citizen carry a gun was simple. And it had nothing to do with bears or hunting.
The question is often raised: " Who polices the police? " The answer is every citizen.
The founders of the United States realized that in a normal, everyday world, police will behave in a manner that to them seems just. Laws will be enough to keep everyone, including the police, in line. The problem comes in times of chaos. These times can be long, like the LA riots after the Rodney King beating, or short, like the beating itself.
It is times like this, when police are either the problem themselves, or cannot help each citizen, that the citizens must be able to help themselves.
Yes, I live in a country where a co-worker could go nuts, go home and get his gun(s), and come back and kill everyone. The chance is remote, but it could happen. This is a trade off, however, that I am willing to make. I understand the risk, and would rather live in a country where if the shit hits the fan, I can defend myself, instead of being dependent on the gov't for protection.
Re:Guns (Score:3)
You say that guns are far more "difficult" to get today, but I have to wonder if that's entirely true. Yes, there are more laws regulating possesion of guns, but guns are also cheaper and in wider availability than, say, 50 years ago. In fact, in a small town it would be extremely difficult to acquire a gun without half the town knowing before long, as the person selling the gun is likely to know everybody within a few square miles.
I think anonymity is more of a problem in this matter than anything else. It's easy to acquire a weapon without anyone noticing today, whether via legal means or the black market. As far as I understand, matters such as those Katz refers to would have been dealt with during a fistfight after school, or whatever they did back then
Re:bumper stickers (Score:3)
Re:Guns (Score:3)
-Omar
Re:Not so in Canada... (Score:3)
Re:Guns (Score:3)
It is times like this, when police are either the problem themselves, or cannot help each citizen, that the citizens must be able to help themselves.
So Rodney King would have been better off if he had a gun? Be able to "defend himself from the man?". No, Rodney would be DEAD. The only way Rodney could have held power over his own government was with a portable nuclear device...
As much as this "arming the citizenry to defend against the government" gets quoted, it's not like it's been tested much as a theory. The thing is, is it really needed? Democracy ALONE seems to work well at correcting itself once it's stable, and you don't need to arm your citizenry to the teeth to defend it.
An aside here... There are more unstable fledgling democracies, Africa and Eastern Europe come to mind. Eastern Europe, though going through a hard time, seems to be coming along fine. Some states in Africa had had real problems starting democracy, but that appears to be because their citizenry is armed. It's more of an external force. Feel free to pick me apart on this item...
If government sucks VOTE THEM OUT. I know for you it's 4 years, and that's too long. Maybe think about changing your system so that if something is VERY wrong you can kick out your government. Most parlimentary democracies (sorry, my only frame of reference) can allow you to ditch a government in a single non-confidence vote. Sure, you can have more frequent elections, but in a near 50-50 split like your last election, the government would be so unstable it would either have to co-operate (or more likely) collapse after several months.
I'm disturbed how Americans defend their right to self government with guns, and then so few of them actually vote when the time comes. And when they do vote, they don't take enough care of their voting system to be able to handle exceptional situations (like vote count accuracy within, say, 50,000 votes!!!). Democracy is something to be cherished an nurtured.
Sorry, I don't mean to flame the whole country. The US has done some amazing things, and is damn high on the list of places to live in the world. And Canada has its fair share of problems too, they just generally don't involve things blowing up or killing people. It's just every once in a while we see things up from up here that scare us. Perhaps America needs to be able to take a little constructive criticism instead of telling everyone else to bugger off.
Re:bumper stickers (Score:3)
Just as a point, not all coaches are bad, I was in track and cross country, and I had the best, fairest, most inspirational coaches you could imagine. Now realize I was the worst on the team...
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The problem is the Undead: (Score:3)
JonKatz wrote:
The problem is after the kids kill themselves, it is their unstopable lust for life that makes them go on killing sprees.
Re:What is to be done? (Score:3)
That's crazy, and not even us gun-nuts argue it that way. Even in states where you can legally carry a concealed weapon with ease, no one's carrying around rifles and other forms of extreme firepower.
If someone takes after you with a BIG gun, even a SMALL gun is enough to defend yourself. Carrying a big gun doesn't make you tougher.
If you are really getting at "why do we need to have the right to own black, scary-looking rifles?" then that is another topic for another post.
Re:Guns (Score:3)
Are we all sure that this phenomenon of children going berserk is recent?
Everyone seems to assume so, but I'm not to sure...
How many small town news stories like that would have spread far enough for you to hear about them back in 1900 or even in 1950? Not many...Most people only knew about things that happened in their small towns, particularly before the widespread use of telephones.
Now information is spread instanteously; I can fidn out about the latest school shooting within an hour of it happening. In 1950, you *might* hear about it the next day, you might not ever hear about it.
To say that we know what the cause of these things are, is to reduce an extremely complex problem down to an absurd solution. It could be guns, it could be bullying, but I don't think those are the answers. John's essay indicates that many of these people (I would guess this holds for similar past crimes) are mentally disturbed/ill.
The problem seems to me to lie in the parents, teachers, and friends who might realize that their son/daughter/student/friend is having problems and doesn't step in to help. It is a failure of that person's support network. There is one obvious solution to this problem:
Pay attention to the people around you and talk to them if you think they are having problems; counsel them; help them. If you don't help them, who will?
.
BTW, the lameness filter sucks, repetition of a few characters can cause a filter, but the trolls seem to get by just fine.
I was wondering (Score:3)
Talk about double standards.
Re:Bullying doesn't cause killer kids (Score:3)
I also think our school system is a massive failure. Someone else on this thread suggested that we not extend the school year into the summer, but ban school entirely. I disagree. I think that school should be year-round. These days, kids who have the summer off are completely on their own after about age 10. Those kids who aren't own their own are doomed to a day in a daycare, which is a stultifyingly structured unproductive environment.
But on that same note, past sixth grade, no kids should be in school for more than four hours a day. They should be working at internships and part time jobs... and not fscking fast food, but assisting in adding value to the world and learning to do something (or a variety of somethings) useful at the same time. This should be part of their educational experience and not additive as it is now. It should be coordinated and fairly compulsory. They should be treated with respect and given real responsibilities. Sure, there is still room for activities like sports and debate teams, and all that. But get a kid with a math bent a job in an actuarial firm or a bank or a science lab, and she'll never be stuck in a room with 29 other kids whose primary question is "what good is this junk?" Also, this gives kids an honest chance to see what jobs and work are like.
Further bonus: one of the frequent arguments against homeschooling is the supposed lack of social skill practice. Well, what kind of social skill practice is it to sit in a room of 30 kids listening to some adult drone? How to learn to actually interact in a civilized manner when you're surrounded by other children? School is missing some major lessons that life has to offer and serves to do little more than keep most kids age 12-21 in a kind of social holding tank.
Re:What is to be done? (Score:3)
It has to be a complete culture change - from that of a typically violent, religious-based, keeping-up-with-the-Jones' culture to one where individuality is respected. And that is not likely going to happen in the near future.
The solution to foot-in-mouth disease is to not have any foot-in-mouth disease. Read: get rid of the guns. I know that won't help the poor individuals who will take their own lives or come up with more inventive means of striking out, but it might slow things down. Seriously, what the f*ck does a person need a gun for anyway?
Drop the religious aspect of your society back to the individual's beliefs. Don't ever allow it to creep back into politics or society as a whole. I've been to engineering meetings in the USA where problems encountered in designs were met with a "prayer" session. Sheesh - why don't we just sacrifice a goat or virgin or two to Baal to help our sales team.
Keeping-up-with-the-Jones' is going to be a real tricky thing - this is the result of feedback from a capitalist society - more money tends to breed more money, and a drive to get what is perceived to be better and better things. Some people will be able to afford the "bestest" things (generally the goal of all), most people will be able to afford the "next-to-bestest/acceptable" things, and unfortunately, there are a lot of people who never will - they get left out. I don't know how to counter this one.
Perhaps as the boomers die out, we can influence our children to respect each other's individuality a bit more. Cycles like this occur to counter the previous generation - we just have to wait for the prevaiing group to die for the other extremists to take over.
Oh well, that's all I got's to say - let's see what fallout comes from this...
It's a Fad (Score:3)
You know, I've come to the decision after working with high school kids that it's a fad. What do I mean by that?
Kids do things to get attention: from their peers, from their parents, from those in authority. That's why kids act out, and that's why kids have interesting modes of dress. That's why kids push for "innovative" music--because it pushes the envelope.
This nature--probing the envelope--is key to understanding this phenomenon. Kids are going to push the envelope: consider bedtime. "Mom, can I stay up 'til 10?" If that works, you push for later and later. If it doesn't, 9:30 is your next offer. Kids push, push, push, until they find the limit.
A loving parent sets those limits. It can really hurt to do that. Hell, it hurts me as a twenty-something working with kids to set those limits on kids for things that adults would do with no recourse [such as alcohol consumption, etc.]. It bothers the snot out of me to tell kids not to drink at their age when I am just 4-10 years older [depending on what age group I'm working with at the time] and can drink most folks I know under the table.
Unfortunately, some parents, rather than set limits, become uninvolved in their kids' lives. Becoming uninvolved is a process--because kids want their parents to be involved, for the most part. Yeah, even at the teen ages, they still want some parental involvement, though they only want it on their terms. The kids keep reaching out for things that aren't there--loving parents who want to know what's going on. And considering that brain development is still going on at that age, they can contemplate things from a whole new perspective without good parental supervision: hence, the idea to go out and take a lot of people out with you.
I contemplated and nearly did commit suicide just five years ago. But while I was at a residential high school [k12.ms.us] where taking out a few of my peers would have gotten me a shitload of publicity, and I did have access to guns, including one of my own, when I was suicidal and wanted attention, I never thought of doing something like killing my peers. But now that a couple deranged people have done it, it now becomes plausible and has mindshare. The "early adopters" have created a market for killing.
I'm sure there are a ton of posts about how kids picking on kids are nothing new. Sure wasn't when my parents were growing up, sure wasn't as I was growing up. That's true. What's different is that there are new methods of acting out in the social conscious. Wonder why teen smoking and drug use is somewhat down? They've found something new to try.
And, like a bad kidney stone, this too, shall pass.
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Re:Bullying doesn't cause killer kids (Score:3)
Re:Lay the blame where it should be. (Score:3)
no, but you do hear about them taunting/beating up/raping their peers. (ask me how i know.)
i'll ignore the obvious 'freedom of religion' argument here and go for a little reality. while i feel that there is nothing inherently wrong with touting "traditional (insert religion here) morality" as a need for children, it really does nothing. it might keep kids from killing, but think of it this way - the most christian people in my school were the most cruel to me, and the hindi and agnostic kids were the most tolerant of me.
coincidence? maybe, maybe not. either way, if i had gone over the deep end, those traditional christian morals would not have saved me.
The schools eventually have to act. (Score:3)
Schools are just as equally to blame - for their silence and inaction if nothing else. How many of us have gone to our counselors or teachers or principles for help. "They will not leave me alone. Do nothing to them, but they keep hounding me!" How often has the response been something like, "oh, just ignore them/be nice to them. Everyone gets picked on." Pfft. Things are different.
The dynamics of how who gets picked on and why are different and nobody seems to realize this. Now a days, it's the majority - the people who follow the norm, play sports, wear Abercrombe & Fitch, etc. that are doing the bullying. They often move in packs or groups upon individuals or very small groups of smart/independent thinking people. That's a hell of a lot for a person to cope with. In my grade school days, I've been surrounded by groups of 10 or more other students, all bent on name calling, pushing, etc. There was never any escape and the school never did anything. Often times, I was the one who was punished for making a "big deal out of it" or pushing them back.
The story is the same and goes on much longer. But in my pre-highschool days - a far back as early elementary, this kind of treatment has induced violent behavior. I often fantasized about severely injuring my class mates. I dreamed of bringing a gun to school so I could make people not mess with me. I harbored images of the school's smoldering remains. And yes, you guessed it... this was LONG before I had ever even SEEN a video game. And no, I wasn't listening to goth music either.
Again, this story is nothing new. But one thing is certain, it's worse today for the "social outcasts" than it ever was before. Ashcroft's position is a slap in the face. The schools' continued inaction is a cause for yet more dispare. However, with the sudden increased frequency of school violence, they're going to get to the point where they have to act, out of fear if anything else. One of my friends and I were discussing this issue, and he was of the position that this is the only good thing that will come out of these shooting. Schools may do something about the problem (other than installing metal detectors - those only make the 'jocks' feel save). And maybe, just maybe those who do the bullying will think twice.
Who knows. I was one of the fortunate people who didn't suffer any kind of break down from the treatment. But there are a lot of people who simply cannot take it and will lash out against oppression. Ironic how schools do nothing. That's simply historical fact.
Re:bumper stickers (Score:3)
Re:Guns (Score:4)
Actually it's always been a problem, but only became a MEDIA problem when it started being upper-crust white kids getting killed.
Guns don't kill people, gun culture kills people.
Knives don't kill people either. America probably has more KNIFE killings per capita than Canada - which hints at the real problem: American culture is just plain violent. It's like we're expected to go for the most violent solution first (and I consider lawsuits a form of violence, if that helps) any time we meet resistance. Actually two problems - we want EVERYTHING (American corporate culture is driven by the belief that you can't just make money, you have to make ALL the money, and you go to Hell if you leave one cent unmade in your chosen market - doesn't this explain the RIAA's behavior?) and we don't see anything wrong with using violent means (guns, fists, lies, lawyers) to get it all. Canada doesn't seem afflicted with either disease, except perhaps within the bounds of hockey.
Re:What is to be done? (Score:4)
Same reason a person needs a lawyer - to defend oneself against other people with lawyers. We really don't need guns or lawyers, but as soon as one person pulls either a gun or a lawyer on you, you'll need both.
Drop the religious aspect of your society back to the individual's beliefs. Don't ever allow it to creep back into politics or society as a whole. I've been to engineering meetings in the USA where problems encountered in designs were met with a "prayer" session. Sheesh - why don't we just sacrifice a goat or virgin or two to Baal to help our sales team.
Funny, I think, that the unholy marriage of religion and politics were something Jesus seemed to resent.
The only way a state religion can work is if EVERYONE - every last person - supports it, or at least if there's a convenient way for dissenters to move to a neighboring "free" nation that the religious nation isn't planning on conquering. (In many ways a theocracy is a bit like a Communist state - if even one person doesn't buy into it, it starts to collapse.)
Actually, that's not entirely true. A theocracy COULD possibly work if it's not the kind of fundamentalist regime we see in most Christian and Muslim countries - the real problem isn't the religion, or the link to politics, it's that for FAR too many people in the countries I've mentioned, religion amounts to little more than a desire to see everyone else become exactly like you, and for some, it's a means of gaining power. THAT's the real reason we have a separation of church and state - religion is all about interpretation and divine inspiration of unverifiable origin, so all it takes is one Cardinal Ximinez or one Jerry Falwell to start to impose his will onto a religion and then impose that religion onto the state. The only defense is to prevent religion from being imposed onto the state - and so far America has done a shitty job of this, mostly because the lawmakers tend to WANT religion imposed on the state.
Keeping-up-with-the-Jones' is going to be a real tricky thing - this is the result of feedback from a capitalist society - more money tends to breed more money, and a drive to get what is perceived to be better and better things. Some people will be able to afford the "bestest" things (generally the goal of all), most people will be able to afford the "next-to-bestest/acceptable" things, and unfortunately, there are a lot of people who never will - they get left out. I don't know how to counter this one.
Look at the root of the problem: people don't know how to be happy anymore. Unable to find emotional satisfaction, unable to comprehend subtlety, or unwilling to become philosophers who see more beauty in a rundown building than in a mansion, people have tended to latch onto dicksize as a means of happiness. They think if they LOOK happy, they can BE happy - and the only way to look happy is to look like you have more toys than the happy people next door. They shouldn't call 'em yuppies, they should call 'em Happies.
Anyway, it's an amusing situation - a whole sector of people who want big houses they can't live in because every room is a museum, big vehicles that get 8mpg and have 4 wheel drive they'll never use because going off road would get it dirty (I have no problem with people who buy SUVs because they actually intend to use the four wheel drive, but as status symbols they SUCK), and kids they don't even raise. (And yes, I think this tends to pass these same kinds of values on to the next generation.) All because these are the things they see other people having and it certainly makes THEM happy.
Me, I'm thankful I have such weird tastes in stuff. I've gotten cynical in my old age (26) and despite the limited world experience I have, I've nonetheless come to the conclusion that there is NOTHING in this world I can obtain - no stereo system, no car, no woman - that will grant me lasting happiness. There is joy to be had in owning things, which is why I hang out at thrift stores, and I do happen to like having a girlfriend - these things, for me at least, tend to subtly increase the level of joy in my life, but I already know there's no guarantee that ANY of them - or even ALL of them, if I should somehow one day be granted the complete checklist of "stuff I want" (a delightfully implausible list that includes Jennifer Connelly, 109 missing episodes of Doctor Who, various unbuilt Amiga prototypes from over the years, and a winning $250m lottery ticket) - will make me live happily ever after. Nor would I want them to - the struggle to become happy is the point of life. (Even for you religious types, "being happy" means pleasing God, and therefore is the point of life.)
Granted part of the reason I came to this conclusion was that I noticed I never really much liked "cool" things. It's a blessing not to have to judge oneself by other people's standards - and it's paid off, because I can get great deals on the stuff other people throw out.
I don't know how to cure the Happies of their problem. The sad thing is, the ones who were once hippies used to have the answers (insofar as they had simpler tastes) and seem to have forgotten them. But there's another aspect to the problem - the Happies have been conditioned by the media. Come on with a commercial during Seinfeld to tell them this year's SUV brings happiness and they believe you - and once they own one, and can park it in the driveway where their neighbors can drool over it, pretty soon the whole block will have one. How do you decondition people from the media? Hell, most of them don't even realize they AREN'T as happy as they make the neighbors think (and when they do, it's called a midlife crisis) - which means as far as they're concerned, this kind of one-up lifestyle has WORKED. It's a religion, really - and people only ditch a religion when a) they realize how silly it sounds, b) they realize it isn't working for them, or c) they weren't really that deeply into it to begin with.
The problem is that waiting for the boomers to die won't help - the boomers have offspring who have been similarly conditioned.
This is bizarre (Score:4)
Please explain how it is possible to first kill yourself, then kill others.
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The plague of experts (Score:4)
Re:The plague of experts (Score:4)
Funny, I learned that a long time ago after playing first person shooters.
- Slash
If guns are so good, why not arm the students? (Score:4)
There's been a lot of talk in this thread how guns are used for useful purposes: self defense, to defend against the governmet, etc.
Can you imagine if these same arguments were used by students in real schools???
"Everyone knows that it's dangerous to go to school these days, who knows what sort of whacko's are out there. I'm going to arm myself in self defense."
So why not train and arm all the students in a school just in case one person comes along and decides to start shooting people. If gun control doesn't work, why have gun control in the schools?
The analogy is the same, except for the "children are not the same as adults" argument. There is a point here. Adults generally have more social maturity to handle situations like this better. So it's a matter of scale... 99.9% of adults are responsible with guns, lets say high school children would be about 80-90% responsible in the same environment.
But in this argument, even with the change of scale, wouldn't the arguments be the same? I get the feeling that people here advocating gun posession would still possess their guns even if the odds of violent crimes occuring were a thousand times less. I ask these people:
By the same logic, why not advocate arming school children as well?
Reductio ad adsurdum. Perhaps not quite QED..
The Paradox of Blaming Society (Score:4)
Who do we have to blame most? People like JonKatz. People who refuse to see that the blame first and foremost for the child violence, both self inflicted and caused by others, lies in the hands of the perpetrators.
I hear cries about "persecution," and "intolerance." That's called human nature. Are we so oblivious of the way children act that we forget this has taken place for thousands of years?
Fifty years ago, virtually any person in America could easy obtain a gun. Why is it we haven't had this outbreak in child violence until (relatively) recently?
Compare any schoolchild today to a child living during the Great Depression. Do you honestly thing you could hurl a single insult that would even phase a child living in the poverty stricken America? They learned to endure what they had to, and kept going. The average teenager today cares more about who broke up with who on Dawson's Creek, rather than what their grandparents had to endure so they could be alive today.
If students can't stand bullies, then bring criminal charges on them. If the level of harassment brought upon students does not qualify as criminal action, then learn to live with it. It's cruel and unfortunate, but (shockingly) that is how life works.
What drives these children to do what they do? Nothing. It is the indifference, the feeling of "nothing," which allows children to committ truly evil acts. Through our own ignorance, we have raised a cynical generation, adorned in nihilism, seeking only hedonism. I have seen the face of evil, and its name is Apathy.
Not a day goes by that I don't hear from the media about just who is "really" to blame for these tragedies. I know who is to blame. The whores in the media, whether they be Newsweek, JohnKatz, the New York Times, or Oprah, who make us feel good about ourselves, by telling us we didn't fuck up raising our kids. Instead, we are offered the alternative of blaming violence in the media... blaming school bullies... blaming guns. No.
We can only shift the burden of those to blame on ourselves. Yes, it's a child's fault when a child kills someone. It's also our fault when we neglect our duty, and _ours_ alone, to raise children who don't break out into violence.
What can we do? We can set the first example. We can take responsibility for our actions, starting with the rearing of our children. We can stop parenting as a means of pleasuring _ourselves_, and start paying attention to the fact that once we have children, there is no longer such a thing as "myself". We can stop trying to be the world's coolest parent, and start trying to be a _good_ parent.
I leave you only with an excerpt from a letter Ronald Reagan wrote to his Alma Matter, after he was critized by the student newspaper for having spoken out against a raucous and disgraceful student event that took place on campus grounds.
"I know from my own memory the easy question of why study history-- whats so important about where we've been. At your age you are interested in where you are going. But we must study mans achievements as well as his failures. The problems we must solve today are the results of errors of the past. True feedom is the freedom of self discipline-- the freedom to choose within acceptable standards. Take that framework away and you lose freedom."
Of course. (Score:4)
It's not guns or games, it's schools & parents! (Score:4)
I preface this by saying that I'm an RF circuits engineer and she's a teacher in a private school that goes pre-K to twelfth grade.
We both are of the opinion that what we're seeing is partly a reflection of the narcissism of the modern classroom. On numerous occasions I've seen reports that rank American high schoolers close to last in the industrialized world for math skills, but they rank themselves as first when polled. For ten years or more we've had this idea of Outcome-Based Education, which is an odd name for a system where the outcome doesn't matter. With OBE, it's how the student feels, not how much they know. We as a society have raised a whole generation of empty egos, and they don't know how to handle anything that might endanger their severely distorted self-concept. I think that the great majority of school violence, from these shootings to inter-class fist fights, stem from this (inherent in kids) over-inflated self concept. Anything that threatens the self-image is more than they can handle, and they lash out.
Also, with more and more kinds coming from two-career families or broken homes we have parents that bend to their kids' every whim out of the parents feelings of guilt. I see some of my wife's colleagues -- teachers no less -- doing this. The incessant cry of, "Gimme!" is never met with a, "no." Children are taught that they deserve and are entitled to whatever they want, without exception. Their little egos are continually puffed up both at home by unwitting parents and at school by institutionallized emotional poisoning.
Is it right? No. What should be done about it? I say, increase the torment! Call it Tough Love. People need to be deflated from time to time so that they don't get these dangerous egos. They need to see how they're not that smart, they're not that tough, they're not that athletic, they're not that pretty, they're not that anything. In a word, they need humility. They need to know that it's ok not to get everything you want; in fact, nobody has ever received everything they wanted. They need to learn not to take themselves so seriously or to be so brittle when things don't go their way.
One thing that's missing from just about every aspect of modern life is humility. To be humble in America is to be weak. To be unimportant. To be laughed at. These are the things that must change.
Guns (Score:4)
If you think the problem is the availability of guns, think about this. The US has had easily available guns for 200 years. In fact, guns are far more difficult to get than they've ever been. Yet, this problem of children going berserk killing people is only a relatively recent phenomenom.
If guns are the problem, why hasn't this always been a problem throughout history?
Guns are not the problem, people are. The problem is cultural. Not all modern cultural trends are bad (I don't think video games are), but quite a few are.
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Re:bumper stickers (Score:4)
first - sorry, i shouldn't have bothered with my previous post. it was kinda pointless. i WAS shocked that i got FP tho, first time ever. not even intentional.
anyways, my 2 cents- i think the whole thing about bullying is pretty simple. some kids are jerks, some are not, and the rest float in between somewhere. The jerks make life hell for the "easy targets", the defenseless who won't garner any sympathy. witness the phrase "man, look at those pants. he had it coming. snarf snarf snarf". coaches push to fight against the weak- so the jocks naturally gravitate towards the oppression of the weak.
the worst thing about all of this is that when there IS a backlash (columbine etc) the only thing that happens is blame is thrown around and the easy targets become easier. according to a friend in high school, the school shootings that have been happening actually caused an INCREASE in the violence and general crappiness in his school. the jerks in the school used his long blue hair as a target- one even tried to plant a "hit list" on him. he's been frisked numerous times by a not-at-all-attractive vice principal, more than anyone else and on very shaky grounds.
my point is... crud. i forgot. i think it had to do with the fact that being a teenager sucks. it always has, and always will. someone told me "these are the best days of your life, jeremy"... i wanted to kill myself then.
Bullying doesn't cause killer kids (Score:5)
I didn't kill anyone or go postal. WHY? Because I had good parents who recognized when something was bothering me and dragged it out of me. I say a culture where parents don't give two shits about whats going on in their lives and let their kids have free rein of their lives is what causes killer kids. This is not an issue of what the schools/teachers/media can do, but what good parenting can solve. Call me out of line or whatever, but I really think a two parent loving family, that is attentive will prevent 99.9% of these incidents from occuring! THATS ALL THERE IS TOO IT!
Re:bumper stickers (Score:5)
It's funny, but when I was in junior high, I remember talking to my Dad for a while about girls. Not the "this is how the plumbing works" talk, but more prosaic "why don't you ask girls out" kinda stuff.
The thing I remember most about that conversation was that he told me, "Don't believe anything anyone else says to you. These are, bar none, the hardest years of your life. It all gets easier from here." And, he was right. By the time I was a high school junior, I was more or less comfortable with my geekiness, and resolved to just have a good time being me. My senior year, the group of geeks I hung out with mysteriously turned into the most popular group of kids in the school. It was nuts. Large numbers of us still hang out together, ten years later, and we even have actual lives.
I was lucky that things got better for me, I know. But I suspect that the improvement in my circumstances stemmed from an understanding that life wasn't all wine and roses, and I didn't have to act like it was all the time.
Simply and nicely said. (Score:5)
In our country people like to blame "outside" elements - the that-not-like-me. It is games (which I don't play), music (which I don't like), and the Internet (which I'm too ignorant to use).
However, what is missed is that a problem this widespread (violence, suicide, bullying) is not going to come from outside - it is going to come from within the culture. That is hard for many people to accept.
Americans are people with a great deal of pride, but not all of that pride is earned. We visualize ourselves often as the Light of the World.
We're not good at introspection (having only 200+ years of history limits our shared experiences).
So, we don't want to deal with the fact that if something is going wrong in our country at large there is a problem in the culture at large. It would be having to admit we're not perfect. It would be having to admit we can make mistakes. It would mean hard work to fix things. It would mean confronting ourselves.
We are a violent culture. Wether we justify it by God, Darwin, or History, we figure nothing is wrong with taking what we want, hurting those different, and stomping around as if we'll never take a fall. Repercussions will never happen because, of course, we are so wonderful - and if they do "someone else" must be to blame.
Someday, America, will have to collectively examine itself.
Re:Lay the blame where it should be. (Score:5)
Another thing that bothers me is the lack of traditional Christian morals that are being instilled in today's youth. You never hear about a Reverand's son or a child of a devoutly religious family shooting up a school. It seems like today's family's would rather watch WWF Smackdown than enrich themselves with the wholesome teachings of Jesus Christ.
As a Buddhist, I resent the "My religion is better than your religion!" mentality that you imply here. I agree that religion has a place in society, but please do not denigrate people as immoral because they do not agree with your religious beliefs.
May I remind you that the young lady Smith who commited suicide in Detroit was bullied partly because of her religious beliefs. She was a Wiccan, or at least curious about Wicca, and her tormenters were Christian Fundamentalists (though they weren't acting according to the teachings of Christianity.)
DUH! (Score:5)
If this editorial piece were in a major newspaper or on the six o'clock news - it would be substantially more useful. This is really a case where Mr. Katz is preaching to the converted (again).
To make this piece useful I encourage everyone to print it out and mail it into your local newspapers and news stations. And perhaps the people who really need to be reading this kind of essay will get the opportunity.
Re:Guns (Score:5)
Density?
Let's face it, if the number of bears in the forest surrounding your log cabin outnumber the number of children in your family, then having a good supply of ammunition and weapons in your house is a good thing.
Oh crap, I feel a flamebait rant coming on... Oh well, I've got karma to burn...
Maybe I'm stupid and Canadian, but in an urban population with a decent sized police force, there should be no good reason for people to have to carry around weapons. I mean, Jesus, I remember driving in LA on vacation and seeing a cop in her squad car with the shotgun holster mounted right in the front seat. I mean, holy shit, that thing's loaded. I try not to think about how many loaded weapons there must be if I enter into a family restaraunt in the states with my kids.
Can't you see how this makes you all look like freaks to the rest of the world?!?
Go ahead, mod me down. I don't care. But this is one of the reasons the rest of the first worls looks upon America with bafflement and disbelief.
Guns don't kill people, gun culture kills people.
Not so in Canada... (Score:5)
Last night on the news I saw a segment on an elementary school talking about anger management and bullying to 5 year olds. Things are starting to *happen* here. I've got more confidence that my own kids (the oldest now three) will be able to go to a school where the consequences of bullying are recognized as severe.
All I can suggest: Write your local media. Find a good set of journalists who can do a *good* job of getting down to the school level and investigate what kids are actually saying. We had one of our (two) major networks do a huge story on bullying and the whole thing started to snowball once the general public had a chance to react.
Not exactly agreeing with you... (Score:5)
What's more likely is that either a) the teasing leads to depression, mental or clinical (I wonder, can someone be depressed during puberty, and then the body thinks that the *standard*, thereby causing clinical depression?) or b) the depression leads to unusual habits/attitudes, leading to getting teased.
Finally, what I think few people tend to forget is that kids can't get out of these situations. They're stuck with the people at school for years, live in the same neighborhood, have a tight community that they can't get out of; and seeing ways to make the future brighter isn't exactly something people teach. Taking away their video games isn't going to fix the problem. Just may make them stop specifically *shooting* one another. The problem's still there.
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? (Score:5)
Can you name ONE "fundamentalist Christian theocracy" on the planet at this time? No, because there are no significant Christian theocracies in this era.
There are, however, many Islamic countries which we would classify as having a theocratic system. The laws of government are derived from the Koran and Islamic religious tradition- it has nothing to do with, as you state, "a desire to see everyone else become exactly like you, and for some, it's a means of gaining power". Do you really believe this, or are you just saying it because it seems like it must be true because the alternative is to imagine a large body of people sharing an absolute religious worldview- a concept that, in our post-Christian agnostic consumerist society is too alien to fathom?
Visit one. I was in Jordan last year. The Islamic citizens there aren't pod-people with a hive mentality looking to homogenize themselves- they're human beings with beliefs that they value above their own lives. Also contrary to your statement, they have less power as citizens than you could possibly imagine, and belief in Islam will ensure that they remain without power or freedom as we know it. Yet they still believe..
As a Christian, I disagree stongly with their religious worldview. But try to have a little more respect for people with differing beliefs, and allow for the possibility that the fact of someone else's differing opinion may not be indication of their inferiority as individuals or thinkers.
It's just easier to blame video games (Score:5)
Now don't go flaming me just yet, these are broad generalizations, lets look at these in a bit more depth.
Quality Time
In our society there is a huge increase in 2 working parent families. Most day care services are staffed by some of the poorest trained lowest paid workers in the United States today. A child raised in this environment is usually introduced to other children via the law of the jungle. i.e. those that can exert their force and power will and you will bend, or go home bloody from "falling" off the jungle-jim.
A parent's time is hard to come by. Companies DEMAND more and more out of their staff (especially those of us in tech or management and on salary!) This in turn gives us less and less time for ourselves, and also less time for our families. Then comes the fabrication of quality time. The idea that spending the "right kind of time" will be ok and you won't have to spend as much time with your children. Try to find a good scientific study about quality time (good luck). The find a study about just plain old "parental involvement". Quality time is a crock designed to make over worked/stressed parents feel better about themselves.
Cost to fix? High, companies would have to stop demanding 12/15 hour days, perhaps even give mothers more time off for maternity. Help provide proper day care. this adds up to $$$$$
School Systems
School Systems Schools are designed with cost in mind, and it is cheaper to build a BIG school for thousands of students then to build several little schools for say 250-500 students. This leads to a system where students can easily get lost, be over looked and hide. There are simply too many students, and our current Jr and Sr years are nothing more than a fashion show in many schools. The fix would be to build smaller schools, and hire more teachers. This of course costs $$$, and trust me the BABY BOOMERS (i.e. the me generation) wants absolutely nothing to do with raising taxes or paying for a good education system. Of course raise taxes for Socialist security to keep it solvent, but the hell with our children! (Sorry, I live in an area with a lot of Senior Citizens, and that attitude is so pervasive it makes me sick)
Improper treatment of children and adolescents
Our society, our advertisers and to a lesser extent each of use are treating adolescents as adults. This can be seen in malicious humor directed at them, in advertisements and in their ability to commit "adult" crimes. It's so funny that our society must be PC (nee see the "re-education" of John Rocker) but we will happily laugh along with the sitcom that makes fun of the "geek", that chastises the girl that is "over wieght" (i.e. she doesn't look like she spent 8 months in Ausweitz) etc. Wow, strange world we live in.
To some extent adolescents WANT to be treated like they are older, and I did too when I was 15-16 etc. BUT this is the age when one learns coping skills, when one learns how to deal with adversity and so forth. A minor incident for an adult can feel like a life threatening tragedy to some children/adolescents. People need to keep that in mind, adolescents aren't adults yet.
Agree with me or not, the cost to solve these problems are high, they will take time, and lets face it video games and rap songs are a symptom not a cause. The politicos will point to the John Rockers of the world (and who cares what he thinks anyway???) and have him get "sensitivity" training while happily ignoring millions of school aged children. PC will simply be a way to silence different points of view, while allowing daily doses of hurtful propaganda that makes some companies rich right on through.
It Still Takes a Village (Score:5)
Stay with me here, I think I have part of the answer, and a damn sight bigger part than a politician would dare try to tackle.
The "village" in this instance is the environment of the kid; this includes parents, school authorities, his peers and friends, TV, video games and computer games. From this village he forms his opinion of the world and obtains a sense of 'connectedness'. 'Connectedness' in this sense represents his relationship with his village: i.e., he gets what he needs from his environment and in return he is responsible for contributing his part to the environment ('he' is generic here, okay ladies?); he feels connected to it, a part of it.
But our village is burnt out.
The parents have skewed values and pursue money at the expense of time with their children. The child is latch-key and unsupervised and unloved in a real sense.
The school environment is composed of overworked and burnt-out teachers: sure they Could care, but who Cares if they Care? So none of them connect with the troubled teen in a realistic manner. And the teen feels inadequate to approach them for help; it certainly isn't encouraged in this day and age. Teachers are Not Parents, but they play them in the classroom.
And now for the Active elements in the Boy's young life! TV actively plays teens against their parents, portraying them as the enemy and corrupt and evil. Kids buy into this because they want power and ally themselves with a 'villager' who appears to be their ally. But it isn't their ally; it is their 'wormtongue', placing messages of destruction into the child's mind. No one would argue that TV is a poor parent for a child. TV actively increases the level of anxiety in the teen's mind... I could go on and on about this, but I think we all agree its fairly evident.
Finally, and in league with the media, is the interactive world, the electronic world of messages that play into the natural tendencies of a child's aggression. He doesn't roughhouse with Dad, he doesn't play capture the flag with his friends, he isn't wrestling in the gym. No, he is sitting in front of a screen blowing the bejeezus out of a bunch of frightening images, getting a subtle (not so subtle?) rush of adrenaline (adrenaline, the drug of choice for Americans, bar none) in doing so. And, as Ashcroft correctly if misguidedly asserts, learning how to kill.
Finally, add the complete humiliation day in and day out of his peers, the final element of his village, taunting and ridiculing him freely and
without supervision. Nothing will stop this daily terror.
Oh no, add one more thing.
Give him a gun.
Therein lies the recipe for these disasters. And when you add the sensationalism and copycat solicitation provided by the media, you really shouldn't be surprised in the monsters you have created.
It takes a village, alright. A village of village idiots.
Last thing. All you single-cause zealots who use these tragedies to foster your cause are doing nothing to help. You add heat but little light to the discussion. Banning guns would help but it ain't gonna happen. The Ten Commandments in school halls would remind us all who is really in charge here (White Christians, not God), but would lessen the alienation of our troubled youth not one whit. Punishing Hollywood, punishing parents, laying blame on Any Single Thing is perpetuating a vicious spiral that gets us nowhere. So please, if you care to respond to any of this, keep that in mine when you do. It is a complicated problem and it might even be one that cannot be solved today or even ever. But we can't make headway if we fall back into old and tired arguments. Not that the NRA isn't an idiot, but that it is too thickheaded and stubborn. Not that Christians aren't the new Nazis, but that calling them names doesn't allow them to trust America enough to open a dialog. We need a brand new paradigm, just like the old paradigm that we once held sacred, albeit only for the landed gentry. Perhaps if we can extend it to All Men and Women and Children, the village can have meaning again for a nation of alienated and Disconnected youth.
(Reprinted from a Plastic article [plastic.com] I wrote. I only got one karma point, but a bunch of replies.
bumper stickers (Score:5)
"my kid shot your bully in the head"
with a doom background.
Speaking of which (Score:5)
One thing Katz missed in an otherwise very good article is the termonology battle. Kid in school are victims of "bullying"? I think not.
They're victims of: Assault, Simple Battery, Agrevated Assault, Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Misdemeanor and Felony Harrasment, all degrees of Sexual Assault (with 3rd degree happening to your average attractive girl around 40 times per day), Extortion, Robbery, Theft, Racketeering (a group organized for the purpose of an illegal activity) and countless other very real crimes.
So long as we continue to convince students either a: that the criminal behavior in which they are engaged is acceptable (or, at worst, subject to minimal action taken outside of the criminal justice system it would be in in any other context) or b: that their complaints regarding criminal actions being taken against them aren't to be taken seriously we will continue to have large numbers of students taking their own lives or, in much smaller numbers, those of others.
What is to be done? (Score:5)
Cultural change against bullying must come from the kids themselves. Perhaps they need to think of themselves as a cohesive group with a common interest and goal.. in which case, resistance against the curtailment of everyone's rights would be a good option.
Once again parents are looking for a scapegoat (Score:5)
It feels to me that parents want to point fingers at anything other than themselves for their children's problems. For instance, Columbine - lets blame music and the colour black. The more interest parents take in their childrens' lives, the quicker to help and slower to punish, the more trust children should be able to feel in their parents; these are all issues that should be addressed. Not "what should we ban for the sake of our children". That's why they hate South Park, it is a cleverly executed, very accurate parody of modern society.
Claric
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My experiences as a suicidal youth (Score:5)
When I was younger, I was very pale, very small, and had a very sharp tongue. I also grew up without a father and instead being raised by my drill sergeant mother and spineless door-knob step father. The Pink Floyd album "The Wall" has special meaning for me.
From the 5th grade to the 9th grade, I was the target of constant ridicule and physical violence from other students. Invariably, these students had social problems that they were unable to handle. So they looked for a target on which to vent. My poor people skills, high intellegence, sarcastic tone, and effeminant manerisms made me an ideal target. My mother had always indoctrinated me with non-violence. So when I was the target of abuse from other students, I always backed down. And even if I hadn't I figured I was smaller than everyone else, so I would have lost anyway. Dating was also hell for me since I was exactly the opposite of what every highschool girl wants.
Ashcroft said video games contribute to an "ethic of violence."
Video games, violent and otherwise, were an escape for me. had those been taken away, I'm sure I would have vented in more destructive ways.
The question really is whether vicious kids and hostile school environments are turning kids into killers. It's a question neither politicians nor the media seem to want to ask.
I suspect that's because politics and the media tend to attract extroverted people. These types of people, in my opinion, would tend to be the popular people at school. So drawing on their own school experiences would be useless in understanding the plight of these targeted children.
What makes big news -- and what doesn't -- is always telling. We hear a lot about kids who get gunned down in schools by their peers. We usually hear even more about the evil influences on their lives, from gaming to violent TV and movies to the Net. Yet a vastly greater number kill themselves because of their peers. That doesn't draw many headlines or stories on the evening news, or denunciations from the President.
The media is in business to make money. And sensation sells. That's why they cover it. And if they can promote their liberal agneda in the process, all the better. No one wants to hear about how johnny got beaten up on the way home from school for the fourth time this week.
As usual, the government has tended to blame video games and violent movies and TV shows. Aschroft said "the entertainment industry, with it's video games and the like, which sometimes literally teach shooting and all, we've got to ask ourselves, how do we as a culture ... be more responsible."
LOL. I know our public schools are bad, but even the worst educated students can figure out how to fire a gun. They don't need a video game to learn that. I hate it when old conservative politicians try to find some "morally reprehensible" activity, one they don't engage in themsemves, on which to blame society's problems. Morality is part of the answer, not the answer.
Psychologists and researchers report that bullying, taunting or constant ridicule by peers is often a major factor in these suicides, as well as a constant thread running through the horrific series of school shootings.
This is bullshit. A student fearing a shooting at their school is like a passenger on a plane fearing a plane crash. I guess the APA has to get their gun control agenda in there somewhere.
Kids who are non-conformist, rebellious, individualistic or different in other ways are routinely subjected to harassment all kinds, as well as life in schools that cling to outdated curriculums, punish non-conformity and isolate individuals.
It's not just the goths. All I worked hard at being normal.
Yet 81 percent of Americans told the Gallup they blame the Internet for Columbine.
This is because that's what the media told them to believe
A handful of schools have instituted anti-bullying and harrassment programs, but the popular media and most politicians seem much more interested in kids who go over the edge and shoot others than in the many more who are driven over the edge and kill themselves. Maybe it's time to shift focus.
I'll believe it when I see it. And that is why my four kids are in a private school. There's no more powerful weapon to get schools to fix a problem than money.
I have a very clear opinion as to the cause of schools shootings. You can agree or not. I don't care. But it goes something like this:
1. In the lower grades, the "killer" student is ridiculed. Singled out by the other class mates as someone who is different. Maybe they look different, like a very pale person in sunny california. Or an over weight person at a very athletics-oriented high school. Or maybe their parents are poor, so their clothes are an issue. Who knows.
2. Then the killer student either goes to someone they can trust and gets nowhere or the have no one to go to. For me, the people I trusted did nothing.
3. The student feels trapped. Nothing is resolved. The physical and emotional abuse goes on and on, unchecked. Somewhere around now, the student may exhibit emotional or behavioral problems and is more than likely placed on some kind of drug.
4. Then the killer student reaches puberty. The student is now feeling a volatile mixture of self-destructive feelings, poor self-esteem, and unbridled rage.
5. What happens next depends on the student and how they were brought up. If they were brought up in a religious, but not too religious home, with caring, if out of touch parents, they simply kill themselves while leaving a note designed to exact the maximum pain on the ones responsible. If the student was brought up in a home where the parents had no involvement at all, or were really out of touch, and the student has a weak moral background, they may decide to take out as many students as possible on their way out.
In any event, suicides, and shootings are designed to send a strong message to people who aren't listening, while putting an end to the student's pain.
I was close to suicide on many occaisions. I was constantly considering ways to end my life. I eventually decided that the only ways available to me were slashing wrists, jumping from my high-rise apartment building, or jumping in front of a subway train. None were certain or instant enough for me. Salvation for me was puberty which finally hit in the 9th grade. I grew nearly a foot in one year. And over a summer vacation, nearly all of the bullying stopped. Now I'm 6'5" and 270lbs. People tend to leave me alone now. My manerisms are also very different now.
What these kids need today is a good moral background. And good parenting from both parents. If every child got this, the targets would survive the bullying and the bullies wouldn't need to. But parents/adults/politicians don't want to hear this. They want a scapegoat, an easy solution that doesn't involve a behavor change for the parents. Today it's the internet and first person shooters. When I was growing up, it was heavy metal and D&D. Tomorrow it will be something else. Is it really so hard to see?