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Are Kids Turning Your Kids Into Killers?
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.
Density?
:-)
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.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Seriously, what the f*ck does a person need a gun for anyway?
:-)
:-)
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.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Please explain how it is possible to first kill yourself, then kill others.
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"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
See the Rough Draft column from Monday for more from the Press.
Best Slashdot Co
OK, getting back to the original subject.
:)
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..
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Humans are social animals, if not pack animals, and will tend to derive self worth from their peer group. And between other kids who mock them, teachers who tell them that 'it's nothing to worry about,' the 'it' in this case being, of course, the child's feelings of unworthyness, and parents who often don't notice such things it can get rather lonely. Throw in the fact that the average 10-15 year old is probably somewhere in puberty process, depending on race, sex, and a few other factors, and you get some nasty hormonal imbalances influencing the kids towards behaviour that, a year or two later, they'd never dream of. Oh, and as an aside, zero-tolerance policies are a bad thing; they tend to influence kids into not 'ratting' on friends who are 'talking smack' because they'll get thrown out of school; how do the kids feel when it turns out he wasn't just 'talking smack?' Of course, how do they feel if they do get him kicked out, and it turns out to be nothing?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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.
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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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
>>>>
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.
--endcycle--
I was a geek all through school, ostracized and bullied (Even more so since my little brother 12" shorter than me and extremely athletic could kick my @ss in a fight, good thing we are really tight).
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!
Rule of Life Number 2: Remember, it can all go to hell at any minute. --Jimmy Buffet
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.
OK, this is when I enjoy Katz - heartfelt, human, and without bizarre comparisons or conspiracy theories.
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.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
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.)
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
As much as this a very accurate and useful point to make I think most people who read Slashdot are going to go 'duh'. I mean it's very obvious to those of us who grew up in such a life and contemplated escaping it all ourselves.
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.
If guns are the problem, why hasn't this always been a problem throughout history?
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.
I've been amazed in Canada how bullying has taken the forefront of the local, provincial, and national news in the last year, and specifically in the last few months. After several teen suicides, a few key surveys of school age kids, and a rather well done documentary on bullying on CBC's evening news show "The National" that provoked an enormous outpouring of phone calls and emails to the station that the next night they had to do a follow up the following night, to the commercials on TV and the radio "bullying is dead serious", Canada seems to have taken the hint. Bullying => teen violence, and bullying is the root source of the problem. BC's government seems to have gone off on this weird tanget for rating video games, but that story is eclipsed here by what's now perceived to be a epedemic problem across the province and the country.
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.
Pointing out that whole "Its the mental condition that get kids teased in the first place" - that's bull. Kids get teased because they're there. They get teased for anything at all that makes them different; this, at least in my case, may have had depression as a contributing factor, but I never heard anyone coming up to me, saying "I'm teasing you because you're depressed."
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.
Whatever you do... don't read this.
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.
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.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
No matter what Hillary says, that phrase is important because it points closer to what it is that allows for the evil suggestion of a student's Final Solution to enter his brain and seem like the Only Solution.
:)
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 I wrote. I only got one karma point, but a bunch of replies.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
i don't know.... my brother just made a bumper sticker as a spoof of the "my kid beat up your honor student"....
:)
"my kid shot your bully in the head"
with a doom background.
--endcycle--
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.
I think that policymakers focus on guns, games, etc. because they can be eliminated using traditional authoritarian police measures from schools, homes and the other places where children live. Every parent, no matter whether they abuse their child or are a moidel parent, can feel better when they remove evil games or install software to spy on kids or set up a snitch line. That is why law enforcement finds these approaches politically useful.
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.
Goat sex free since 2001
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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There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
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?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.