Slashdot Mirror
More Stories From The Hellmouth
The messages started coming in a trickle Friday afternoon, then a torrent by Monday. They were wrenching, sometimes astonishing, an electronic outpouring of anger and compassion.
These jarring testimonials explained more - a lot more - about Littleton than all the vapid media stories about video violence, Goths, game-crazed geeks.
For a writer, there? s nothing more humbling than to be at a loss for words. I can't do more justice to these stories than to let them speak for themselves.
By last night, I had received thousands of e-mails about life in junior and high school. Few remembered it fondly - none, in fact. Some had unbearable memories. Some are still recovering. Many more are still there, suffering every day.
Many of you wrote asking if you could help these kids. Others wondered if there was any way to get the message about their lives out beyond Slashdot, if these stories might reach the mainstream media in some form.
Don't worry about that. The column and the responses to it richocheted all over the world, via e-mail, mailing lists, links, even faxes. There were scores of requests to reprint. For any others, and on behalf of Slashdot, be my guest.
On the Net, ideas don't need to be pushed. They find their own audience and stand or fall of their own weight. Eventually, I will answer each e-mail, and am grateful for them.
In the wake of the killings in Littleton, Colorado, here are more stories from The Hellmouth, from its current and former children:
From Eric near Littleton, Colorado:
"?I live just a few miles north of the school between the same streets. I'm a geek under the skin. I was a state champ in the high jump, and the leading scorer on the track team, so I was not quite the outcast that some of the geeks are, but I understand what they are going through. I wasn't very popular despite being the big athlete on campus, but I at least had respect.
I am very happy to see you and Slashdot carrying coverage of "the other side" of the story; the side nobody else wants to look at. These outcast kids are now being swept under the rug at best, and prosecuted at worst."
From Josh, a Slashdot reader:
"I was much like those kids when I was in school - weird, cast out, not much liked, alienated, all that sort of thing'I used to imagine bringing weaponry to school and making the fuckers who made my life miserable beg for mercy. (I was never sure what to do then, though. Do I let them go? They won't have learned, and after that, I could never turn my back. Do I kill them? I really just wanted to be left alone'Remember the scene in "Ender's Game.") I think my parents and their support made a lot of difference to me."
From John of Austin:
"?you can probably imagine the emotional scars that I still tote around with me at age 26. I still have yet to go to college, I have shelves upon shelves of books that I have bought, read and committed to memory. From literature to computer programming, there is no one that I can't have a meaningful and informed conversation with.
But to this day, the thought of entering another educational institution to prove that I have the facilities to be a ?meaningful? member of society makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and turns my stomach inside out.
"I am the father now, and as such I worry about the kind of life my son will lead, too much at times, I'm sure'A few weeks ago I was watching the TLC (The Learning Channel) or the Discovery channel, and there was a special on the social structure within the United States prison system on. While I was watching it, I was thinking to myself just how similar it was to the social structure we find in schools.."
From John, who's 37 years old:
"What this really means to all my fellow young geeks out there? Endure. It may take a year, or two or five, but we will win'All those preps, jocks, etc., etc., will have their Ms. degrees, 2.5 kids, a job at Circuit City as an assistant manager, will be wondering where their life went, when we are coming into full bloom and taking over the world."
From Dan:
"How dare you glorify these scum? They were Nazi thugs, nothing more, nothing less. They are brutal murderers. They planned this on Hitler's Birthday, for God's sake. What kind of creep are you? How dare you compare them to geeks? They deserved everything they had coming to them, and so do you. May they rot in Hell."
From Kevin, a parent:
"I am married, have two wonderful little kids, and am, by conventional measures, considered "successful." I'm also a computer geek, a nerd, and still have painful memories of the emotional and physical trauma I sustained in high school. I still attend counseling regularly. I still take anti-depressants every day and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my life.
"Did I feel hate and rage for my attackers? Oh, yes. But I could never do anything about it and couldn't get anyone to help me. The only advice I got from my parents was to just ignore the bullys and eventually they'd leave me alone. Fortunately, I don't seem to be pre-disposed to violence or was too much of a coward to consider it. I can, however, see how the wrong kid in the wrong situation could go over the edge."
From Peter in Boston:
"I am a geek, and very proud of it. I have been beaten, spit on, pushed, jeered at. Food is sometimes thrown at and on me while teachers pretend not to see, people trip me. Jocks knock me down in the hallway. They steal my notes, call me a geek and a fag and a freak, tear up my books, have pissed in my locker twice. They cut my shirt and rip it. They wait for me in the boy's room and beat me up. I have to wait an hour to leave school to make sure they're gone.
Mostly, I honestly think, this is because I'm smarter than they are, and they hate that.
The really amazing thing is, they are the most popular people in the school, while everybody thinks I'm a freak. The teachers slobber all over them. Mostly, the other kids laugh, or walk away and pretend not to see it. The whole school cheers when they play sports. Sometimes, I want very much to kill them. Sometimes, I picture how I'd do it. Wouldn't you? But unlike those guys in Littleton, I never will. I value my own life much more. When I read these messages, I would ask other geeks to try and remember that, no matter what. And get online and make contact."
From Rory in Chicago:
"Would you bring a kid abused by his family to counseling and call him the problem? If that kid expressed rage and anger toward the world, we would call it a product of his abuse, and try to help him with this rage, treating him as the victim. However when it is other kids abusing each other, we treat the abusees as the problem and ignore the abusers altogether. Hunting down and persecuting the abusees is only going to alienate them further - not only with their peers be persecuting them but so will their parents and teachers."
From Jason, a Slashdot reader:
"Jon, please take these e-mails'and take them to CNN, ABC, NBC, whoever, what ever. Make them heard, and stand up for all of us! Geeks = different, different = okay, if not better! Make my mother understand, sweeping problems under the rug, or simply not dealing with them, doesn't do jack shit! And there's a bigger problem, it's them!
The people who think being different is bad, being geek is bad, TV, Games, the Internet, all bad! It will be hard, a minority against a majority! But please do it!"
From Evan: "I am 24 years old, and a successful professional now, but the, fifteen years ago, I was in the Hellmouth. Just wanted to shout some small form of encouragement out to the kids fighting today. Take your fight for the right to be different to the people with power, and enlist your parents? help. Remember that if you can get your parents to understand your need to be creative, and non-conformist, because your brain is just plain bigger than the small world of middle and high school, your parents can make a fuss to school boards. But if they won't listen, go to the school boards yourself. Peacefully, but forcefully, assert your right to be different by speaking out against fear and oppression. Because that's what it is. It's all about the fear.
People fear what they don't understand, and let's face it, the world of a geek isn't something most people can understand, if only because it's a complicated world filled with smart folks. And most people aren't complicated smart folks. You have GOT to break them of the fear. You gotta explain that it's an outlet, like racquetball or bridge. You have to explain it's not violent, it's colorful. You want violent? Look at football, look at sports.
That's REAL ACTUAL violence, not the simulated, stylized, far from even looking-real violence of video games or D&D (Dungeons and Dragons). And for a real kicker, ask them how many geeks are arrested for violent crimes and misdemeanors when compared to popular athletes."
From Cory, a high school student:
"I go to a private high school and on Wednesday in religion class I told the class, because we were on the subject that I could understand what would drive them (the killers in Littleton, Colorado) to do it. They said that it couldn't happen at our school and I responded by saying that it could because back in my freshman year it was so bad (the jokes, abuse, etc.) that I wished I had had a gun at home. I am a Senior now and 9 days from graduation. News got to the administration and I was suspended until I received an evaluation by a psychologist and was deemed safe to return to school. I have not been back to school since."
From MishtaE: "I've been out of school for awhile (not very long) but I still physically shake, I feel adrenaline go through my system when I think about my own junior high experiences'The feeling of hopelessness, of knowing that you have no one to go to who can or will make it STOP is a very horrid feeling. It makes you consider irrational things, because the rational ones obviously don't apply.
"But make no mistake, the cruelty inflicted on kids doesn't magically go away when you graduate (or drop out and get your GED at 16 as I did). You live with it, you learn to deal with it, but it's still there, and it does change you."
From LHRunkle, a self-described geek Mom:
"?my six-year old wonders why he isn't popular on the block, but does not enjoy racing his bike, or playing soccer. (Soccer is becoming fun.) He also wonders why noone else is reading the books he is. The online community did not exist when I was in high school, but geek culture did. Dungeons & Dragons (the original three-booklet set) and science fiction saved me.
"How many scared parents have taken the time to introduce their child to the items that kept them sane in high school? How many high school libraries are even allowed to stock Theodore Sturgeon, or all of Robert Heinlein? Before we go to Net culture, we need to face local culture. How many schools enforce a respect-for-all policy, and enforce it fairly? I know that I have a budding geek, and if I can get him sane through the next thirteen years, there will be another decent adult on this planet."
From Simon:
"The mainstream is missing the point. All over the world, "geeks" are standing up and saying "This is horrible and I know what cause it" and all over the world people are saying "Oh, my God! Another killer!" I'll spell it out: "The killers are a symptom of the alienation of an unrecognized minority - the geeks." No, that doesn't make it right. No, that doesn't mean a thousand more killers are lurking in the computer rooms of your schools.
"Failure to understand this severely limits your ability to correct it. I read with dismay that geeks are being cut off from the Internet and violent online games so that they "won't become killers."
Follow my logic here:
"Given: The killers were motivated in no small part by alienation. Reducing a persons contact with like-minded people increases their alienation. Reducing a person's sense of identify increases their sense of alienation. Geeks tend to communicate with each other via the Internet and online games.
"Conclusion: Cutting geeks off from each other (Internet access) and their identity (choice of clothing) will increase rather than decrease the likelihood of violence."
"I've been wracking my brain to figure out what stopped me (from hurting someone). I've been asking myself "what can I hand to people to fix this?" The answer is very simple. The faces are very clear in my memory of the few "popular people" who took the time to talk to me and find out about me. There are maybe a half a dozen. They showed me that they were people too.
I heard a report, it may not be true [it is] that one of the killers went and told one of his classmates before the killing, "I like you. Go home." If that happened if you are that person, you know that your attitude saved your life. If there were a few more like you, maybe it would have saved everyone."
From Armadillo:
" I thought I had put this behind me but I obviously haven't. This whole past week has really torn me up inside because 15 years ago, I was one of those kids. Because HS for me was sheer and utter Hell. I have no single memory that I can recall as being good.
I have no single person who I can recall as a friend. Hell, even the OTHER rejects kicked me around. I feel like I'm seeing this all through the eyes of a refugee from a war, who by some circumstance is rescued, taken off to a land far from the conflict, far from the danger and death and constant fear and destruction.
Years later, after having made some personal peace with the past, if not the people, they hear or see a report that their former home town or village has been bombed and the people they knew killed and it all comes flooding back.
"Why is it that we as geeks, freaks, nerds, dorks, dweebs'have to suffer while the clueless, bow-headed, tostosterone poisoned "normal" people are allowed to get away with murder'I wonder just how many outcasts have been driven to suicide because of just one too many tauntings or practical jokes on a particular afternoon?
"Why do we murder the spirits of our most gifted and talented young people? THEY are the ones that are our future. THEY are the ones that are best equipped to build the world to their hopes and dreams. The prom queens and cheerleaders will have their 15 minutes and then take their places among the teeming masses of consumers. They have already shown they want to be lead around and are more than happy to let society tell them where to go and what to do."
From Nick:
" I'm a junior in high school in a suburb of.... I felt that in light of what happened last Tuesday and your recent article on Slashdot, I should respond. Recently, one of my friends, Chris, was suspended for three days. He's an athlete (football and shotput), but is no means considered a "jock" as he plays computer games, reads fantasy novels, plays Warhammer 40K, etc. One person, Ryan, considered a "nerd" by his peers, mislabeled him [Chris} as a jock and decided to taunt him verbally. Chris is normally a nice guy who's never been in a fight before, as he gets along with most students. This verbal abuse continued for almost the entire school year so far.
Last Thursday, Chris slapped Ryan upside the head due to a particularly nasty thing that was said and Ryan picked up a chair, shouting death threats and swears. They were quickly broken up by the teacher and hall monitors, and were escorted to the dean's office.
Normally, each would only get a 1 day in-school suspension for what they did, but due to the incident in Colorado, each got three days and counseling by the school psychiatrist for the remainder of the year. The deans obviously overreacted, given the circumstances. What the main problem is here is that years of torment in people like Ryan's lives have led to such "classes" -- Goths, nerds, freaks, preps, etc. People form together in cliques where people are distinctly filed into the social pecking order. The high school situation could (and is) leading to a French Revolution-esque "class war" where social outcasts decide to say enough with the years of torment. Unfortunately, this is happening sooner than we think.
From Sally:
"The irony in the current coverage, at least to me, is that I remember my leather-jacketed, spiky-haired, combat-boot wearing friends as being for the most part peaceful, gentle, sensitive types - lots of vegetarians and anti-nuke people. Sure, there were a few who probably could have benefited from some therapy, but most of them were - and are - the nicest, kindest people I knew, despite their rather alarming appearance. After all, we had to be like that - we all knew what it felt like to be shoved in a locker, spit on, have stuff thrown at us, etc. I seem to remember the football players and other jocks as being a lot more violent and given to fits of rage and other displays of aggression.
... I certainly agree that the two shooters in Littleton were deranged boys filled with hate, But it's a fine line between a supposedly "well-adjusted" teenager [who bashes freaks] and a disturbed one."
From Matthew C in Wisconsin:
"I, like many of the Slashdot audience, was one of those those kids in high school, and junior high, and elementary school. I have suffered what those kids suffered, and continue to suffer. I made it through, but apparently not everyone does. The response to your article seems to suggest that there are many of us out there who want to help do something to curb the backlash to focus on the correct issue. I was wondering, in your surely large catalogue of responses to this column, have you found any hints of where we might send letters? Or who we might contact, to start telling people what the real problems are?
I want to help. I want to write, to talk, to help ensure that geeks of today and tomorrow aren't further persecuted for pursuing differences from the norm. We have to spread the word far and wide, teachers, parents and people who should know better than to ban trenchcoats, take away computers, and further drive their kids into depression and isolation. How can we organize something meaningful?"
This is all so wierd; I wasn't just a Geek in high school, I was the Alpha Geek. The nerdiest of the nerds in most repects.
But yet I was happy. Sure, a couple of times in Grade 8 someone tried picking on me for who or what I was, but I fought back - hard - and they soon learned to leave me alone.
In fact, I went out of my way to try and get to know as many different people as I could; to have a foot in as many different groups as possible. To make as many friends as possible.
It takes courage to try and make friends, but it works. I could hang with anybody, and I had a BLAST. I'd happily go back to being in high school if I could.
And as I think back, I don't remember any truely unhappy Geeks. I remember one guy who had a particular religeous agenda to push (he was B'hai) who occasionally caught some verbal flak for his incessant expousing of his views, but he was respected for his courage to speak his mind, and certainly never beaten up. He may have been a little lonely, but I wouldn't say _abused_.
You know, it's cool to be happy. Surely I'm not the only one who was (and is!)
DG
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love (relaxing@home.com):
When I was in Kindergarten through first grade out bus driver actually PAID two kids something like $2 per week to keep the other kids in line. I was shoved, and screamed at by second graders when I was only 5 years old. I was not allowed to sit in the same seat as my best friend because we were too rowdy.
One of the two was a female, who when she got older was actually kind of cute. I got back at her four years later. Every time she got on the school bus I squeezed her butt. Hard. She would get on the bus and see me and sit down in the nearest available seat. She tried to enlist other people to protect her hind quarters from the biting grasp of my hand, but the most people would do is stand between us. I had long arms, I reached around them. She finall told the art teacher, who pulled me aside and takled me into leaving her alone. He was a fair man and I've got no problem with what he did, but the incompetent principal who did NOTHING to stop my abuse was later promoted to superintendant of the FSCKING DISTRICT. The guy bully moved away, and I never got to get back at him.
I hadn't thought about this in years, but now it really pisses me off to think about it. I just hope nobody cuts me off on the drive home from work.
I haven't been this mad since I was 17.
When I was young I reached my breaking point and lashed out violently against several of my peers. That got me a reputation as a kid who people didn't fsck with, at least not as much as the other so called nerds.
Having a high pain threshhold didn't hurt either. One time a guy split my lip, and loosened one of my teeth. He climed on top of me and proceeded to punch me in the face. He got one or two shots in and I was able to block 3 or 4 punches. He climed off of me and ran down the hall before he could make it the length of of a classroom I was on my feet again calling him on again.(I probabaly would have lost teeth if he came back) My tenacity impressed people, that day a bunch of kids from school came to see how I was, one of the "cool" kids came along. When I told them my side of the story he said and I'll never forget this "You're one tough son of a bitch." If felt good to have the respect of my peers, and even though I had stitches in my face for two weeks, even though I lost, people didn't really pick on me after that.
That was during my 7th grade year. We were the youngest, and smallest people in the school. Many of my friends only ran or hid from being picked on, I faced it. I got mad, and I fought. In that year I got into four fights, and I only lost one.
That set the pace for the rest of my high school career. I didn't fight much after that year, because I didn't have to. There were even a couple of times I was able to intervene to stop strong people from picking on weak people.
To drop out is to let them win, or at least to let them think that they've won. This is unacceptable. Don't take a gun or a knife to school, but keep a tightly packed roll of nickels or two in mind.
LK
While I understand the outcries against unfair treatment that are being expressed, I think it's also scary that many of these e-mails seem to express disdain and even hatred for ALL non-geeks. What these e-mails seem to ask for is acceptance and the control of their lives, yet they don't seem to recognize that not everyone else out there is against them or insensitive to them.
I come from a fairly unique position in this debate, having been on both sides. My experience through the 9th grade was that of the outcast. I was the guy that didn't really get much attention, was passed over in sports, ridiculed by other kids, and hit, tripped, etc in the halls and outside of school. Then, in about the 8th grade, I discovered that I could run. By my junior year I was captain of the track team, and everyone knew who I was. I still vividly remember the day in 9th grade where someone started to poke fun at me and one of the guys they were with said "Leave him alone, man, he's that runner."
Throughout high school I still had friends who were geeks, but I also had a lot of friends who were jocks, and I found that for most of them they weren't any different. Granted, there were those who were real jerks, but there were just as many geeks as jocks that fit the jerk category. I guess my purpose in writing this is to ask that all the geeks that hate jocks, do you really hate ALL jocks? It can be just as dangerous to stereotype one's enemies as it can be to be stereotyped yourself.
It is shocking to see the way the principal'a and teachers treated students, especially in the aftermath of the Colorado killings. It reminds me almost exactly of the treatment Balint Vazsonyi received when he was a student in Hungary under both the Nazis and the communists. Think the wrong thoughts and you get "counseling" or kicked out or worse. (He describes this experience in his book "America's Thirty Year's War").
But while it offends, it is not surprising. Years of Supreme Court rulings have basically stripped students of anything resembling rights. It is legal for the school to force them to go through metal detectors to enter the building. Or to randomly search their lockers without cause. Or to censor their articles in the school newspaper. Or to install camers to monitor their every move. Or to force them to submit to drug tests if they want to participate in any extracirricular activity. For someone who spends 12 years in a school with armed police guards, cameras everywhere, random searches of their possession, metal detectors, and administrators with dictatorial powers, how will they every grow up into adults who behave as though they have freedom and rights? If you spend years with school guards who can search your locker at will, why would not think the police can search your car or home at will when you get older? It is very scary what is going on. (My description is accurate for many urban schools. Soon to be more suburban schools if I read things right).
And of course that one letter sent home by the principal encouraging students to rat on friends they think are acting "suspicious". That's also a tactic straight out of the Soviet Union, where children were invited to inform on their peers and their parents. Witness the DARE program as well (a program that is proven not to reduce drug abuse at all, BTW) where in some schools the students are told to inform the cops on their parents if they see drugs. (Included are lies about how the parent will simply get help - no mention of arrest) What kind of a message is that? The government is putting itself up as the ultimate authority figure in children's lives, supplanting the primary role of the parents in shaping their children's values.
There there are the "zero tolerance" policies. This is shorthand for zero intelligence in my opinion. Teachers can simply say bring a steak knife to school to cut the chicken breast your Mom packed for lunch, you're expelled (this happened in Indianapolis). It's so much easier than using judgement. You see, judgement requires intelligence, which is something far too few teachers and adminstrators have. With rare exceptions I was both smarter and more knowledgable than the teachers in my high school. Look at the average SAT scores of education students. I rest my case.
Of course teachers also value conformity to their way of thinking. It's makes their life so much simpler when they don't have to deal with the unexpected.
I am genuinely afraid for the future. I cannot even imagine sending my children to public schools.
I've made it through the hell we call Middle and High School. I had some unique experiences because my father was in the Army and I got to go to another new school every other year.
.22 rifle for my 13th birthday, I had hunter safety training and I joined the High School Rifle team (Varsity Letter no less). There's no way I could point an unloaded weapon at another human being much less a loaded one.
:). And last and certainly not least I would go down several times a week and shoot a firearm downrange and receive training on how to become a better marksman.
I learned early on that you had to respond with violence in order to gain any respect. Not only was I the "new kid", but I was also a geek and I was in fist fights constantly starting in elementary school. I'm really quite a non-violent person, but if someone pushes me too far then I will fight back, and I suspect thats what happened with these latest school shootings.
I can well remember sitting in Middle School science class quite peacefully while a little bully gave me a "red neck" which is a term describing how the giver slaps the back of the givee's neck multiple times causing it to become quite red. He did this once and I sat there and did nothing. The sound of the skin being slapped went through the whole class room and the teacher sat there and didn't say a word. The bully did it again. My friend next to me says that I mumbled one more time and I'm gonna kill him or something to that effect, but I don't remember saying anything. The next time he did it I stood up threw him against the wall and proceeded to beat the tar out of him. Of course, THEN the teacher noticed and we were broken up and sent to the office. Now due to the zero tolerence rules we were both suspended even though I had never been in the office for any kind of trouble and my attacker was well known there. So, for standing up for myself in self defense, I received the same punishment as my attacker. In fact, we sat near each other during our 3 days in In School Suspension.
However, I could never think of doing anything like the TCM did because I had been raised with firearms. I was given a
I think what saved me more than anything in my High Schools (I went to 4 different ones) was that I was a member of the JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps). It seems weird for me to say so, because it seems like such a non geek thing to be a part of. But I was a part of a large group of people that were jocks, geeks, freaks, and every other subgroup, and for the most part we all got along and had a bit of esprit d'corps to boot.
I suspect that if I were in High School right now I would be dragged into counseling. I've always had a fascination with Military History, Military tactics, equipment and everything else. When I was in the 5th grade I had a bizzare fascination with the European theatre of WW2 (well I WAS in Germany at the time). I read every book on WW2 in the library including LOTS on Nazis and Hitler. I spent much of my free time in front of a computer often connected to BBS' (where I first downloaded Wolf-3D long distance from Apogee BBS several minutes after it came out
I'm sure it would be quite obvious to all these supposed "experts" that I was some raving psycho ready to let loose another school shooting. The worst part is, that every one of the activities I listed are what kept me sane through High School. Something about competitive shooting focused and calmed me more than almost anything could.
Well I guess this turned into a personal story which I didn't intend when I started.. What I really meant to say was that I suspect that many Geeks if given the chance to be in the Majority would discriminate against the Jocks and everyone else. Many of the posts I've read have stereotyped negatively ALL jocks. This is no better than stereotyping geeks and we need to realize this!
Who here would deny the fact that if Geeks ran the schools that everyone else would be taunted for running Windows and not Linux or *BSD? Or programming in Visual Basic and not C or Perl? There may not be as much physical abuse, but the mental abuse would be there...
I don't know what the answer is.. Humans have been forming into little groups and fighting with the other groups from the very beginning... The only good thing to come from this shooting is that at least we are finally talking about this.
The more you know, the less you understand.
As others undoubtably have said, the press
is completely ignoring the side of the story
of the outcasts, casting them as anything
from crazed students to white supremists. But
what is not realized is how backwards
high school can be in terms of morals -- and
part of the problem is that the people involved
at this point (teachers, adminstrators, the
press) are *NOT* the ones that faced this stuff
when they went to school -- AFAICR, most of
the people that were the in-crowd went to
college degrees in social sciences, not
hard-core science. And until this point is
made clear to the press, which will then be
distributed to the public, it will be buried.
JohKatz, you should prepare all these stories,
including those of the students that spoke
up about this in school and suddenly found
themselves in trouble, and send them to
all the major press houses. Keep the letters
anonymous as you have done here, of
course, but make sure that the letters are
clear examples that the public high school
envirnoment is terrible.
Also, someone else made the point that while
the in-crowd people will end up with lousy
jobs while the nerds/geeks will get those jobs
to rule the world: the nerd/geek has been around
for at least 40 years (take a look at classic
TV; Eddie Haskle from 'Leave it to Beaver').
The bully has also been around. If nerd jobs
automatically lead to jobs of power, you'd think
we would already control this world; unfortunately, this is not true. Yes,
the nerd jobs are generally more prestigious
and make more money, but certainly have little
power behind them. It's people with MBAs
(CEOs, for example), and Pol Sci degrees
(gov't ppl) and Law School degrees that end
up with control over this world -- and those
areas are generally ones were you will find a
large lack of nerds/geeks, and a larger percentage
of the in-crowd.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
When the school reopens, the geeks will still be shunned and ridiculed. Anyone 'caught' making comments like the thousands Katz received will be subjected to the trauma of being ordered to receive 'counseling' or expelled. The lesson being that differing opinions and the improper use of words is itself a dangerous and heinous act to be suppressed. This just builds more tension and resentment toward a school system structured more like a prison than an educational institution. And no one, not the student, not the parents, not the media, will stand up to defend a different opinion because a paranoid society will only suppress such people harder. Some will, on mere reflex, curse them as nazi/homo/goth/deathsquad sympathizers. Others, particularly in the schools, where mind control is stronger, will try to convince them of the error of their wrongthink. They will be badgered, continuously, unendingly, letters written to their parents, physicians secretly notified, psychiatrists and social workers too, all behind their backs, the conformists see it as their God given mission to 'help' these people before (they just assume) they can hurt anyone else.
I'm a 31 year old "geek sympathizer", and from recent experience, I've got to tell everyone out there that we're playing with fire here.
We're in the middle of a full-fledged backlash, and admitting ANY kind of compassion for "these monsters" can be very dangerous. I think it's best that people remain anonymous in this, and I also think that you have to be VERY careful of what you say and who you say it to. Especially if you're a minor. I know it sucks, and I know that's not the way things ought to be in America (TM), and it certainly isn't fair, but people are VERY sensitive out there right now.
I got into an argument about this with some neighbors, and I told them this story about the kid who posted yesterday (posted his picture), about being approached by a "jock", and being verbally abused, accused of being a Trench Coat Mafioso, and liable to snap and shoot everybody, then the jock spit on him and punched him. The response I got was not sympathy for the weird kid it was: "maybe people are really afraid right now".
That makes ME very afraid. Like they said in MIB. . "a person is smart, people are stupid panicky animals and you know it".
Truer words were never said.
I wouldn't be suprised if Jon Katz got his email inbox subpoenaed to locate these kids and cue them up for reeducatio- er, I mean counselling.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think it's pretty clear that violent hazing of students lower on the totem pole of school society is both permitted, supported, and abused by school administrators and faculty in an attempt to maintain order. This simply must stop.
While I'm offended at the flagrantly violent abuses I endured from other students while in high school, I'm outraged that the administrators actually preserved this system of order. As an individual student I simply didn't know it was this pervasive throughout the American school system, nor did I realize to the extend at which public school faculty and administrators regularly use students to impose order upon other students in a caste system; this is reminiscent of the Brown Shirts of Germany -- imposing order through violence against the minority German Jewish population during the 1930's.
And lest you think that I'm taking this too far by drawing parallels with Nazi Germany, allow me to point out that I was assaulted several times by groups as large as six with metal chains on school grounds, and the faculty wouldn't do anything to preserve my safety because they claimed I didn't have any witnesses to back my story up. This is after they called me in to the administrative office and nursing station to find out why I had bruises all over my body, ostensibly in order to determine if my parents had been abusing me. Once they realized that in fact it was other popular students committing these crimes they lost all interest in the matter. So the school system would have called state protective services in an instant if they thought my parents had committed a violent crime against me, but once they realized it was popular students to blame they shut up and told me to go away (they didn't even suggest I should call the police). What assholes.
Damn, I haven't thought about this in years and I find myself getting outright pissed off thinking about it as an adult. We do not accept this behavior in adult life, why should we impose this abuse on our children?
Now I'm 31 and far from school grounds these days, but allow me to suggest to the younger audiences here on Slashdot that if you're experiencing this kind of violent abuse in school: drop out! Just go get your GED and immediately sign up for University or local Community College courses. Once you make it out of high school and start going to college (especially if you avoid those stupid fraternities), you will find that the adults behave civilized or they go to jail. Don't put up with violence, that high school diploma is meaningless compared to a decent degree and post graduate degree; never mind the emotional scaring you will likely avoid. And you don't need that high school diploma to get into college, you simply need to get good marks in a community college, or local state University, to transfer to just about any good private or public undergraduate institution.
I will never allow my children (when I do have children) into a public school because of these experiences.
>Lets not mix 'geek' and 'outcast' even those >terms are considered similar in conventional >wisdom.
In conventional wisdom, the terms are identical. 'Geek' and 'nerd' ared used in the hallways of schools every day as put-downs, and are often the very tools used to ostracize and outcast people that are viewed as different or strange.
>In 1 generation, every kid will be using the >internet, programming, etc., and it will be quite >common. Instead of working at GM you work at >Microsoft or whatever, so the internet and >omputers are not the issue here.
You're right. In 1 generation, every kid will be on the internet, and the internet as an issue in this will be a moot point. But the point you're trying to make isn't accurate. Sure in a generation everyone will be on the internet. If you've been watching the tech industry during the current generation, by the time the next one rolls around we're going to have some amazing technology. Full VR gear is just around the corner... And when the next generation rolls around, it will still have its 'geeks' and its 'nerds' unless we take the time and effor to do something about it _now_.
Things are not going to better simply because you say it will. The only way things are going to get better is if _you_ take the time _now_ to change the way things work. Putting change off to the next generation has been typical of the 20th century mindset, and as we've seen, it only damages our children and their children. The tragedy in Colorodo is at least partially a product of this, perhaps moreso than anything else.
You say we should take solace in the fact that using computers will be the norm in the future. If we could transport ourselves forward, that would be fine. But the use of computers isn't the only thing that outcasts people today, and new reasons to hate and dislike are always cropping up. Just because one of the most prominent reasons will slowly disappear over the course of the next generation doesn't mean another won't replace it.
What needs to change is the way of thinking that causes this.
Being different isn't _any_ grounds for hate or derogatory remarks. The law has defined what happens to our children when their in school as harassment, assault, and battery. Yet what happens to the people (yes, children are people too) that commit these acts? They're cheered on by the rest of the students, and the administrators do very little to discourage it from happening again. If an adult were to do the things that our children do, they'd be arrested, convicted, and then sued for physical and emotional damage.
This has nothing to do with how bright and intelligent our children are. It's about how we as a society treat our children, and how we treat each other. That has to change, more than anything else.
It's nice to think that tragedies like this could be averted if everyone would just stop their mistreatment of nerds and geeks. Damn us engineers! Always trying to change our environment to suit us! But, practically, can we really expect everyone else to suddenly become geek-friendly? I've found it much easier to adapt myself to my surroundings: you (hopefully) have much more control over your own body and souls. It's much easier to improve a situation by controlling yourself than by attempting to control other people. Attempting the latter would merely make us frustrated and helpless... feelings that draw us towards emotional instability, as we learned from elementary psychology. I've developed some of the following guidelines for myself in order to make it through the troublesome school years, (insert Baz Luhrmann disclaimer on "dispensing advice" here)
- Learn some people skills: this appears to come naturally to "normal" people, but nerds and geeks (almost by definition) will have considerable difficulty with this area. This is one way that "outcasts" are identified. You must make a concerted effort to realize this problem, and retaliate by practicing your social skills. If these "jocks" and "preppies" are really as shallow as you say they are, this should be easy. Study a little drama, or practice in front of a mirror if you need to. Examples:
- Keep a good sense of humor: Geeks excel at humor. Try to keep a good sense of humor, even when you're being picked on. Don't let a confronational situation turn serious, that's what bullies want. Turn things around, don't look aggravated when you're being abused, but try to appear to enjoy the attention you're getting. Take the opportunity to crack a joke. This can sometimes win you friends out of your oppressors, since pranks like wedgies and dopeslaps can sometimes be a form of hazing that "jock"-types often pull amongst themselves (not my definition of "friendship", but that seems to be how it is inside some circles).
- Strategic alliances: Some tormentors are more dangerous than others. You might be able to ask the "jocks" to help stand up against the "gangsters" that are giving you trouble. Similarly, if you can somehow solicit the favors of the "preppies", they might stand up for you when the "jocks" are being too abusive.
- Have some humility: everyone hates condescending behavior. Don't let yourself brag. Downplay your successes if you have to. Say things to make people feel good about themselves. Above all, do not let yourself become elitist! That puts you in the same group as the Nazis, the Fascists, and the bullies who think they can push nerds and geeks around. You're better than that! (oh, um, wait a minute... well, the logic here is tricky... use your judgement)
- On forming groups/clubs: It's great for geeks and nerds to band together, the best memories I have from high school were from NBC ("Nerds by Choice"). There were several things we learned were effective, and other things we did that went horribly awry:
- First off, by forming an "official" group, you are almost brandishing yourselves as elitist outcasts, which can spawn resentment from about half the people you introduce yourselves to. We tried to offset this by picking a silly, self-deprecating name, and having an open membership. We touted "unconditional social acceptance" to somehow show that we were less elitist than many of the other groups, but it all came to little avail. My recommendation would be to go with an innocuous name and a pretense of a purpose that doesn't seem intimidating to others... like "checkers/cards club" or marginally "SAB" (Students Against Boredom). You'll be more creative than I. Go with something safe, because, believe it or not, even we were censored by our school administration solely due to our name/purpose. Now more than ever, with the Colorado hysteria, it's important to choose a name that's harmless. You have much more important things to be doing than fussing with the administration over your rights to free speech.
- Meeting location: naturally you want a hideaway that doesn't get too much traffic, like a remote corner of the school or the classroom of a friendly teacher. You'll be behaving normally (for geeks), which means you probably don't want to attract too much of the wrong attention.
- Lunch: The cafeteria is the prime place for abuse, since everyone's stressed and restless and has a ready supply of projectiles. Sit at the tables far from crowds and traffic, so at least tormentors will have to go out of their way to do anything. We'd also avoid going to our lockers before lunch so we'd make it to the cafeteria in time to beat the long, arduous waits in the lunch line, where impatience and tension usually runs high. The best part of my school time was spent skipping lunch entirely in favor of a period in the library or the computer lab, eating a packed lunch in a classroom that didn't mind it.
- Learn Martial Arts: nothing can do more to improve your confidence and constitution than good physical and spiritual training. Besides, if you suck at competitive sports as much as I do, you'll need something to keep yourself in shape. Of course, don't go to a school or club that's only into competitive sparring, instead find one with lots of mature people who are more focused on traditional techniques and development. Your goal is not to become a black belt or turn into a fighting machine, but simply to improve your self-control, manage stress, and sharpen your chi. (Not that physical prowess doesn't help... I once threw a warning kick at an oppressor that merely tapped him on his temple; however, I made it through the rest of middle school with the reputation like: "don't mess with that guy or he'll kick you in the head!")
This rift that has been opening up between introverts and extroverts in school environments is only worsened by any "us vs. them" elitist mentality. One of us is going to have to step up and bridge the gap by accepting the other for who they are. Someone will have to evolve out of the natural human inclination to war and quarrel. I have a good feeling it's not going to be the others. Someone is going to have to start providing solutions to this crisis. We've seen the silly solutions the mainstream has been coming up with, it's about time we implemented some of our own.- Say "hi". Greet people. Smile at them. Many are offended when geeks (who might be shy or preoccupied in thought) seem to be giving them the cold shoulder or ignorming them, simply because they missed their cue on common courtesies.
- Be interested in others (or at least appear to be). People love talking about themselves. Unfortunately, geeks especially tend to be so absorbed in their own world that they forget to ask other people "how are you doing?". Ask more questions about them. You'll be amazed by how long people can be in their reply. And you'll be winning valuable brownie points just by sitting there listening with glazed eyes.
Try this even if you're a misanthrope and hate everyone's guts. Sooner or later you'll come to the realization that everyone sucks, and once you come to accept and expect this, then maybe people's acts of stupidity won't annoy you so much.Understanding why these kids became monsters in no way condones what they did. While they may rot in hell for their actions, we must live in this hell... where people can't see past the mask to find the person underneath.
Like some of the other posters, I've no real wish to rewrite my essay-length post from the first Hellmouth article (subj: Some thoughts...) but seeing some of the responses to this article (most specifically, the one i'm responding to) have made me think a bit further on some points I had missed in my first bit.
:P).
:P The key here is that I have come to understand that this approach to life is not for everyone, in fact it may not be right for anyone besides me. That still doesn't change the fact that I'd like people to understand how I feel about it, but that may come (or not) with time.
Life is not a game. There is no way to win.
Some people persist in trying to live life as if it were a game (most people, in fact), keeping "score" with such things as money, posessions, power, etc. This is all bullshit. Yes, you need money to live off of, and you need money to do things (for the most part) but that is _all_ you need money for. I don't know who said this, but I once saw this quote somewhere: "In 100 years nobody will remember how much I had in my bank account, nobody will remember what kind of car I drove...but in 100 years the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of just one child." This explains, quite nicely, my feelings on all the "we get rich while they work at McDonalds, so we've won" posts. Life is not a competition, life is life. (this is why we have two separate words for these two ideas)
For some people, money, fame, power, etc. may be the things they feel themselves called to chase after...these things may be what makes them truly happy, but what is right for one person is not necessarily right for everyone (or anyone) else. Conforming to non-conformity is still conforming...if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice (any other Rush fans here?
I have the technical ability to be a fairly well paid sys admin, webmaster, whatever and everyone I know boggles at the fact that I'm not...they constantly ask me why I haven't taken some position with some large (or small) company making ~60k a year for doing what is fun and natural for me. No matter how I try, I can't explain to them well enough that the last thing I want is to wake up at age 35 (i'm 22 now) and find that I've become the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (!) type of mindless worker-ant happily trundling along and giving away bits of my life (time) to someone just so I can have a nice car or a nice apartment. For me, I need to take the time and find something that I really love to do, something that I can define by being who I am instead of something that defines me by being what I do. It is also necssary that I can make money at this since I _do_ need to eat
The greatest bit of advice I have to give is to make sure that while you're so busy trying to beat "them" you don't become them. As with my last post on the first article, I'd like to leave off with a bit of wisdom from a great philosopher...
"'This is my way, where is yours?' I said to those who asked me 'the way,' for 'the way' does not exist. Thus spoke Zarathustra." --Friedrich Nietzsche (from Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)).
-dk
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
When I read all these awful stories, I just can't help but wish there were a place where the "talented misfits" could go to find an uplifting, supportive atmosphere. Of course, you're not going to find that sort of silver bullet anywhere. But I still wish one existed.
:-) Please don't crash down on me with the logistical problems, I'm daydreaming.
On a more pragmatic level, the best advice I can think of came from another Slashdotter: Get your GED and get out! If your high school is a living hell because you're bright, you sure as shootin' ought to be able to pass some lame GED exam and move on to college, where (usually) you can be challenged and appreciated.
Ordinarily, I'd say high school is a valuable and necessary step _socially_ in the growing up process, but if high school society is the cause of your problems, get out!
One word of caution: Going to college is no panacea, either. I knew underage college students who were just as miserable and lonely as high school students. Your fellow students may not be the abusive assholes they were in high school, but they ARE as many as seven years your senior -- and a hell of a lot happens in those seven years. Even if you are their intellectual peer, a social gulf will still exist. You have to go through late adolescence eventually, and it won't be easy anywhere.
This, of course, brings me back to the idea of some sort of "geek haven" high school that the tormented outsiders could go to. Boarding school, of course, with 100-base-T in every room.
You may argue that the real world is a whole lot more like high school than we care to admit, and you're only hurting yourself hiding from it. I would disagree in one key aspect, though, which is that in the real world your tormentors rarely have the chance to actually beat you up. And in a battle of wits, we geeks can hold our own.
Is this problem a characteristic of having too few academically advanced students in a school?
/.'ers here think?
I ask because I had a group of friends who were similarly inteligent and didn't have much trouble with alienation and rejection from the normals in high school. My friends weren't as interested in computers, but we still understood each other and had various intellectual coversations. Because of our academic abilities, we were grouped together for most of our classes. But even when I did meet the normals, there usually wasn't much trouble unless they were freshmen.
Middle School was much worse for me. The school wouldn't put me in the academically advanced gifted classes for some reason, and I was board most of the time. A lot other students didn't seem to appreciate me, save for the students in the gifted classes.
So, maybe the problem could be reduced by grouping students with other students of similar academic ability. Of course, this won't solve the problem. It'll probably allow the problem to continue.
I'd like to know what makes the masses of the school lash out against the most intelligent of the students. Maybe its the "attack what is not understood" syndrome.
What do the
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
It's good to finally geeks and (former in some case) high school outcasts being able to express the way we've always felt. It's even better to express it mainstream so that people might realize that the people they've been laughing at and hating for no good reasons are also human being and have much to share if allowed to. But I'm beggining think it might be questionable to use this tragedy and those two kids as a launching point for all this. Let's not forget how it all started, lets not forget that those two killed 15 others, lets not use them as martyr to boost our cause. By doing this we're no better than the ones we're accusing of rejecting us. I already see the flames coming but as I posted this message to share my point of view I'm ready and eager to read what you think of my point of view and maybe you can even help me set my ming and figure out what is the better way to feel/act about this.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
We can speak out and start teaching children at an early age that ridiculing people who are different is wrong.
I was a new kid in the middle of the first grade. the first teacher I had at that school thought learning to get along and fit in was part of growing up. Instead of stepping in when the kids started to tease the new kid, she let them. She let them get away with it even when I told her they were hitting me. She said if I would just ignore them they would stop. She told me not to be a tattletale and a crybaby. Her inaction taught them that their actions were ok.
I was tortured over the next 3 years until I moved out of that school. They got away with it because they were many and I was alone. That teacher had an opportunity to prevent at least some of that, but felt the lesson I needed, to learn how to fit in, was more important.
This week I have talked to people who echoed her sentiments. I think such attitudes are very much part of the problem. It is not always possible to make your tormenters stop without help. I was told to ignore them and they will go away. Ignoring them did not make them go away. Instead of growing bored with a captive who did not scream, they hit me harder and tried more severe tortures until I screamed. Instead of me learning to fit in, they learned how to torment.
We can reach out to those young people we know on the net, welcome the teen geeks to our groups--from linux users groups to our weekly D&D game. We can talk to them online and let them know that life gets better, but we need to teach the others what they are doing is wrong.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
Don't forget the administration.. I had the principal of my high school come accuse me of vandalism. When I told my friend about it, I was lambasted for violating the confidence of his lies.
I should mention that the vandalism was against some members of the student government whom I had no great history with. But the last 2 years I was in high school, I was punished for some other fools vandalism.. I'm glad I never had a gun, and I'm glad someone else was breaking shit for me.
I got the pleasure of seeing girlie hooch cry b/c 'I' shaving creamed her car and she had to repaint it. BUT I did'na do it.
Moral of this Story: Fuck it. Go read a book, and screw all those assholes. You don't need them, but killing anyone (including yourself) is just a chickenshit escape. Doesn't make things better. You just go to jail, or die.
-- Spankmeister General
FastFood for thought:
On the previous Hellmouth article, someone posted about Nerd Revenge, suggesting that getting a better job, a better spouse, and a better car means that you "won" and the jock working at McDonalds "lost". I like to tell myself this, but I'm not so sure it is true.
What does it mean that you won on these criterion? You sacrificed everything you cared about when you were oppressed in high school-- freedom, deep intellectual concerns, a love of good books and good stories, general geeki-ness, and tried to beat the popular croud at their own game. So now that you are rich, well dressed, have lots of friends, and are tied 24/7 to your cell phone doing internet consulting... have you won? You bought into their ideals and sacrificed what you cared about. Sleeping with that popular person's boyfriend (or girlfriend), driving a porsche, and having them get your fries isn't what winning at life is all about.
To the people still stuck in school: Middle school was hell. High school was hell. If you are lucky, you manage to slide by on the sidelines, keep your D&D friends, keep your computer, and keep learning. If you aren't, someone "cracks down" on you and takes away the things that are expanding your universe. Life is infinitely better in college; you'll find more people like yourself, be able to control what you buy, what you watch, what you do. You will [mostly] be rewarded for being intelligent and dedicated.
-m
The scarier part about all this is how people are labeling the killers as 'freaks and mentals' or the equivalent. And to some extent, it's true. Only someone with a little bad wiring would take the hate this far. But at the same time, anyone with 'bad wiring' would be targeted and picked on even more in the school setting.
I won't bring my own experiences into this (they're just like all the others, picked on and what not), I just feel that someone has to say that labeling the killers any futher is possibly a little hypocritical. Labels and what not started this whole thing.
If they were nuts, they probably woulda taken more heat for it. And that would just make it all worse.
I'd love to go into miserable detail on why my formative junior high and high school years were filled with terror and alienation, but it would be just another scar on the collective /. belt so I'll leave it at that. (How did I get through? Found a few other like-minded individuals, channelled that energy into writing, listened to "Quadrophenia" incessantly.)
More important to me is that the public education system is so ass-backward that it doesn't recognize the need to support its top students, the ones most likely to feel the pangs of alienation. Schools that have fought an uphill battle to have tracking (i.e. grouping intelligent kids together) are going to be hard-hit by the Columbine massacre. I'm sure we'll see folks saying that we can't trust all these geeks, nerds and gamers together or they'll turn out like the TCM. Well, obviously that's not the case -- the Denver killers had no support network, that's part of what drove them to do what they did. Smart kids need other smart kids around to understand them. Often their parents don't. I know when I'm a parent, I'll do my damnedest, having been there before, but only systemic change to the education system is going to make a substantial difference, regardless of the efforts of any parent.
The lowest levels of our society have miles of support groups, and schools are required by federal law to provide special education and counseling services to the worst performing students. However, nothing mandates similar programs for the top tier of kids, and we have to squeak by on what sustenance we can gain from the few parents and teachers who know what it's like to be the one crawling from the garbagecans.
Wes
QWxsIHlvdXIgQmFzZTY0IGFyZSBiZWxvbmcgdG8gdXMh
As with the teachers and administraters across the country, the adults at my school who are payed to teach and take care of us are taking things too far. At my high school there is no question of "could it happen here" because a kid brought a gun and knife to school last month planning to kill a girl who refused to go out with him. The situation was diffused and played down at the time, the student body was informed, but there weren't any changes in policy. Now however, the principal and the deans have taken things to extremes. The school paper had an article in it about death, which was unfortunate but not planned because it went to press before the murders, however our principal doesn't understand that, flipped out in front of the faculty, and has been throwing away all the papers he can find. All this does is show us students that he's irrational. Another boy had been distriubting a magazine he'd made of questionable taste with numerous drug references and even a picture of a naked woman, but did he get in trouble for those things, of course not! The deans threatened to expell him because there were two lines in it that were violent. And now we students are not allowed to stay after school and do work, the administrators are worried that something could happen with all of us not under constant supervision--maybe we'll run around the school and do bad things. This isn't sending the right message to the students, it makes for an environment where there is no trust and a lot of fear. How do they expect us to learn in a place like that?
Roma vivit!
Is this because we(Canada) have more restrictive gun laws? I've seen a lot of comments about this, I guess because it's a very touchy subject in the States. Yes, and no. Yes because not having access to the weapons(a locked metal cabinet is much easier to get at then going out and buying a gun), means that the scale of the violence is limited. Sure people could still make pipe bombs or other such things, but they aren't as reliable or efficient at killing people. No because having access to a gun does not absolve the attacker of anything. It is still the person that wilfully took the gun and killed someone with it.
After reading all of the comments here, I think the main difference is that I don't know anyone who didn't love high school. Sure people formed different cliques, and perhaps the cliques as wholes may not have interacted with each other much, but it was very commonplace for individuals to change between them as easily as a politician before an election. I alternated between Ubernerd, jock, artsie, and for a bit AV guy. In a way it was expected of us to be as multifaceted as possible. Teachers in school would be just as lenient for assignments/tests/etc regardless if you were away playing rugby, going to a trivia tournament or filming a school event, in most cases they encouraged us to do as many things as possible whether or not we were any good at it. There was less of an us verses them mentality in high school because at any time we could be on either side, and so it makes it much harder to dehumanize your fellow students. Something that it appears was very prevalent in more than a few of your high schools.
In fact from what i can see, the American attitude is like that of the Olympic Games: "Citius, Altius Fortius"(Faster, Higher, Stronger), whereas the Canadian attitude is more like that of the Special Olympics: "Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt." In other words, for Americans(gross generalization alert!!!) winning and differentiating yourself from those around you, is more important than the cameraderie gained by experiencing common events.
Not sure what exactly it says about us but I thought it was worth mentioning
Oh, and glad to see that there wasn't as much Katz bashing as there has been in the past.
Anyways, that's my $0.02 (or $0.013 American)
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
Every device ever engineered has a set of design specifications. The red line on your tachometer shows one. When you exceed the redline, your engine is going too fast for its own good and you can no longer guarantee that it won't tear itself to shreds and take you with it.
In short, when something exceeds design specs, it can fail. By "fail", I mean to stop doing the job it was designed to do. Engines explode; bridges collapse; processors release blue smoke; software crashes.
People have design specs as well. They're more flexible specs, because a person is a wonderfully complex system. Some design specs are physical, some are mental, some are emotional.
People can only handle so much stress before they exceed their design specs and fail. When a person emotionally fails, they become irrational. In common parlance, they "lose it".
Who here has not exceeded design specs and lost it? I've certainly lost it, and done some incredibly stupid things as a result. But for most of us, it is but a momentary lapse of reason. We lose it, we get out of (or distanced from) the source of acute stress, and we start operating like somewhat rational human beings again.
And then there are people who have exceeded design specs so far, or so constantly, that they lose it and never get it back. In engineering terms, they have "failed" and not recovered. In common parlance, we call these people "sickos" or "psychos".
If this were not bad enough, the fact that we're so complex (compared to machines, anyhow) means that we fail unpredictably. It's like a girder buckling under the pressure; you don't know when it will fail, nor in which direction. Psychology texts are full of ways that people fail to deal with stress. The psych texts are incomplete, and people come up with new failure modes. One of these failure modes is suicidal and homicidal mania.
With all the profiling, the talk about games and bands and coats, people are trying to predict the failure mode. We worry about this kid because he's likely to crack by going postal; we don't worry about that kid because she's likely to crack by popping barbituates and dropping out.
Trying to predict which people will fail by gunning people down is a fool's errand, because we can't tell which way a person will fail. If we can, psychology is incredibly advanced, and I'd love to see some of these psychologists working in engineering firms.
We can tell if a person is likely to fail in any sense. We can't tell when somebody will fail, because we can't accurately gauge their tolerance for stress. We can look at a person, see what causes stress for them, see what relieves stress for them, and look for a mismatch. If the stress is far above the relief, then the stress will eventually surpass any person's capacity. That person is going to break, period.
I can't tell you whether it is possible for a school to do this for students. If it is, it is very hard. It is possible for parents to do so, if they know how and if they care. As a nation (not necessarily as a government), we must give the parents that care the knowledge to look for this. As a nation and a government, we also must require that parents do care about the well-being of their kids, including their emotional well-being. Failure to do so is criminal neglect.
The schools are trying to make themselves safe, due to the media-hyped school shootings. First and foremost, this is a laudable goal. I believe that our schools are acting in good faith, but with bad information and the wrong tools. I'd rather have this than have intentionally malicious people attacking this problem with good information and the right tools. People with good intentions can be trained; people with poor intentions can often only be restrained.
To all the parents and school faculty reading this and actively dealing with the issues of this tragedy, thank you. You have the right intentions. Read this thread, not just this post. Arm yourself with the knowledge and tools you need to do the job effectively.
--The basis of all love is respect
Computer games, Goth, black trenchcoats, loud music...
None of these things cause tragedies like the Littleton shootings.
All of these things are merely attempts by isolated kids to create a means of expressing their pain in a way that DOESN'T involve getting a shotgun and blowing off the face of their tormentors. They are not not unhealthy influences that corrupt otherwise innocent minds. They are mechanisms we create in order to avoid giving into our unhealthy desires to haul off and wail away on our enemies.
Suppressing these activities won't make the problem go away. If anything, this will simply limit the recourses these kids have and increase the possibility that they will resort to more violent modes of expression.
I don't want to make sweeping generalizations, but it seems like in many schools student athletes are given license to abuse and even assault their classmates. I know in the town my wife grew up in, the police looked the other way when the football team did acts of vandalism. As a high school geek, I didn't get picked on because I was an avid judo player (surprised the hell out of the jocks when the found that out), but otherwise what happened to Peter could have happened to me.
I don't lay blame at the hands of the kids -- athletes or geeks; IT IS THE ADULTS THAT ARE OUT OF CONTROL. Can you expect a kid to behave in a civilized way if there are no consequences for his or her action? I don't know many adults that I'd trust under those circumstances.
The media backlash against marginalized youth subcultures totally misses the point. There's no way to avoid the popular/unpopular thing with teens and all the baggage of unfairness and shallowness that comes with it. What we need to do as adults is not to take sides. Some kids are geeks, some are jocks; our job is to provide kids with the things they need to explore their identies constructively: education, art, music, theatre, science, computers, clubs -- and yes, athletics too.
Taking sides in the jock/geek thing creates an unhealthy, winner takes all atmosphere where the popular groups get everything: peer admiration, adult respect, money for school programs, and above all a freedom from the basic constraints of civilized behavior which no citizen, much less child, should have. As adults, we need to be on the side of all kids.
For kids like Peter in Boston, I wish I could say that as adults we had our act together better. As a teenager, you won't have any problem seeing we've screwed up pretty badly. There's probably no easy or completely satisfactory answer to your problems. However, there are things you can do to get through.
Also, if you can find a wise and responsible adult who understands you can't just administrate this problem away, he or she may be able to help you find ways of improving the atmosphere in your school. Finally, if you're near Cambridge, there's an MIT student group called ESP that runs programs for smart kids. I don't know what they're offering now, but you might give them a call at 253-4882, or visit there web site: http://www.mit.edu/edsp/www. Any MIT geeks reading this may be interested in volunteering services with this fine organization. Geeks in colleges who want to do something about this situation should also take a look at this group as a possible model.
Like we used to say -- if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There are parental voices speaking the same words. MSNBC has some letters posted on their site The politicians and lawmakers are headed in the wrong direction. Speak up! go to www.senatevote.com and send your opinion to your senator on how this should be handled.
Madhatter --It's no wonderland out there.
I watched the news coverage of the Littleton Massacre with dawning horror.
There was a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that what was going on was more
than just wrong for the kids of Littleton. I dread that this is going to make life so
much harder for kids like them.
When I was in high school I was an outcast by choice. I hung with the popular
crowed for my entire freshman year. But I felt so fake around them. I wasn't
myself. I did not enjoy the same things they did. I was not concerned with clothes
or parties or dances. I wanted to play with my computer and read my fiction
books. By that point I had read my entire grade school library and was well on my
way to devouring the paltry sci-fi/fantasy section of my High School library.
I met my real friend my sophomore year. We got to gather through a club on
campus called the Fiction Federation. Most of us are still friends (I graduated in
89). We were not popular then. Though we were a registered club, we had to fight
to get into the year book. We had to fight for a room to have meetings in and for a
teacher willing to be a mentor. But we were lucky we found each other. And
because we found each other we became a type of gang. We looked after each
others emotional needs. We understood each other even if our parents and peers
did not.
I am terrified that since the Littleton mess that there will be no more Fiction
Federations. That no one will be willing to help the geeks. And more than that, I am
afraid that the geeks themselves will be too afraid to reach out. It is hard enough in
high school to reach out to another person. Harder still if you are shy and different
and your interests are nothing like those of the people around you. But now these
people are going to be alienated even further, if not by their peers but by their own
feelings.
Where as before they might have brought a fiction book in a shy attempt to attract
the attention of someone like them (my best friend and I got together like this), now
they will be too terrified to even do that. It breaks my heart to think of how many of
these people will succumb to feelings of worthlessness. How many of them will
suffer silently in the darkness of their lonely lives. I fear that while before, loneliness
will drive them to make contact, now it will drive them to an more permanent
solution to their torment.
And it will not be just the geeks who suffer. The artists, the poets... any one who
does not fit in. High school was a prison for so many of us. Now it will be a
concentration camp. Saddest of all is that the same people who could be helping the
outcasts will be adding to the hysteria. Administrators, teachers, counselors...
instead of instilling a sense of trust in these kids will now be watching them with
suspicion. Alienating them further.
And how many of us had parents we could turn to? I certainly didn't. Neither did
any of my friends. If we had net met each other, it might have been one of us with
the guns and the bombs. Certainly I have seen that much rage in some of my peers.
And back then I was the only one with a computer and a modem (BBS days).
I pray for their sakes that these kids can find an outlet. That they find a support
group on line if they cannot find one locally. Find people like them. People who will
support them and their creative efforts... or programing efforts. We need to provide
access to the internet in every school library. In ever library period. Not everybody
has a computer. But everyone needs an outlet. I think that a lot of doors have been
closed for kids like these. Time we opened some up.
That's my two cents.
-Kit
I understand where you are coming from, and it's completely justified. This is a highly....... sensitive topic. The intentions of all these posts are to finally bring to full light the true nature of school life for many people. The problem is we are linking it to a terrible event. With what occured in Colorado, everyone's focus is on the deaths of the 15? students/teachers. With death comes the feelings of mourning, but aslo anger, hate, and rage directed at the ones responsible, and, unfortunately, the ones associated with them too.
Now you said, "lets not use them as martyr to boost our cause. By doing this we're no better than the ones we're accusing of rejecting us."
Why exactly do you feel that way? The way I see it, as much as they failed the system, the system failed them just as much. Out of all the stories we have heard, the posts that have been written, we all have come to the conclusion that these kids were not just geeks, outcasts, or whatever you want to call them. We all see that there was something else deeply wrong within them, and that they had some serious issues. Now, the question is, why didn't any of the parents, teachers, or counselers see any of the serious warning signs?
There could be many answers to this, and your guess is as good as mine. Here is my view. They were all labeled as goths, loners, and all the pretty words that means they were different from the mainstream. One set idea that has been stated many times in these posts, is that those groups of people are 90% of the time misunderstood. People don't know anything about them (and don't want to), so anything and everything they do is just thrown into the class that people have labeled them as.
Now I know im explaining this horriby, and I'm trying my best to get my point across straight. What I'm trying to say, is these people need to put their prejudices aside, and get to know these "different" kids, so that everyone can tell the difference between a gothic trend, and the signs of a seriously disturbed mind.
These Colorado kids are a perfect example that the people in charge (and nearly everybody for that matter), just cannot tell this difference. The sooner people become knowledgable, the fewer of these cases we will see of schools overreacting to the actions of the "out" crowd. And, like the dominoe effect, when they start to learn about this "out" crowd, hopefully they will see exactly how bad it has gotten for them.
-Sarkis-
"Disclaimer: Any errors in spelling, tact, or fact are transmission errors."
Funny, I thought that social engineering is exactly what both school and the media are about, and both of them are very effective at what they do. You seem to have just focused purely on restrictive and punitive measures. It is possible to engineer creative and supportive solutions that do actually help people, and it is possible to engineer society by having better PR than anyone else.
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
What can we, as a community, do about it?
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
ok, first of all, expect no quotes/single quotes. they are not getting translated properly. we shall see what other symbols do not come across properly.
... my point, you ask? intelligence shaped the right way can be a benefit to everyone. open your eyes, yes, educators; stop thinking the world revolves around sports and athletics. when the body is old and feeble, what are you left with, if you have never worked to develop your mind?
i am 30, female, a mother, and a fringe geek chick. basically, i like being around people more intelligent than i am. while good enough for work standards with a puter (and could be better if i pushed it) i am working more on developing the >>people>too busy>group
anyway
but by that same token, i made it through high school without ever hurting anyone. and i made it through a home life that was actually more traumatic than high school was, and i made it out alive. yes, geeks, nerds, what-have-you -- you are the upper class when it comes to brains and intelligence.
i do not say this to say that it gets easier, or that one should sit idly by and allow oneself or a friend to be abused. but look at what MADD has done in this country about drunk driving in the last 20 years, alone. if you cry, do not keep it inside. find an outlet, raise your voice, be heard, speak up, ask for help and ask and ask again, until you are heard.
but keep your fist to your side, unless to defend yourself from physical harm. let us speak to those parents who are too busy to make time for their children, let us teach them. let us speak to the educators, to the media; let us open eyes and minds to what is truly a horrendous situation. yes, yes, i am preaching to the choir. but if this goes beyond slashdot.org, then perhaps some parents will begin to twinge with guilt, and some educators to sit back and say, well now. maybe i SHOULD open my eyes.
because -- take my word for it people -- this is not the end of it. it begins one person at a time, but things have a way of growing. let us see if we cannot influence the right things to begin growing, rather than a public outpouring of hatred. this is the easiest thing to do, to hate a group or class for what one or two of its fellows did. but i think we should push for something with a little more weight behind it; something like personal responsibility, and parental responsibility.
and open-mindedness would not be so bad, either!
I was in highschool between 1989 and 1993. I can think of many times, just like others have admitted here, wanting to get back at others for the crap I had to deal with. Heck even before high school, I was being taunted all the time.
In elementary school because I was interested in computers, everyone assumed that I was a super smart kid. Unfortunately that was the wrong assumption - I hated homework, and I didn't like school work. I got in a few fights, etc. Nothing too major, but I don't look back on it with rosey thougths.
In grade six I went on a trip to Ottawa (Canada's National Capital) and by the end of the trip, someone had spread a rumor that I was gay. The kid who spread the rumor was completely pretentious, and had to better himself over others.
Kind of funny to note though is, I came out as a gay man when I was in university in Ottawa.
Anyway, in high school, I had to deal with looking after my grandparents while my mother was working. My parents were divorced when I was four. So while trying to get the grades to go to university, I was looking after my grandparents.
I had to deal with stupid 'popular' kids on the bus who had no idea the life I was leading. As far as they were concerned, I was a gullible individual who had no life, was never invited to parties, who sat in front of a computer all day.
It wasn't until grade 12 and my OAC year I was told by someone, "You know, you're really cool." I was floored! I had no idea that I was cool! Someone actually liked me!!
I went to university and lived in residence for my first year. While I wasn't one of the guys getting picked on, my roommate was someone who did get picked on all the time.
What about the counsellors when I went through school? Useless. Teachers? Useless.
There was a memo leaked by some of the students while I was in high school. The teachers were having a contest to see who could score the most baseball caps from students in the school. Teachers were waiting by the entrace at hometime, and kids on the way out of school with their baseball caps on inside the school would have them taken away. How can you expect the students to respect you if you won't respect them?
What about teachers who jump to conclusions and you don't get a say? Guilty until proven innocent? HELLO!
It's not just the kids we need to look at, the parents, teachers and administration are all responsible.
What about games, and such? Give me a break! Music does not make kids bad. Video games don't make kids bad. It's the example they get from society - and in high school the examples are teachers, administration, and parents.
Schools should not be facist states, but they sure seem run that way, for no particular good reason. I often wonder if the administration even think!
If you want to find out just what your rights are as a student, go to http://www.aclu.org/issues/student/hmes.html, which solely focuses on the civil liberties of students.
Several "Student Briefer" documents deliniate what rights you actually have.
Again, a couple excerpts:
FREE EXPRESSION:
PRIVACY:
DUE PROCESS/FAIR TREATMENT:
So you do have protections. Obviously, you'll have to check the rules at your school district, but if the officials mistreat you, make a stink. The more people who hear how ludicrious these policies are, the quicker they'll be dissolved. Try these on for size:
If you think you can win, challenge it.
Ask the school for a written copy of their dress code. Get every detail. If they use a vague phrase like "Gothic attire" then demand an exact definition of what exactly is forbidden clothing. Then find all the loopholes or places where rules are arbitrary, unreasonable and/or discriminatory.
Can't bar hats unless there's an exception for yamulkes (Religious Jews keep their head covered at all times). If nobody is allowed to dress in black, then what are people in mourning supposed to do? If combat boots are prohibited, then what happens to ROTC? If miniskirts are forbidden, find out how many inches that is.
Now you have three options:
Hope this information / these ideas helped. If there's a local branch of the ACLU in your neighborhood, they may have the specific rules for your neck of the wood. Otherwise, I do enjoy digging for data like this, so if you have further questions, post them as a response and I'll see what I can find out.
But this is still America, where the Constitution promises us freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble, and security against unreasonable search and seizures without probable cause.
Take a look at the 1969 Supreme Court case called Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Disctrict. This argument could be very helpful for people trying to challenge these prejuicial policies.
In summary:
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the students, noting that:
To read the full text of the decision, go to http://caselaw.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?nav
There are some really good arguments here, and it doesn't get too bogged down in legalese. Much of it is still relevant to the recent cases wardrobe harassment. The following extracts all come from the full decision:
So, if you are still wearing Goth clothing to make a statement you may have a case here. If you do get harassed by officials, see what they make out of this. And otherwise contact your local ACLU, who may be in a position to help.
In a country where juries will award a million dollars to a woman for spilling hot coffee on her lap, why doesn't anyone sue these schools which have such "look the other way" attitudes towards harassment of other students? I remember a year or two ago sexual harassment prevention in schools was the "big thing" (and went way overboard IMO). Since schools seem to only pay attention to lawsuits, this seems like the best way to win the war against apathetic school administrations.
This never happened to you?
The problem isn't a few insults-- the problem is constant, unwavering abuse.
Sometimes, subtle abuse. Sometimes people shouting "Hey, faggot!" as they drive by.
The problem is thrown things in class. The problem is being tripped in the hall. The problem
is people muttering "fag" as you walk by. The problem is so overwhelming that those
people you malign, the ones who, as you say, "relate better to inanimate objects" can't cope, because it's difficult to cope with that sort of thing.
Especially when it's constant. You sound like you were never in this position. For this, I think I envy you.