The Price of Being Different

Since Littleton, the cost of being different has gone up. Thousands of powerful e-mail messages have chronicled an educational system that glorifies the traditional and the normal, and brutalizes and alienates people who are or who are perceived as different under various names -- geeks, freaks, nerds, Goths and oddballs. One of the powerful messages coming out of Colorado is that so many of these "different" kids say they find school boring, oppressive, and utterly hostile, feelings echoed by educational survivors, many of whom are now parents. The hysteria over Littleton has only made things worse. It's time geeks defined and lobbied for some new rights. From their own messages, here are some places to start.

Joan McDonald has been a teacher in a New York State suburban public high school for nearly three decades. "While deeply saddened by the tragedy in Littleton," she wrote Tuesday, "I am appalled at the resulting backlash our students are forced to suffer" in the wake of the Littleton massacre.

The last thing we need in the 20th Century, she wrote, is another witchhunt.

But that's what we're getting. McDonald described what hundreds of other teachers, administrators and students have been reporting all week - an assault on speech, dress, behavior or values that the media, politicians and some educators deem uncomfortably different a/k/a geek, nerd, Goth, the usual labels.

In a Gallup poll this week, 82 per cent of Americans surveyed said the Internet was at least partly to blame for the Colorado killings. And schools across the country were banning trench coats, backpacks, black clothing, white make-up, Goth music, computer gaming shirts and symbols. They installed hotlines and "concern" boxes for anonymous "tips" about the behavior of non-mainstream students. Kids who talked openly about anger and alienation, or who confessed thoughts of revenge or fantasies of violence against people who'd been tormenting and excluding them, were hauled off to counselors.

Thus the students already at risk, already suffering, have become suspects, linked in various thoughtless ways to mass murder and - consequently - more alienated than before.

The number of incidents involving disaffected kids and schools is growing. In Canada, a 14-year-old boy shot two students at a high school in Alberta, killing one. In Brooklyn, five boys were charged with conspiracy after allegedly compiling a list of people to be killed in an attacked planned for their schools commencement on June 26. In Oak Lawn, Illinois, a 15-year-old boy was charged with assault and disorderly conduct after an ax, knives, a rifle, shotguns, and 150 rounds of ammunition were found in his home. In California, one student was arrested for threatening to burn down a middle school and another for threatening to blow up the high school. In the city of Chicago, a 15-year-old was caught with a .22 caliber gun taped to his ankle. Pennsylvania officials reported at least 52 bomb scares and other threats at schools in 22 counties. In Washington, more than 12,000 high school students were evacuated after a caller said hed placed a bomb in one of the citys 13 public schools. In Longwood, Florida, a 13-year-old student was arrested after allegedly threatening to place a bomb at the school and kill eighth graders who had tormented him. A note on a map hes supposedly drawn included the phrase "revenge will be sweet."

"I just came right now from the counselor's office," e-mailed DrgnD. "I scored a thousand. I had on a long coat, was wearing black and loudly told the jerk sitting next to me that I'd do my best to kill him if he ever called me a " trenchcoat freak" again. I am now officially on probation. He is not."

Among the many other consequences of the Columbine High School tragedy: the cost of being different just went up.

Take the Goths, one of the distinct sub-cultures singled out by the press and linked to the Littleton bloodbath. Gothwalker says he (Drew) wrote his principal after his school made plans to ban black clothing, trenchcoats and Marylyn Manson music.

Goths have been e-mailing me for months now.

One of the most individualistic, interesting, and yes, gloomy subcultures, Goth is a style - of music, dress, state of mind. In general, Goths wear black, hang out on the Net, experiment with androgynous styles, are sometimes drawn to piercings, tattoos and white makeup; and love Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy and the Cure. Among their cherished authors are Sartre, Burroughs, Shelley and Poe. Fascinated with death (a taboo in the media and certainly in schools, along with sex and the open discussion of religion), Goths see it as a part of life.

In general, though, Goths do not hurt people. They brood; they emote; but the idea that they are murderous is a cultural libel.

One of the educational system's pervasive responses to Littleton was to lecture oddballs and geeks about the importance of not slaughtering others. One thing geeks and nerds hardly need is patronizing, offensive lesssons about the importance of not committing massacres. They're probably one of the least likely cultures in American life to commit homicide; their weapons of choice are electronic flames, not machine guns.

Of the thousands of e-mail messages I got this week (4,000 between Friday and Wednesday is my best guess), not one advocated violence or supported assault, murder or revenge.

Although many expressed sympathy for the killers as well as the victims in Littleton (unlike, say Time Magazine, which accompanied cover photos of the killers with the headline "The Monsters Next Door"), no one threatened violence, supported it, or approved of it.

But the stories of physical, verbal, emotional and administrative abusive that came pouring in were stunning, a scandal for an educational system that makes much noise about wholesomeness and safety, but has turned a blind eye for years to the persecution of individualistic and vulnerable students.

The Voices from the Hellmouth series on Slashdot this week demonstrated the power of interactivity and connectivity. Kids passed it around to one another, to parents, friends, teachers and guidance counselors.

"My seventeen year-old son handed me a print -out of your Littleton article," wrote Bagatti. "No one seems to think that peer abuse is real or damaging. I would like to see any adult report for work and be taunted, humiliated, harassed, and degraded every single day without going stark, raving mad. Human beings are not wired for abuse."

One of the clear messages from all of the e-mail was that it's time for geeks and nerds and the assorted "others" of the world to assert themselves, to begin defining and asserting their long overdue rights, perhaps with the help of the communicative possibilities of the Net. And to begin the work of re-structuring American schools - barely changed in generations despite the ongoing Information Revolution - and their frequently warped procedures, infrastructure and value systems.

At the very top of the agenda: Freedom from abuse, humiliation and cruelty. Geeks, nerds, and oddballs have the right to attend school in safety. Teachers and administrators have an obligation to make dignity for everybody - not just the popular and the conventional -- an urgent educational concern, in the same way they've taken on racism and other forms of bigotry.

Geeks who are harassed and humiliated should report the assaults, and perhaps using the possibilities of the Internet, take their complaints farther if they are ignored or further victimized. Online, they can receive support, advice, even counseling if necessary. Judging from many of my e-mail messages, it is.

Each generation has the right to determine its own culture. Culture isn't just symphony orchestras, movies about dead British royalty and hard-bound books. For some, culture is now also gaming, websites, chat and messaging systems, TV shows, music and movies.

No generation has the right to dictate to another what its culture ought to be, or to degrade its choices as stupid and offensive. Yet geek and nerd culture is continuously denounced as isolating, addictive and, now, even murderous.

Games like Tribe, Unreal, Quake, even The Legend of Zelda, and yes, Doom, can be astoundingly creative, challenging and imaginative. They are often demanding, played in communal and interactive ways. Some people may be uncomfortable with some of their imagery.

But youth culture has frequently been offensive to adults - that's often the point - and culture has always evolved. Adults seem to have no memories of their own early lives. Early rock and roll was likened to medieval plagues by the clueless journalists and nervous educators of the time. Now, next to some extreme forms of hip-hop, Chuck Berry seems as dangerous as Beethoven.

Adolescence is a surreal world: kids who don helmets and practice banging into one another for hours each week are deemed healthy and wholesome, even heroic. Geeks are branded strange and anti-social for building and participating in one of the world's truly revolutionary new cultures - the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Or for being isolated or lacking school spirit. Or for listening to industrial music or wearing odd clothes. But perhaps geek kids are isolated partly because schools don't provide them with any means of connecting.

Educators need to radically expand their notions of what culture is, and to re-consider the messages of disdain they continuously send some of their potentially most creative and students.

Inhabitants of a new world, with a new culture, geeks often find that the old symbols don't work for them - pep rallies, proms, assemblies, etc. In fact, scholars like Janet Murray of MIT ("Hamlet On The Holodeck") are beginning to explore the ways in which interactivity and representational writing and thinking are changing the very neural systems of the young.

Instead of banning Doom and Quake, schools should be forming Doom and Quake clubs, presided over by teachers who actually know something about the online world ( my e-mail indicates that there's one frustrated geek on the faculty in most schools). Any school with a football team ought to have a computer gaming, web design or programming team as well. Geeks ought to see their interests represented in educational settings, to not simply feel pushed to the margins of everyone else's. When these new interests and values are recognized and institutionalized, geek kids may have more status, and feel less like aliens in their own schools.

Schools need to provide choices. Educators love to talk empowerment, but few seem to grasp what it means. Geek kids are not, in general, docile and obedient; their subculture is argumentative and outspoken. Online, each person makes his or her own rules, goes where he or she wants to go. Increasingly, it's a difficult transition between free-wheeling cyberspace and the oppressive, rule-bound Old Fartism that dominates American education.

"School sucks," e-mailed Jane from Florida. "It's run like a police state, and it's boring and clueless."

Kids raised in interactive environments - with zappers, Nintendos, computers, sophisticated games - complain that they sometimes struggle in environments where adults stand for hours droning at them about passive things. This doesn't mean they are dumb, just different. Their digital world is much more vital, colorful and engaging that their educational one.

Geeks are used to choice, a landmark cultural and political issue for them. It's the responsibility of schools to create more challenging and interactive environments for its students - a benefit for all younger people who need to learn how to analyze, how to question, how to reach decisions, not just how to take notes and then check the right boxes on the midterm.

And: freedom. Why does the First Amendment end at the school door, when many kids, especially geeks, have spent much of their lives in the freest part of American culture - the Internet? Online, people can speak about anything: dump on God, talk about sex, flame pundits, express themselves politically and rebelliously. In school, no one can.

Geeks, perhaps more accustomed to free expression than their non-wired peers, increasingly and disturbingly refer to schools as "fascistic" environments in which they are censored and oppressed. All kids can't have absolute freedom all the time but many kids, especially older ones raised in the Digital Age, need more than they're getting. Without it, they will become increasingly alienated.

A gaming website like PlanetQuake gets more than 70,000 visitors a day; Planet Halflife gets about 30,000. GameSpy, which helps gamers connect to local games, draws between 60,000 and 80,000. Estimates of online gamers in the United States alone run as high as 15 to 20 million people. The half-baked notion that this activity sparks kids to grab lethal weapons and murder their peers sends a particular kind of message to the millions of kids gaming on and off-line -- that the people responsible for educating and protecting them (politicians, therapists, journalists, educators - have no idea what they are talking about, and are posturing in the most ignorant and self-serving ways. It's hard to imagine a more alienating lesson for the young than that.

Finally: access to popular culture and to the Internet isn't a privilege. It's a right. For many kids, the Net isn't alienation, but its alternative; it's their intellectual, social, cultural and political wellspring. They need it to learn, to feel safe and connected, and to function economically, socially and politically in the next century. Obviously, no rights come without responsibilities - and those should be spelled out both in schools and in families. But access to the Net and to other facets of one's culture ought not be a toy that parents and teachers are willing to dispense to "good" and "normal" boys and girls. For many kids, it's their lifeblood, and it shouldn't be restricted, withdrawn or used manipulatively except under the most serious circumstances.

It already seems clear from the stories coming out of Colorado that the two young killers killers were severely disturbed, victims of mental illness about which we know, to date, very little. The media roadshow - increasingly our leading transmitter of national hysterias -- that quickly engulfs stories like these demands answers, and has an endless supply of experts happy to go on TV and supply them.

But Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, along with the completely innocent people that they slaughtered, are also victims deserving of compassion. Their illnesses may or may not have been exacerbated by social cruelty and alienation, they may or may not have been affected by access to violent imagery and/or lethal weaponry. We may never be able to answer the why's their act provoked. Human minds, for all we're learning about them, sometimes remain mysterious, human acts inexplicable.

Reading all these messages from the Hellmouth this week, I've been overwhelmed by the outpouring of suffering generated by the experience of going to school, and by the brutal price people have paid and are paying for being different. Few people commit violence in schools, but way too many have fantasized about it.

These messages were, in different ways, all saying the same thing. A humane society truly concerned about its children would worry less about oddballs, computer games and clothing, and more about creating the kind of schools kids would never dream of blowing up.

Postscript-just came in:
My life has been turned upside down over the last few days, all because I wear a trenchcoat to school. The vice principal called the local sheriff because of rumors that he herd. On Friday I had my home searched by 3 deputies when they didn't find any thing I thought that it was the end of my humiliation but it was only the start. When I got to school Friday I had to spend a entire hour talking to the vice principal and a guidance councilor. Today when I got to school I was called back to his office and this time had a nice chat with a detective from the local police. This time the person from the police was asking me about rumors that when the sheriff searched my home that they found weapons and bombs. I now have a police investigation going on about rumors of the sheriff's investigation. In the mean time I have been speeding more time out of class then in it. When will this witch hunt end? When can I get back to my life? And when will the nation learn that it is pointless to composite for long periods of inaction with extreme over reaction.

Mootar in central IL

Comments

I still didn't hate high school

[Skyshadow]

I feel isolated and alone 'cause I *didn't* hate
high school.

Sure, I remember a lot of bad times; times when
administrators and teachers picked on me and my
friends for not falling into line, times when the
jocks and rich kids got special treatment, times
when I got made fun of...

Overall, though, high school was fun. I remember
laying out in the sun with my friends, water-gun
fights (probably banned now, eh?), bowling,
Denny's at all hours, parties, and just plain
hanging out.

I see all of this angst dripping around here, and
I almost feel like I have to defend my experience
because it didn't suck. And yeah, I was in the
dweeb clique -- RPGs, first person shooter games,
trench coats et. al....

Someone back me up here....

----

Wanna make a difference? Write the schools.

[Will Sargent]

Reading these missives makes me hurt so badly I have trouble reading through them. It really amazes me that people can do that to children, and then keep doing it even when the consequences of abuse are so, so clear.

I understand the problem. They don't know. They have no idea there is a problem; their behaviour is exactly what causes kids to snap and even kill.

Ironically, the very thing which they think might be responsible could actually help them. It's a simple solution -- it's worked for Amnesty International for decades. E-mail the schools. Don't let them act without letting them know you know what they're doing, and you don't approve. Tell them about the Hellmouth. Tell them why what they're doing is wrong.

I would love to see the Geek community united to the point where it is a force for social change as well as just the technical. This seems like an excellent place to start.

Will.

Katz and Slashdot doing the right thing

[evilpenguin]

I'm 31 years old. I was a misfit in school; so much so that I never joined a distinct subculture. I just wore clothes that weren't trendy, listened to music that wasn't trendy, thought what I wanted and said what I thought. I was isolated, alienated, and generally unimpressed with my peers. My overwhelming feeling was one of pain. Pain at the casual, random cruelty that people inflicted on one another. I'm not religious at all, but I have a favorite verse of the Bible. It is the shortest. "Jesus wept." Do you know what it is like for an overweight male computer geek who cries at the pain of others?

Now I am 31. I'm very mainstream. I've reached equilibrium between my continuing concern for my fellow living things and my relative powerlessness. I'm actually happy. All of this personal revelation is just to lay thr groundwork for what I have to say.


Even now I am forgetting (as I think most adults have forgotten) how powerful adolescent emotions are. I wept, I raged, I suffered. In retrospect, it was a lot of wasted energy, but at the same time I miss the passion I had then.


When I heard the news of Littleton, I heard the demonization of the children who perpetrated this crime. Adults do this so we don't have to own up to our own painful responsibility for this event and others like it. Adolescents need the involvement of caring adults in their lives, not the intrusion of fearful or mistrustful adults. These were not monsters, they were CHILDREN. What they did was monsterous, but there were not adult enough to be monsters. They were not "gunmen" as I hear in the press all the time. If anything, they were "gunboys." Until you have lived through some adult pain (like the death of a parent, etc.) until you know the emptiness of unconsolable loss you don't REALLY know what death means. To these "gunboys" death became a game. Not because they played Doom, but because they hadn't learned through loss the value that life has. They held life cheaply.


I do actually think violent games and movies are a problem, but I do not think they are to blame. I think each of us, parent and child, game maker and movie producer, employer and worker (the economically induced absence of parents plays a part I do not hear enough about), jock and nerd, each of us needs to take a look at how we treat ourselves and one another. We need to ask ourselves if our lives should be this way. The world is not immutably a place of cruelty. We have the power to make this world what we want it to be. We just have to decide within us what has value. Money and power, or compassion and love. It is our choice. It is my choice. It is your choice. Choose.

At last, a voice of reason.

[Utoxin]

I'm one of the people who fit the nerd/geek/wierdo category. This article is very thoughtful, and extremely well worded. I can say as a person who spent every year of school until my junior year of highschool being tormented, that it is worse than a lot of people can imagine. What saved me?

One day, I stopped myself from snapping back at somone, and thought about it for a second. What exactly did 'nerd' mean to me? It meant someone who did well in school, who liked learning, who loved science, computers, and being their own person. At that moment, it stopped bothering me, and within a month of that, they stopped bothering me. They started to respect me, because I respected myself, and realized that I could be proud of myself.

So, to all you nerds out there, I have a few words of encouragement. Stand up for yourselves. Stand tall, be proud. We are the people who really make society run.
--
Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant

Problems Are Fundamental to Our Society

[black.flag]

The mandatory hell referred to as high school will always be one of the most detrimental experiences an individual can go through until some fundamental changes take place.

What we need to understand is that the jocks, preps, and wacko administration kiss-asses do not go away once high school is over. They become the new generation of teachers, cops, judges, businessmen, etc. They do well in life because they already have the advantage of being well-to-do, accepted by the rest of the mundane society, and "on the right track." In case anyone hasn't figured it out, high school is a training ground for the workforce. All the necessary skills of obedience, blind acceptance, kissing butt, the willingness to sacrifice 66% of your day to mind-numbing and pointless work or sleep --- these are the "job skills" that need to be learned by the innately free-willed human being to fit into our mechanical capitalist hell.

Of course, nothing of this has to do with the fact that our society has been running on an authoritarian structure that places a small group of people as an elite over other groups and, ultimately, all of the "masses."

Black, poor, gay, freak, geek --- your individualism is useless to the machinery of global profit-making.

But there is more to it than that. Your individualism is more importantly dangerous to the button-pushers and their servile middle-men (the managers -- cops, teachers, landlords, corporate scum). They will always do whatever they can to appease you. And they will try to appease you over Colorado. They will become more "open" -- at least on the record. But in the end, when push comes to shove, they are "they" for a reason: they have the power and they will do anything to keep it.

Our generation has the cynicism from watching the extended hippie revolution joke, the anger from being further polarized and born into a violent, oppressive culture, and the numbers to make a difference.

So what are we doing whining about it on this message board? Let's overthrow the music industry with MP3's, overthrow the tech industry with free software, and overthrow the corporation-state's power monopoly through plain old internet anarchy!

-----------
open source everything

The very ignorance you display . . .

[Laygo]

. . . is a great source of the problem. Ignoring things will not change it. Forgetting about it will not change it. These very issues need to be addressed!

I would hate to be in school as a teenager now. I lived thru years of torment/alienation from ignorant people like you. Take the time to understand the people that are picked on. Those 'jocks' & 'preps' that took the time to get to know me, the 'freak', knew I was someone worth liking. Kids needs to understand that. Befriend those in your class because it is they that have to deal with you. Once they know you, understand you, they may even stand up for you. I had a 'jock' friend that was willing to fight my fights with the 'jock' bully who was picking on me, calling me a fag, threatening me. Take the time . . . it works . . .

This tragedy(s), & the ones gauranteed to follow from more copycats like Taber Canada, touch me deeply because I lived it. I feel that the persecution from the 'jocks'/'preps' is only being justified by the school administration when the schools themselves persecute. What kind of message does it send to a developing mind when the school administration isolates/persecutes/alienates/traumatizes people that so happen to dress the same as Eric or Dylan? There has to be a place for the kids being 'attacked' by the school systems to log their complaints! It has been labeled before, but this WITCH HUNT needs to stop before they pust another kid over the edge!

I have created a place for everyone to discuss these issues. Where to get help, where to take your complaints, what to do, why, when, & who . . . stop by!
LITTLETON TRAGEDY DISCUSSION
£ Ä ¥ G Ö
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I get knocked down, but I get up again;
You're never gonna keep me down
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