Ok, I did my time in the hell of highschool, too. Before that it began - I remember being in 2nd grade (that's about 7 years old, folks!) and being put in another room by myself to read, because I was too far ahead of the other kids. A life of isolation and alienation about to begin. 5th grade brought those damned "gifted and talented programs" which took me to another school one day a week, guaranteeing I wouldn't make any friends. Not at the gifted school, because I was only there one day a week, and not at my normal school, because everytime I came back after my "vacation" I got funny looks.
Junior high and highschool were met with beatings, and stolen lunches, forced to do others homework, all of it. It was miserable, like everyone has said. In junior high we got in trouble for putting a copy of the Anarchists' Cookbook into the computers (mind you, that would have been about 1983 or so, no internet involved). in high school I got suspended for flashing my knife in the presence of a teacher.
But I never killed anybody. None of us did. Something has changed. What? Is school really that much more of a hell than we had it? I haven't heard about any torture yet. The athletes picked on the geeks, oh no. That's not new. You can't tell me that's to blame for killing sprees.
No, I don't think it's videogames, or the net or the media. Those have all been around for my lifetime too, but I'm not picking up a gun. I think that the very fact that we glorify what's happened is what causes it to happen again.
Think about it. Perhaps the first time truly was a bizarre, one in a million thing with no explanation. Maybe even the second. But how many times does it have to happen before some geeks somewhere, in their depression, start to say something like this:
"Nobody loves me. Look at those kids in Arkansas, look how everybody's crying for them. People all around the country feel for them. How come nobody feels like that for me? Nobody cares that I exist now. I'm never gonna be on tv. If I killed myself tomorrow nobody would care. But if I did what they did, then everybody would see. Then they'd realize how much they miss me, and how much they loved me. That'd show them."
It's true that there are children out there in hell (not just geeks, either). They want someone to recognize their pain, and feel for them. To understand that it's real pain. And tv keeps portraying to them that the world will tell you how much they understand your pain, but they'll only do it after you're dead. It isn't a difficult leap to make from this to "Well fine, I'll show them. I'll cause some pain, and then they'll see what mine was like. Only then it'll be too late. But they had their chance."
It's a catch 22 for us. We want to express our pain (and rage and sympathy and everything else) at what happens at these schools. But in so doing in, and getting so caught up in our media-fueled desire to say "Oh, the horror! Why oh why didn't we see it coming!" we tend to forget that it potentially *was* coming, every day. Almost all of the schools that start counselling programs this week won't still have them in place next year, I'll bet. We'll all overcompensate for awhile, to ease our guilt at having "missed it" with these two kids, who are actually only the latest in what is potentially an endless stream.
I'm not sure I have a solution. I've been out of school for too long, and I don't have kids of my own. Has it really gotten that much harder? I would say that I fear the entrance of drugs into schools, but these killing sprees don't seem to have anything to do with that. Are the athletes meaner now than they were then? I don't know why that would be. If anything, it seems like being a "computer person" is more acceptable these days. Where's all this pain coming from?
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Junior high and highschool were met with beatings, and stolen lunches, forced to do others homework, all of it. It was miserable, like everyone has said. In junior high we got in trouble for putting a copy of the Anarchists' Cookbook into the computers (mind you, that would have been about 1983 or so, no internet involved). in high school I got suspended for flashing my knife in the presence of a teacher.
But I never killed anybody. None of us did. Something has changed. What? Is school really that much more of a hell than we had it? I haven't heard about any torture yet. The athletes picked on the geeks, oh no. That's not new. You can't tell me that's to blame for killing sprees.
No, I don't think it's videogames, or the net or the media. Those have all been around for my lifetime too, but I'm not picking up a gun. I think that the very fact that we glorify what's happened is what causes it to happen again.
Think about it. Perhaps the first time truly was a bizarre, one in a million thing with no explanation. Maybe even the second. But how many times does it have to happen before some geeks somewhere, in their depression, start to say something like this:
"Nobody loves me. Look at those kids in Arkansas, look how everybody's crying for them. People all around the country feel for them. How come nobody feels like that for me? Nobody cares that I exist now. I'm never gonna be on tv. If I killed myself tomorrow nobody would care. But if I did what they did, then everybody would see. Then they'd realize how much they miss me, and how much they loved me. That'd show them."
It's true that there are children out there in hell (not just geeks, either). They want someone to recognize their pain, and feel for them. To understand that it's real pain. And tv keeps portraying to them that the world will tell you how much they understand your pain, but they'll only do it after you're dead. It isn't a difficult leap to make from this to "Well fine, I'll show them. I'll cause some pain, and then they'll see what mine was like. Only then it'll be too late. But they had their chance."
It's a catch 22 for us. We want to express our pain (and rage and sympathy and everything else) at what happens at these schools. But in so doing in, and getting so caught up in our media-fueled desire to say "Oh, the horror! Why oh why didn't we see it coming!" we tend to forget that it potentially *was* coming, every day. Almost all of the schools that start counselling programs this week won't still have them in place next year, I'll bet. We'll all overcompensate for awhile, to ease our guilt at having "missed it" with these two kids, who are actually only the latest in what is potentially an endless stream.
I'm not sure I have a solution. I've been out of school for too long, and I don't have kids of my own. Has it really gotten that much harder? I would say that I fear the entrance of drugs into schools, but these killing sprees don't seem to have anything to do with that. Are the athletes meaner now than they were then? I don't know why that would be. If anything, it seems like being a "computer person" is more acceptable these days. Where's all this pain coming from?