School shooting du jour
 

The story

How long do you figure it will be until the cries for tougher gun control laws will be using this story? 20 hours and counting at this point.

I've never understood the whole school shooting thing. ok, you don't like yourself, your family sucks, and you get picked on at school. welcome to your teens. how do you go from that to dropping your schoolmates?

and how do the guardians and others not see this coming?

Check out the other thread where people are bitching that his grandmother read his journal and turned him in to the cops, and he got arrested.

When that doesn't happen, school shootings do.

Since when is it a bad thing to PARENT your child?

Teenagers don't think with the right part of their brains. The hippocampus part of the brain isn't fully developed until the age of 25. It has a lot to do with social and emotional behavior, and I think it effects your understanding of the consequences of your actions.

This is not to say that someone shouldn't have seen this coming - but then, reasonable thoughts on a troubled teenager would be to expect either drugs or hanging with the wrong crowd or *some* violence or general illegal behavior . . .

I don't think anyone would expect a kid to take up a gun and go shoot people.

<small> I just got around to reading my March issue of National Geographic and they had a big article on the brain and how it works. . . forgive me if I'm putting my facts together wrong - but it makes sense to me </small>

Ok--my sweet, adorable son was suspended with possibility for expulsion when he was in the SECOND grade for bringing his grandfather's swiss army knife to school (his father and I had no idea that he had put this treasure in his backpack; and he brought it solely to show off, not harm anyone).
We pleaded his case and he was given a 10 day Out of School suspension.
Now. We've all these damn rules and regulations but it seems that if a kid is determined to shoot up his classmates he will find a way.

I call bullshit.

It is not possible that someone intelligent enough to drive a computer can be dumb enough to believe that "when kids don't get arrested for writing in their journals, then school shootings happen". There is absolutely no overlap. You are clearly talking out your ass just to troll for attention, or some other ulterior motive. What you said is so utterly beyond the pale that I have to attribute it to some bizzare sad message-board-tourette's-variant. Nasty to witness, but completely devoid of content.

Because the order of things is really more like 'you get harassed constantly at school, kids throw things at you, you are physically intimidated if not actually hit or kicked on a frequent basis, and the school officials blame it all on you because you clearly are just not making an effort to fit in.'

In junior high school, there were two boys in a particular class who took it upon themselves to write grafitti about me all over the inside of a supplies cabinet. Quite graphic things, actually, very creative. At the time it didn't really bother me because I had it on good authority from a friend of theirs that they had a crush on me and were just flirting in their sad, adolescent way. But the point of the story is, the teacher didn't know this. All she knew was that extremely personal, hurtful, and threatening grafitti full of my name had suddenly appeared all over her cabinet. She didn't know who did it--so I was punished, because clearly I must have done something to provoke this and 'maybe it would encourage me to reach out and establish a truce with these people.'

There is still not a widespread recognition among school administrators that bullying is the cause of this kind of thing and if they would just stop the bullies they wouldn't have to worry about whether the kids are just having fantasies about killing other students or really contemplating doing it.

Totally Agree.

All three of my kids, who are each special needs in one way or another (brain-injured, huge geek and schizophrenic, in order from oldest to youngest), were/are mercilessly taunted, bullied, threatened and physically attacked by their schoolmates. The middle son has been accused of sexual harassment (accuser later admitted it was BS), spit on while walking home, chased down by four kids in a car right in front of his own home and countless other outrages. A large part of it is racial in nature, but we couldn't do anything about that since it is not possible to discriminate against Caucasians.

Each and every time, it has been the same old drill...go to the school, meet with the principal, wait for them to somehow blame it on the victim, threaten them with legal proceedings, problem solved. Until the next time.

I'm surprised *more* kids don't kill at school. It is a vicious place, utterly bereft of education or elevation of people's spirits. Our kids have changed.

Here is a link to the Guardian's story about the kid's claim to have been a Nazi.

Some old school techniques should be reinstated.

Time under the stairs, sans weapons, was a good way to resolve a lot of issues. No knives, guns, cars, tazers, etc were used.

I's that last part, that unreasoning escalation that differentiates what is happening now from then.

I call bullshit back. When parents do not "stay in touch" with their kids, the signs leading up to events such as this go unnoticed. In many if not most instances, the desire, intent, planning and preparation for these killings is patently obvious in retrospect.

OC's point is that when obvious signs are ignored or overlooked then a preventable incident can occur.

I guess you are saying that if little johhny's parents find a graphic description in his room of little Johnny levelling a shotgun and blowing off his classmate's heads with rivers of blood running down the hall, they should just have a chuckle and say: "that's my boy!" Gotcha.

An aquaintance was just telling me about her kindergartener getting beat up (actually hit, punched in the head) on the bus several times before they were able to have the bully's seat moved. Outrageous. Also, he has a lazy eye, and his teacher employed his classmates to tattle on him whenever he "cheated" (lifted the patch covering his good eye). Now he's the freak.
I don't think school administrators are able/willing to stop the bullying for the most part. They cultivate an adversarial relationship between themselves and parents, themselves and students, and among students.

You got squat.

The two different stories share some details, are both sad but for very different reasons. The previous story was about an 18 year old high school student who wrote in his journal and was arrested on TERRORISM CHARGES as a result. This is sad because writing in your journal is not illegal. I mean, damn. How much of the incindiary dialogue on this forum should qualify as reasonable cause to have the police come knocking at your door and arrest the author? Thinking, writing talking is waaaay different than acting. Big, big difference.

This story is sad for other reasons that are obvious.

But the two of them together demonstrate the saddest fact of all, that despite our best intentions, a determined kid can carry out this kind of horrible rampage. Did the earlier case prevent a tragedy? Impossible to say. Did the other case itself represent a tragedy. Most certainly.

These sad, terrible events can NOT be prevented. Reduced, minimized, isolated, ok, I'll buy that. But if the price is to arrest every student or child author who puts pen to paper, and says something threatening, I vote no. If the price is to squash expressions of independent thought, what would be taught in schools? Why is dissent so dangerous? I am no anarchist, but I say too much conformity is even more dangerous, more insidious. Witness the slowly boiled frog.

I have no quarrel with this. But it is misleadingly shallow. The shooter's father killed himself four years ago. His mother has been in a nursing home for some time after suffering a brain injury as the result of a car accident. Who was in loco parentis? The grandfather. The first victim. The former chief of police, someone you could reasonably expect to "stay in touch" with his "kid". He was killed first, and then the guns and the bulletproof vest went with the kid in the squad car to the school where more death followed. Where is the blame here Beestie?

OC's point in the earlier thread was that she felt there was a right for her to be aware of all that happens in her home, despite the fact that her kid was 18 or older. And on that point we agree.

What OC said in this post, however, was way past that. Go read it. I paraphrase: Parents read journals and cops arrest kids or people die in schools. Whoa... not just disturbing, but so freakin wrong, factually wrong that I called bullshit. It seemed like a knee jerk reaction--"That shooter, damn shame his parents didn't have him arrested and save us all this tragedy." Sure. Arrest them all, and then the schools will be free of death. It will have moved to the prisons.

Riiiiiight.

More non-seriousness, non-funnyness, non-helpfulness. I strain to imagine any parent behaving that way. Maybe on tv... Do you seriously contend that this example reflects any kind of reality, or desired reality? Get back to me on that, willya?

Sad story jinx. I have heard of similar stories myself. Indeed I lived through my share of being bullied.

Now that I am a parent myself, I would only offer one particle of advice, in a grammatical vein. When you say:

"I don't think school administrators are able/willing to stop the bullying for the most part. They cultivate an adversarial relationship between themselves and parents, themselves and students, and among students."

I would make one small change. I would insert the word IF between "...most part" and "They cultivate..."

Being united in our common cause, the welfare and education of the student and child, is of inestimable value, and is to be diligently sought. When I must I will be the teachers' and administrators' adversary. I have done so and will continue to do so where necessary. But much much more can be accomplished in an atmosphere of cooperation. [/voice of experience]

I won't. I have zero interest in playing that game.



Yes. I know [/voice of experience]