At 20:13 06-03-01 -0800, Kristin wrote:
>I think school violence comes from several things put together -- people
>try to pin the blameon one alone but it is several things interacting:
>
>--1 the sheer number of guns out there - makes it a LOT easeier for a
>mentally unstable person to actually act out his/her pain in a murderous
>way.
>
>--2 stress: over whelmining stress from everything ranging from
>information overload, population pressues, you name it throwing
>scuscepitable (susceptibility may be inborn but that doesn't totally
>determine it) into depression, etc; is creating a larger population oif
>at-risk individuals. Some are strong enough to cope with stress. Others
>arne't and they break. Rates of sucicide, violence and emotional problems
>in gneral have been going up and up., anmd you see younger and younger
>kids who are violent.
>
>3--media violence: only in combination with factors #1 and #2: person is
>(a) susceptible to emotional problems, and (b) has access to guns. In the
>end maybe they "got the idea" from a violent film or whatever, but that
>wouldn't do it by itself.
>
>#1 is hard to deal with in America because guns are so tied up with our
>culture. I would like to see less guns around though. *Something* has to
>be done, and the NRA is so hard line they want unrestricted access to
>assualt weapons! Pul-leeze!
>
>re #2 We need to invest massivley in mental health especially for young
>people. I don't know if we can or should do large scale psychological
>screenings of youth, but parents and teachers and teens themselves need to
>be better educated to recognize the warning signs AND TAKE THEM
>SERIOUSLY. I feel sorry for that poor guy who tried to intervene but took
>the kid's word for it that he wasn't really going to do it; now he feels
>he is to blame. Morally maybe he is to some extent but getting judgmental
>about it would be wrong because that's a terrible burden of guilt to carry
>around. He can probably best atone to society by taking a personal
>interest in getting involved with the prevention of future violence. Who
>could stop a school shooting? Often it's another teen they confide
>in. Sometimes it's an adult. Sometimes the parents, but perhaps more oftne
>they are the last ones to know. Just recently a kid in our area was found
>with a whole arsenal of bombs in his bedroom his parents knew nothing
>about. He was going to blow up the junior college. - only a sharp eyed
>person developing pictures of him with his guns at the one hour photo is
>said to have averted tragedy. Parents should be taught to supervise teens
>more.
>
>Kids most often confide in another kid, and people should learn to stop
>taking it for a mere joke.
>
>#3 - well it would be nice if everyting were rated PG-13. Parents can and
>should filter what their kids get. Parents should also KNOW their children
>and whether they are strong enough to handle it. I think one positive step
>the media should take is to have a youth oriented television show with
>teen characters take on the issue. Years ago I saw one that took on
>suicide - the audience saw it coming, what with this girl behaving in ways
>indicating she was despondent, but her friends didn't. When she actually
>killed herself at the end of the episode both characters and audience are
>thrown into shock.
>
>One local (San Francisco) neurpsychiatrist was quoted on the radio as
>saying the boy in the school shooting almost certainly had a problem such
>as a biochemical imbalance because merely being picked or teased for being
>skinny (iirc that was the reason) and shy, would NOT have sent a mentally
>normal youth so far "over the edge" that way. Everybody should be taught
>that such problems exist and how to recognize them (best as we cah -
>nobody's made a Star Trek tricorder that scans for serotonin
>levels)...Sometimes you might be able to identify a high(er) risk kid in
>advance in terms of genetics. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out with
>the San Diego perpetrator that "Oh...his Aunt Jane was depressed, spent
>time in a hospital." Or if one/both parent(S) used drugs and alcohol (why
>the divorse?) Now a family history of problems does not mean one's child
>is going to shoot anybody! but if depression runs in your family, you
>should defnitely watch your teen more carefully for danger signs.
>
>
>
Tonight -- well, now last night -- after I finished teaching my Tuesday
night class and was cleaning up to leave, as usual I was the only one left
in the building when the campus police officer came around to lock up the
building for the night. She and I got to discussing various topics,
including of course Monday's school shooting. She grew up the same way I
did (as described in my previous post on the subject), with a father who
kept loaded firearms in the home and also taught his family to respect them
and how to use them properly. And, like myself, she said that she never
even thought of taking one to school to settle a dispute with a
classmate. She said that when she was in high school, the worst thing the
happened was a fist fight or on rare occasions a student would be caught
with a knife in his possession.
She wondered if the current fad of medicating problem students might be
behind some of the current wave of violence. If course, I pointed out that
I have heard that -- at least in some areas -- parents who refuse to put
their kids on Ritalin are told that not medicating their children is child
abuse and the Department of Family Services (or whatever it's called
locally) can take their kids away unless they put them on the drug.
Suffice it to say that we reached no solution to the problem. But it is
something to think about.
-- Ronn! :)
