Columbine Made Simple
“The long black coat made me do it! No, it was the music! No, it was the lax gun control laws! No, it was the movies! Nom it was the absence of the Ten Commandments on the wall! No, it was the lack of parental supervision! No, it was the video games! No, it was ...”
The true meaning of the school massacres and what the country should be learning from them.
Section One
The columbine massacre:
WHY DID THEY DO IT?
by Izzy Kalman, MS
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Can there be such a thing as an entire country suffering from dyslexia? At the time I'm writing this article, more than three months have passed since the massacre at Columbine High School, the most disturbing event to happen on US soil in years. The murderers wrote their message not only in the deep red of blood, they spelled it out in plain black and white letters. Amazingly, we are still struggling to figure out the reason for the massacre. We are wondering, Was it lack of gun control that made them kill twelve students, a teacher, and themselves, and injure 23 more? Was it violence on TV and movies? Was it hate-mongering web sites, or violent video games? Was it "Goth" clothing and mannerisms? Was it lack of parental supervision, or absence of the Ten Commandments on school walls? Was it insufficient security in school, or too-lenient punishment of offenders? All of these are being held to blame for the actions of Eric Harris, Dylan Klebald, and the other tormented students who have carried out school massacres. Everything is being considered seriously except for the real reason, available for all of us to read, told in the unambiguous words of the Columbine killers.
The Columbine tragedy, the most horrible of a series of school massacres within the last two years, has served as a wakeup call that we are suffering from a serious illness that is not going away. The American people are panicking (with good reason) that their local school will be the site of the next massacre. It seems that every governmental body, from local school districts up to the Congress and the President, is working on a solution to the problem of school massacres. However, as the months go by, I see the country coming no closer to understanding and solving the problem. Instead, we are taking useless measures that whittle away the freedoms that our great country is founded upon. We are striving to create a society in which our citizens can have freedom from fear. But fear cannot be legislated away. We are losing the war against fear, and it is freedom that is being sacrificed. A state of national emergency has been unofficially declared and, typical of states of emergency, we are suspending individual rights in the hope of defeating an enemy that we don't comprehend.
Almost all of the tangible actions taken by politicians and school administrations thus far have been to increase "Big Brother" tactics: hiring more police officers and security guards; installing sophisticated weapon detection and student surveillance devices; toughening punishments for children who misbehave; mandating children to carry see-through book bags; and instructing teachers and students how to identify and report children at risk for becoming mass murderers. The cherished wall of separation between church and state is being demolished as our government is on the way to approving display of the Ten Commandments in public schools.
Of course we all want security for our children. Unfortunately, making schools impenetrable to determined snipers and bombers would require conversion into high security penitentiaries surrounded by unbreachable walls and bullet-proof windows. And after spending trillions of dollars on these renovations, what's to stop a crazed student from shooting kids on their way to school, during a fire-alarm, or at a local hangout? Furthermore, who among us wants to have our children educated in a prison environment? As for trying to target children based on characteristics of past murderers, this has spawned a nationwide witch hunt: the American Civil Liberties Union has been avalanched with complaints of innocent students being interrogated, searched, or punished for saying the "wrong" things, wearing the "wrong" clothing, carrying the "wrong" books, drawing the "wrong" pictures, and visiting the "wrong" websites. How, exactly, are such procedures supposed to promote tolerance towards students who are different, and how are they going to reduce the rage of those students who already feel like outcasts?
Other more long-range proposals are aimed at the social and emotional factors contributing to massacres. Confusion grows as everyone promotes their own agenda in calling for things like gun control, censorship of the arts and media, increased parental responsibility, stricter discipline of students, fighting child abuse and neglect, instituting uniform school dress codes, and return to religious values. Even the most enlightened of the suggestions, those directed towards counseling troubled students, are vague. For instance, which students are to be counseled, what exactly is their problem, and what interventions will work? After all, Eric Harris had been in therapy for over a year and this didn't stop him from participating in the massacre. Must we implement every suggestion.
