posted on March 9, 2001 02:09:11 PM new
My point, Antiquary, is that this is happening under the roof of the
local High School. Doesn't it seem to you that they should recognize
this problem and do something about it without my direction?
I called everybody, including the DEA and the situation is still
unresolved. I moved my child to another school...same problem.
But we are getting off track. The problem is the outcast who is
not accepted into any group.
Maybe teachers will become more aware of the problem...now that kids are being shot.
posted on March 9, 2001 02:13:19 PM new
The phrase "passing the buck" comes to mind. Spazmodeus said a mouthful, and it was right on. See the bold text in my previous post.
Teaching math, science, history comes hand in hand with ethics, compassion and empathy to all students.
To those teachers who may be reading my posts, dont take it personal what my views are. Being one of the "victims", it isnt fun to be on that side of the fence and I speak from experience. Going from elementary school to high school in the same town, totalling grade 1 thru 8th, then 9 thru 12th and still not getting help or guidance or assistance then, Im sure the same thing is happening now. Only thing that is different is the available access to act out pain, anger, hurt. The same "tolerance" of the actions is still going strong today. If it wasnt, then this wouldnt be happening with such frequency. Unfortunately, there are many teachers who DO try to make a difference and they are a grain of sand in a mound of dunes of the teachers who DONT.
Again, I ask. Who here in this forum was a victim? And did you get help from counselor? Teacher? School official? Parent? Or not? And how did you feel being the punching bag? Who here was the bully? And what did you get out of it?
posted on March 9, 2001 02:29:55 PM new
No, therperon (whatever), I didn't miss a point. Psychosis is a clinical affliction, fundamental mental derangement, that isn't brought on by outside influence. "Nothing made him that way". His social environment brought out the disease where it might not have been brought out, but he'da been psychotic anyway.
Of course it is difficult to know all the details of particular situations, but one important point that I would like to emphasize in the discussion is that today before a school system, administrator or individual teacher can take action on a great number of specific incidents there must be concrete evidence, much as in any civil or criminal litigation. There exists a vast collection of school law at the national and state levels and policies which define procedures and add requirements at the local levels.
Unlike most governing bodies, school systems and personnel are not exempt from lawsuits, and in a number of instances, even in relation to academics, many courses of action are legally restricted unless there is parental approval. The old days of assuming that teachers themselves have much individual discretion or determination with policy or procedure is long past. I could go into hundreds of instances of differences between the time that I began teaching in 1968 and when I retired in 1997. I would call it the Politicizing of American Education.
posted on March 9, 2001 06:10:30 PM new
Thank you for all the responses.
I'm sorry if anybody thinks that this might be intended as a "bash" on schools alone. It is a complex problem with no single answer and no one cause. My thoughts were to the creation of outcasts in society - especially teenagers - and it is too easy to say "Well, it's all the schools fault".
I would imagine that most outcasts (which is certainly not anything new in schools or society) manage to internalize their pain and go on with their lives. They remain as the outsiders - but never approach the threshold of this kind of explosion of violence. The question was raised about what has changed in the past 30 years in our society?
Guns - Naw, a specious argument at best - there were plenty of loners and outcasts in the 1950's - when guns were much more accessable - hell, My dad went to a high school where the gunracks in the student parking - had guns in them.
TV/Movies/Music? - Perhaps some basis in the concept that SOME personalities are desensitized with constant exposure to violent thoughts and images and have a latent tendency towards violence.
But I'm thinking that it is deeper than just that - way deeper - about what fundamentally changed for kids in the past 30 years that makes a few go outside rationality and start trying to kill every person that they can, in a afternoon orgy of distruction.
In reply to hepburn -
My junior high school was a horror - Broken down into the basics of predator and prey. The school teachers were in fear - the administration was run by a principal with political ambitions and had no time for petty things like his school.
I was about as far down the food chain as you can get.
I was lucky - I had parents that were tuned in - I found peers and acceptance outside of my school - Between them, I managed to get through that nightmare
High School was marginally better - I found peer groups and acceptance in places. But I saw and knew of the untouchables. Those 5 or 6 broken-hearted outcasts.
One was a young girl - with sad parallels to "Carrie" (without the telekenetic) Nutcase religious fanatic parents - (Think of Jim Jones - and then have to think of him as "Daddy" ) plain, introverted, and the butt of every savage catty remark ever made. Like the bell ringing remark earlier - abuse was just automatically directed at her by the rest of the pack. By 15, she had already begun a serious drinking problem - that was her way to cope.
posted on March 9, 2001 06:17:30 PM new
Saw two factoids of interest on the news tonight:
1) The Santee shooter, Andy Williams, had earlier phoned friends back in Baltimore (he'd just moved from there) and told them he couldn't bring himself to go to school at Santee because the bullying was so bad.
2) A study conducted by teachers and therapists estimates that every day in America, 160,000 kids stay home from school out of fear of being bullied. Every day.
posted on March 9, 2001 06:28:12 PM new
No, kras (whatever), that theory is only acceptable if you extend it to include every person on the planet as having fundamental mental derangement.
Until such time as the medical community can state explicitly what physical configuration within a person make them more prone to any particular psychosis than another person, and is able to exclude every person who does not have that particular physical configuration as being prone to that particular psychosis, then I will have to remain of the opinion that societal conditions have much more influence on the eventual manifestation of that psychosis.
And I have to agree that you didn't miss a point - you missed the point.
posted on March 9, 2001 06:32:13 PM new
It is definetly a bad situation when kids are afraid of other kids, just because they are "different". Even to the extent they dont want to go learn for their future.
Yes, you did have it ok, nutspec. Me, I just learned to fight back, once in high school. Didnt get any other help, so I did it myself. Not a bully. This punching bag fought back. I used my fists and my smart mouth, not a gun or another weapon. I moved on after school, but I never forgot.
edited to correct spelling.
[ edited by Hepburn on Mar 9, 2001 06:33 PM ]
I'm surprised that out of the approximately 30 million children enrolled in public schools, K-12, that the statistics are that low. I have always deplored actions that I believed to be bullying in any social, religious, government, or business context. But I am at a loss as to how society can eliminate the behavior.
posted on March 9, 2001 06:59:41 PM new
I went through the whole thing. I was smacked around every day by a football player for a whole year. I just was never a boxer. When I asked my counselor to do something he indicated anyone who came to him with a problem WAS the problem. I told him well you are no help I will take care of it myself. He threatened me with discipline. I told him I am already being beat every day - you don't HAVE anything to threaten me with.
I caught the fellow one day at the top of the stairs and smacked him across the back of his head with my books and sent him all the way down the stairs head over heels. He was laid up 3 days before he could come back. Nobody would admit to seeing anything. I was already thinking if he started up again I was going to run him over with my car, but he got the message.
I had my own pistol since I was 12 and never considered shooting him. I really did not desire to kill him - just be left alone. If he had been really slow to learn he could have ended up dead but that would have been the result of a progressive escalation.
posted on March 9, 2001 07:12:32 PM new
I was picked on for a short time in Junior High. Nothing seemed to work to get these people off my back. My dad used to tell me not to let anyone walk all over me. I didn't either. I learned to start kicking *ss and taking names. That worked well for me. I am not saying it is a solution, but what else are children in that position supposed to do when every other avenue has been explored? I became a defender for the poor kids, retarded kids, and other social misfits. I took on the boys as well as the girls and was not scared of any of them. It took all of that for me to be accepted by them. I barely graduated high school because of all the suspensions, despite outstanding grades.
Looking back, I would not change any of that. I had a good friend in 8th grade who shot himself in the head with a pistol because he was so tortured by other kids, a preacher's son. 4 more of them in high school took their own lives. All because some brainless *sshole football player thought he was better than them. Anyone ever heard the country song "Don't Laugh at Me"? I teach my children that everyone should be treated the same way, regardless of social level, mental impairments, or physical handicaps. I wish others would do the same. I also tell them to defend themselves if there is no other way out. I don't take crap from anyone.
posted on March 9, 2001 07:14:24 PM new
What about the children who commit these acts? What do we do with them. More and more states are passing laws that mandate charging and punishing these kids as adults. So is the answer to lock them up for the rest of their natural lives? This kid, Andy Williams, BARELY 15 years old, will live the next 60-65 years behind bars? We're not talking about gang bangers that have been in trouble since they were 8 or 9. In fact, one of characteristics of these kid shooters is that there has been no previous experience in the criminal system. Are these kids that do these things in their "right" minds? I honestly don't know the answers. I ache for all the families. I just don't know if treating children as adults within the criminal system is the right thing to do.
posted on March 9, 2001 07:30:10 PM new
I have been asking myself that same question Katyd. This kid...seems to me he showed all the signs he was near the breaking point. For every person he shot at, and the two he killed, he was seeing faces of all his tormentors. The snickers behind hands, the laughs as he was tripped, the shoves and the name calling. He broke. What he did was not right, but I cant help but feel bad for him. Knowing all the pent up anger I felt when I was his age, I can relate. On the other hand, the kid who killed the little girl doing wrestling moves. I have no pity for him. I have tried, but cant find it within myself. That little girl was tortured and nobody can make me believe he didnt KNOW she was in excrusiating pain as he threw her around while her little body got broken.
I wonder about Andy's parents. His sadness of being where he didnt want to be. The torture his spirit got. And the ones that will follow him since he is not there to pick on. Is there no shame from the bullies that it came to this? We will never know, because "its not MY kid".
You really don't know what you're talking about, and your wringing hands looking for reasons beyond the body of scientific knowledge, though touching, are useless.
A quickie definition of one diagnosis of this kid which may be made is this:
brief psychotic disorder
"An acute psychotic disorder with the defining feature that the duration is of no more than two weeks. The diagnosis is made when the individual showed normal adaptive functioning prior to onset and when the episode was precipitated by an identifiable and serious psychologically stressful event. Also called brief reactive psychosis."
but there is much about this episode that indicates that a deeper analysis than anyone here can make is warranted.
To assist you in forming more viable opinions than you have as yet, you may wish to obtain or otherwise gain access to a cute little volume known widely as the DSM-IV prepared by
the American Psychiatric Society and used extensively as the foremost source in the diagnosis of mental disorders of several types.
I know that there are at least a few people who post here who are able to assist you in understanding the ramifications of what you may read within that source and with any possible application of that result of the study by the scientific community in this case so don't ask me as I've bigger fish to fry than you.
posted on March 9, 2001 10:09:40 PM new
Here is one of the paradoxes in our culture.
As a nation - we tend to root for the underdog. (Mark Twain wrote of a man who would - when he found a fight - simply enquired as who was the weaker side and then fought alongside them) Some of my overseas clients are baffled by the American's reflex to root for the underdog.
To use again the example of the "Carrie" story - The payoff in this fictional story is to the greatest part, that in the end - the tormentors and smirkers are paid back and that there is swift, deadly retribution. The hated and humiliated outcast gets her revenge.
When it plays out in real life - (and lets just say for the sake of argument that the victims were only bullies - but were kids of high standing in the school generally - say the running back for the team and a Champion wrestler) Where are the cheers?
We cheer for the underdog and cheer when the victim fights back - but only to a point. And when the reality gets too uncomfortable - the pain too real - we recoil and jabber about "How could this have happened in our country?"
In the cartoon "Bloom County" there was a perfect example of this paradox. Three of the inhabitants are sitting in front of the TV.
"Hey - this look like a good war movie"
"Uh Actually I think is a documentary on Lebanon"
"Oh Phoo - looks like an old Rat Patrol episode"
"No, those look like real grenade launchers"
"Yea! Blast that sucker! OO! This is great stuff!! - - Um - - I mean if it IS fake"
The third shouts - "WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME IF I SHOULD BE ENJOYING THIS OR NOT!"
posted on March 9, 2001 10:49:55 PM new
This is a great topic, with the increase of events such as these, we really all need to figure out what has gone wrong that children think its ok to start shooting up their school. I was overweight all through school and was picked on endlessly~I hated school, I have very few memories from school because I've probably repressed them all. The point is, as miserable as I was, to the point of considering suicide a few times, I never once thought to bring a gun to school and shoot em up. That's something that never entered my mind, not even as a fantasy, why? When and how did we stop teaching our children that life is sacred?
Everyone wants to blame someone else. The parents blame the schools and teachers and the teachers blame the parents and everyone talks about the violence on TV and in the movies and music. I think its a combination of all these things and probably others I haven't mentioned. I think the important question is-how do we change this?
Citygirl1
posted on March 9, 2001 11:55:52 PM new
Hepburn - there was no violence in the 50's or 60's? Evidently you didn't grow up in Chicago.
We didn't use guns but we used everything else. I saw guns, but they were in the higher level. No one would ever think of going and shooting up a whole school of innocent kids. My mom grew up with Capone people, I dated his nephew. We saw alot, but it was different. Has anyone here had any similar experiences?
There were always bully's that picked on the weak. Some fought back other's took it. I was picked on by one boy and couldn't take it anymore and I beat the hell out of him. My mother and his mother were called to the principles office. I got grounded for a month, but at the time it was worth it. I thought it was funny when they told my mom "your daughter beat up little Joey". But, to go in and shoot people...would never ever happen with anyone. I wish I had an answer to what changed.
posted on March 10, 2001 08:21:30 AM new
Chococake, I was born in the early 1950's, and I didnt say there wasnt any violence back then. I said it escalated and has gotten worse, and wonder why. And no, Im not from chicago. I was raised in a very small town, but it still had its "hoods" (the leather jacket crowd) and "Biff/Buffy" the (jock and cheerleader). No, I never used a gun either, but once in high school, I got kicked out alot for fighting back. Funny thing is, the "leather" crowd never beat me up in grammar school. It was the Biffy and Buffy crowd, sic'ing the wannabees on me. My parents had guns too, but never even thought about using them. So what is the difference between then and now? Many ideas, and no solutions.
I just read katyd's link. Doesnt make me sad. Makes me really ticked off.
[ edited by Hepburn on Mar 10, 2001 08:27 AM ]
posted on March 10, 2001 09:56:38 AM new
Hi Hepburn, my incident happened when I was in fifth grade no one ever bothered me after that. I was always small (I'm only five feet now) and I looked like an easy target. One reason I was used as "decoy" later.
