Wednesday, March 14, 2001
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Wednesday, March 14, 2001 |
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School shootings: By AMY RILEY We've changed It's been less than two years since the Columbine High School tragedy rocked our collective conscience. There were several high profile school shootings before Columbine, but Columbine seemed to solidify the behavior as a cultural malaise which affects us all. Another high-profile shooting last week in Santee, Calif., and the inevitable onslaught of public opinion in its wake, reveals that in the less than two years span of time, we've learned a lot as a society. And as a society, we still have a lot more ground to cover to fully understand the scope of these tragedies and more importantly, to do what we can to prevent another one. What have we learned? How are we reacting differently? The first thing that struck me in the aftermath was the much softer cry for more gun control. The incident at Columbine in 1999 became the rallying point for gun control advocates, even to the extent that the National Rifle Association, America's premier gun rights organization, had to move their annual meeting out of Colorado in the aftermath. What we've learned as a public, though, is that many current gun laws are broken routinely, and when they are enforced, they're often not prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That's not a gun control problem. That's a self-control problem. Another realization came as we recognized as a public that this president was not going to politicize human tragedy. It got to the point during the Clinton administration that the inevitable roar of the Clinton spin machine after an outbreak of school violence became just as predatory as the violence itself. When a nation weeps, it wants to know that its president weeps with them. With Clinton, human suffering was a sound bite and a photo op, or so it seemed to those of us with so little faith that he would lead us in the way that we should go. And what have we learned from the media, or more aptly, what has the media learned from us? We've learned that we don't want 24-hour-a-day coverage for two straight weeks of our society at its worst. We don't want sensational news coverage, or the prostitution of human emotion and grief. We don't want to hear from a bunch of detached psychiatrists and counselors about how our detached society is responsible for breeding killers. We don't want to hear a check list of anecdotal remedies to a problem that is real. We don't want to hear could've, would've, should've. We'd rather hear, "We don't know. It's unfathomable." What we want is honesty and perspective. So what can we do now, as a society, to move beyond this tragedy? Let's get real. For starters, let's face up to the fact that we are a nation of privilege and opportunity. We've been spoiled because we've had it so good for so long, we've forgotten that past generations fought hard and suffered much. Let's critically question how we've been raising our children. We are the spoiled raising the spoiled. It seems to me that the whole "child-centered" movement in the realms of child-rearing and education have created whole generations of self-centered children. We've praised and patted and puffed up our children with overmuch pride and self-satisfaction. We've tried to "give" them a positive self-image that can only be earned, and the false bravado it creates becomes a fissure in their character. Then pane by pane, their little glass houses are built on these weak foundations that we as a society have constructed for them. Inevitably, life has a way of rubbing our noses in our own failures, and these overinflated children grow up and confront the untruths that we told them. Their worlds shake with an upheaval that is universal in the teenage years, and with the bucking and lurching of reality comes a triad of reaction. Some become bullies and try to compensate for their hollow self-images by deflating others. Others, worn tight and angry by the constant taunting of their peers, but cracked in their character foundation in much the same way, explode under the pressure. And the rest, fortunately most, become strong in spite of it, and in spite of us, even. The vast majority come to know that satisfaction is born of hard work, that achievement is the product of effort and knowledge, and that overall success pushes beyond failure and is not born on the backs of others. The truly successful look beyond themselves and into the world to see what good they can make of it. How much easier would it all be if they were taught these things overtly from the beginning by learning that they are NOT the center of the universe? If we want to find the cause of what's happening with our kids, perhaps we should look in the mirror. [Your comments are welcome at ARileyFreePress@aol.com.]
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