Recently, I watched the mother of the 15-year-old Conyers High School shooter,on TV apologizing for her son's actions. I thought to myself, what great courage she had,and my heart went out to her.

Now, as a society,we wonder what we'll hear next. It's a bomb threat, school lock-downs or something new everyday, almost. How many more violent acts will our young people indulge in?

Talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger said recently that the adolescent male in our society is highly uncivilized and unsocialized and needs a strong correcting male figure to provide constructive rearing and discipline.

After these high school shootings, the press, media, police, etc., all descend upon these crime scenes in droves and interview everyone insight, discuss the situation on the radio and TV for months afterwards. Then the professionals (the psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health workers, social workers, etc.) all get into their acts with their endless agonizing and analyzing of the situation - what has gone wrong with the young people in our society?

It's my opinion that the widespread publicity paid to the Columbine shootings in Colorado had an impact upon the Conyers shootings and the other bomb threats we hear about almost daily. There are always going to be susceptible teens with emotional problems, a possible mental illness or low self-esteem who are drawn to the dark instead of the light. They are enamored of a romantic violent death (and they have been fed since infants on violent cartoons, movies, computer games, etc., and don't comprehend death's finality), and want to leave this earth and their problems in a blaze of glory. I wonder if watching this endless coverage didn't fuel the fires of some of these people.

It's a fact that adolescents, already in a state of change, and living in today's high-tech, mobile, materialistic and isolated society can easily be swept into dark suicidal thoughts and violent acts. The forces of the dark and light, positive and negative, and of living or death, exist in everyone, whether they acknowledge it or not. Something for these experts to discuss sometime.

And adolescents already exist with a desire to be accepted by their peer group. You cut them off this, or make the peer group and school so huge that they can't find a place in it, surround them with violence daily and combine this with the adolescents' highly charged intensity and you get Columbine and Conyers.

We, who are of the middle-aged range (myself included) must remember that we were not born into nor reared in the type of society and culture that our young people are struggling with today.

Our young people today often attend megagiant impersonal schools where they frequently feel like a lonely isolated grain of sand on the beach. Often there only two or three counselors for hundreds of students. Also, these counselors aren't really interested in nor have time for listening to personal problems and their emotional difficulties.The counselor's focus is on academic scheduling, graduation, and what paperwork to do for what college they may possibly attend following it.

I, myself, am the parent of children with neurological and delayed developmental disabilities. I'd love to say that the public schools did everything possible for my children, but this is simply not true. Perhaps they followed their curriculum guidelines dictated by the system supervisors, but this is a far cry from following the latest scientific, medical and educational advances in working with their special disabilities. They may say they have no more money for all this, but I have read that there is money available for public schools that they don't use or don't try to attain.

Working with, teaching or assisting children with disabilities - be they physical, emotional or behavioral - is just like anything else, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

The emphasis in public schools is on sports, pushing the gifted student, having a higher and higher SAT score for more students, and how many of the graduates will attend well-ranked colleges. I'm not knocking teachers because I used to be one (takes one to know one and the system), and I think it is remarkable that they do as well as they do.

The child with emotional problems often falls through the cracks in today's schools and society. They are challenging (often difficult) to work with, don't give that great ego-boost and satisfaction that working with the gifted does, and there's no glory to the system, but they are often the ones who, upon feeling excluded, isolated, different, are going to be consumed with hate and anger and cause trouble in schools.

I think that mentorship in the public school system would be a great benefit to help those who feel isolated and different.This would mean that a well-functioning student would assist the troubled problem student in every way social, academic, etc. I brought this idea up in my child's school, but nothing was done about it.There are mentorship programs for academics - poor, abused and deprived, language - but I don't know of any in this area for children or teens with emotional and behavioral problems. You would think that this would be a challenge to some students, so why isn't it attempted or done?

I recently finished a NAMI (National Alliance For the Mentally Ill) 12-week family-to-family education program here in Fayetteville at the Heritage Bank. We, class members, and others who will be attending the next class in September, are founding and starting a local NAMI chapter, which will meet monthly in Fayetteville at the Heritage Bank (information to be in papers).

The purpose of NAMI is to provide education and support to parents, guardians and relatives of the mentally ill. Another big focus of NAMI is to try to eradicate through education that scrouge that the mentally ill have lived with - prejudice, suspicion, withdrawal from them, isolation, etc. There is a tremendous stigma applied to all forms of mental illness in our country and society.

Evidence indicated that mental illness is much more widespread in our society than anyone will admit. Depression and obsessiveness also fall into the category so the chances are that you or someone you know may have some form of a mental illness. These people have been ignored, avoided, misjudged and prejudiced against by schools, churches, society and people in general for centuries.

It's my opinion that we will continue to have trouble in schools and our society until many issues are looked at and paid attention to. We cannot call ourselves a religious or spiritual society if we don't acknowledge that the mentally ill, emotionally disturbed, etc., exist and want to be listened to.

Recently I read an article by Dana Goldman, a senior at Paideia School. Here is a quote from it:

“The adage, children should be seen and not heard, doesn't work anymore. The killings in Colorado and the high suicide rate among teens emphasize what we teens have known for years.We need to feel free to speak. we need to be listened to, we need to be given advice (although we might dislike it at the time), and we need to be loved. When we are silenced, we feel isolated. The shootings in Colorado makes me think the killers were lonely, scared, and felt like their lives were worthless. If someone had been available to talk with them, would this tragedy have happened? If someone had taken their threats seriously, would this have happened?”

Dana, you said it better than I ever could have.

P.J. Morris
Fayetteville

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