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Voices From The Hellmouth
from the Geek-Profiling dept.
The big story never seemed to quite make it to the front pages or the TV talk shows. It wasn't whether the Net is a place for hate-mongers and bomb-makers, or whether video games are turning your kids into killers. It was the spotlight the Littleton, Colorado killings has put on the fact that for so many individualistic, intelligent, and vulnerable kids, high school is a Hellmouth of exclusion, cruelty, loneliness, inverted values and rage.
From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Todd Solondz's "Welcome To The Dollhouse," and a string of comically-bitter teen movies from Hollywood, pop culture has been trying to get this message out for years. For many kids - often the best and brightest -- school is a nightmare.
People who are different are reviled as geeks, nerds, dorks. The lucky ones are excluded, the unfortunates are harassed, humiliated, sometimes assaulted literally as well as socially. Odd values - unthinking school spirit, proms, jocks - are exalted, while the best values - free thinking, non-conformity, curiousity - are ridiculed. Maybe the one positive legacy the Trenchcoat Mafia left was to ensure that this message got heard, by a society that seems desperate not to hear it.
Minutes after the "Kids That Kill" column was posted on Slashdot Friday, and all through the weekend, I got a steady stream of e-mail from middle and high school kids all over the country -- especially from self-described oddballs. They were in trouble, or saw themselves that way to one degree or another in the hysteria sweeping the country after the shootings in Colorado.
Many of these kids saw themselves as targets of a new hunt for oddballs -- suspects in a bizarre, systematic search for the strange and the alienated. Suddenly, in this tyranny of the normal, to be different wasn't just to feel unhappy, it was to be dangerous.
Schools all over the country openly embraced Geek Profiling. One group calling itself the National School Safety Center issued a checklist of "dangerous signs" to watch for in kids: it included mood swings, a fondness for violent TV or video games, cursing, depression, anti-social behavior and attitudes. (I don't know about you, but I bat a thousand).
The panic was fueled by a ceaseless bombardment of powerful, televised images of mourning and grief in Colorado, images that stir the emotions and demand some sort of response, even when it isn't clear what the problem is.
The reliably blockheaded media response didn't help either. "Sixty Minutes" devoted a whole hour to a broadcast on screen violence and its impact on the young, heavily promoted by this tease: "Are video games turning your kids into killers?" The already embattled loners were besieged.
"This is not a rational world. Can anybody help?" asked Jamie, head of an intense Dungeons and Dragons club in Minnesota, whose private school guidance counselor gave him a choice: give up the game or face counseling, possibly suspension. Suzanne Angelica (her online handle) was told to go home and leave her black, ankle-length raincoat there.
On the Web, kids did flock to talk to each other. On Star Wars and X-Files mailing lists and websites and on AOL chat rooms and ICQ message boards, teenagers traded countless countless stories of being harassed, beaten, ostracized and ridiculed by teachers, students and administrators for dressing and thinking differently from the mainstream. Many said they had some understanding of why the killers in Littleton went over the edge.
"We want to be different," wrote one of the Colorado killers in a diary found by the police. "We want to be strange and we don't want jocks or other people putting us down." The sentiment, if not the response to it, was echoed by kids all over the country. The Littleton killings have made their lives much worse.
"It was horrible, definitely," e-mailed Bandy from New York City. "I'm a Quake freak, I play it day and night. I'm really into it. I play Doom a lot too, though not so much anymore. I'm up till 3 a.m. every night. I really love it. But after Colorado, things got horrible. People were actually talking to me like I could come in and kill them. It wasn't like they were really afraid of me - they just seemed to think it was okay to hate me even more? People asked me if I had guns at home. This is a whole new level of exclusion, another excuse for the preppies of the universe to put down and isolate people like me."
It wasn't just the popular who were suspicious of the odd and the alienated, though.
The e-mailed stories ranged from suspensions and expulsions for "anti-social behavior" to censorship of student publications to school and parental restrictions on computing, Web browsing, and especially gaming. There were unconfirmed reports that the sale of blocking software had skyrocketed. Everywhere, school administrators pandered and panicked, rushing to show they were highly sensitive to parents fears, even if they were oblivious to the needs and problems of many of their students.
In a New Jersey private school, a girl was expelled for showing classmates a pocket-knife. School administrators sent a letter home:
"In light of the recent tragedy in Littleton, Colorado, we all share a heightened sensitivity to potential threats to our children. I urge you to take this time to discuss with your children the importance of turning to adults when they have concerns about the behavior of others."
This solution was straight out of "1984." In fact, this was one of the things it's protagonist Winston was jailed for: refusing to report his friends for behavior that Big Brother deemed abnormal and disturbing.
Few of the weeks? media reports - in fact, none that I saw - pointed out that the FBI Uniform Crime reports, issued bi-annually, along with the Justice Departments reports (statistical abstracts on violence are available on the Department's website and in printed form) academic studies and some news reports have reporters for years now. Violence among the young is dropping across the country, even as computing, gaming, cable TV and other media use rises.
Unhappy, alienated, isolated kids are legion in schools, voiceless in media, education and politics. But theirs are the most important voices of all in understanding what happened and perhaps even how to keep it from happening again.
I referred some of my e-mailers to peacefire.org, a children's rights website, for help in dealing with blocking and filtering software. I sent others to freedomforum.org (the website Free!) for help with censorship and free speech issues, and to geek websites, especially some on ICQ.com where kids can talk freely.
I've chosen some e-mailers to partially reprint here. Although almost all of these correspondents were willing to be publicly identified - some demanded it - I'm only using their online names, since some of their stories would put them in peril from parents, peers or school administrators.
From Jay in the Southeast:
"I stood up in a social studies class -the teacher wanted a discussion -- and said I could never kill anyone or condone anyone who did kill anyone. But that I could, on some level, understand these kids in Colorado, the killers. Because day after day, slight after slight, exclusion after exclusion, you can learn how to hate, and that hatred grows and takes you over sometimes, especially when you come to see that you're hated only because you're smart and different, or sometimes even because you are online a lot, which is still so uncool to many kids?
After the class, I was called to the principal's office and told that I had to agree to undergo five sessions of counseling or be expelled from school, as I had expressed ?sympathy? with the killers in Colorado, and the school had to be able to explain itself if I ?acted out?. In other words, for speaking freely, and to cover their ass, I was not only branded a weird geek, but a potential killer. That will sure help deal with violence in America."
From Jason in Pennsylvania: "The hate just eats you up, like the molten metal moving up Keanu Reeve's arm in the ?The Matrix.? That's what I thought of when I saw it. You lose track of what is real and what isn't. The worst people are the happiest and do the best, the best and smartest people are the most miserable and picked upon. The cruelty is unimaginable. If Dan Rather wants to know why those guys killed those people in Littleton, Colorado, tell him for me that the kids who run the school probably drove them crazy, bit by bit?.That doesn't mean all those kids deserved to die. But a lot of kids in America know why it happened, even if the people running schools don't."
From Andrew in Alaska: "To be honest, I sympathized much more with the shooters than the shootees. I am them. They are me. This is not to say I will end the lives of my classmates in a hail of bullets, but that their former situation bears a striking resemblance to my own. For the most part, the media are clueless. They're never experienced social rejection, or chosen non-conformity'Also, I would like to postulate that the kind of measures taken by school administration have a direct effect on school violence. School is generally an oppressive place; the parallels to fascist society are tantalizing. Following a school shooting, a week or two-week crackdown ensues, where students? constitutional rights are violated with impunity, at a greater rate than previous."
From Anika78 in suburban Chicago:
"I was stopped at the door of my high school because I was wearing a trenchcoat. I don't game, but I'm a geekchick, and I'm on the Web a lot. (I love geek guys, and there aren't many of us.) I was given a choice - go home and ditch the coat, or go to the principal. I refused to go home. I have never been a member of any group or trenchcoat mob or any hate thing, online or any other, so why should they tell me what coat to wear?
Two security guards took me into an office, called the school nurse, who was a female, and they ordered me to take my coat off. The nurse asked me to undress (privately) while the guards outside the door went through every inch of my coat. I wouldn't undress, and she didn't make me (I think she felt creepy about the whole thing).
Then I was called into the principal's office and he asked me if I was a member of any hate group, or any online group, or if I had ever played Doom or Quake. He mentioned some other games, but I don't remember them. I'm not a gamer, though my boyfriends have been. I lost it then. I thought I was going to be brave and defiant, but I just fell apart. I cried and cried. I think I hated that worse than anything."
FromZBird in New Jersey:
"Yeah, I've had some fantasies about taking out some of these jerks who run the school, have parties, get on teams, are adored by teachers, have all these friends. Sure. They hate me. Day by day, it's like they take pieces out of you, like a torture, one at a time. My school has 1,500 kids. I could never make a sports team. I have never been to a party. I sit with my friends at our own corner of the cafeteria. If we tried to join the other kids, they'd throw up or leave. And by now, I'd rather die.
Sometimes, I do feel a lot of real pure rage. And I feel better when I go online. Sometimes I think the games keep me from shooting anybody, not the other way around. Cause I can get even there, and I'm pretty powerful there. But I'd never do it. Something much deeper was wrong with these kids in Colorado. To shoot all those people? Make bombs? You have to be sick, and the question they should be asking isn't what games do they play, but how come all these high-paid administrators, parents, teachers and so-called professional people, how come none of them noticed how wacked they were? I mean, in the news it said they had guns all over their houses! They were planning this for a year. Maybe the reporters ought to ask how come nobody noticed this, instead of writing all these stupid stories about video games?"
From ES in New York:
High school favors people with a certain look and attitude - the adolescent equivalent of Aryans. They are the chosen ones, and they want to get rid of anyone who doesn't look and think the way they do. One of the things which makes this so infuriating is that the system favors shallow people. Anyone who took the time to think about things would realize that things like the prom, school spirit and who won the football game are utterly insignificant in the larger scheme of things.
So anyone with depth of thought is almost automatically excluded from the main high school social structure. It's like some horribly twisted form of Social Darwinism.
I would never, ever do anything at all like what was done in Colorado. I can't understand how anyone could. But I do understand the hatred of high school life which, I guess, prompted it.
From Dan in Boise, Idaho:
"Be careful! I wrote an article for my school paper. The advisor suggested we write about ?our feelings? about Colorado. My feelings -what I wrote -- were that society is blaming the wrong things. You can't blame screwed-up kids or the Net. These people don't know what they were talking about. How bout blaming a system that takes smart or weird kids and drives them crazy? How about understanding why these kids did what they did, cause in some crazy way, I feel something for them. For their victims, too, but for them. I thought it was a different point-of-view, but important. I was making a point. I mean, I'm not going to the prom.
You know what? The article was killed, and I got sent home with a letter to my parents. It wasn't an official suspension, but I can't go back until Tuesday. And it was made pretty clear to me that if I made any noise about it, it would be a suspension or worse. So this is how they are trying to figure out what happened in Colorado, I guess. By blaming a sub-culture and not thinking about their own roles, about how fucked-up school is. Now, I think the whole thing was a set-up, cause a couple of other kids are being questioned too, about what they wrote. They pretend to want to have a 'dialogue' but kids should be warned that what they really want to know is who's dangerous to them."
From a Slashdot reader: "Your column Friday was okay, but you and a lot of the Slashdot readers don't get it. You don't have the guts to stand up and say these games are not only not evil, they are great. They are good. They are challenging and stimulating. They help millions of kids who have nowhere else to go, because the whole world is set up to take care of different kinds of kids, kids who fit in, who do what they're told, who are popular. I've made more friends online on Gamespot.com than I have in three years of high school. I think about my characters and my competitions and battles all day.
Nothing I've been taught in school interests me as much. And believe me, the gamers who (try to) kill me online all day are a lot closer to me than the kids I go to high school with. I'm in my own world, for sure, but it's my choice and it's a world I love. Without it, I wouldn't have one... Last week, my father told me he had cancelled my ISP because he had asked me not to game so much and I still was. And when he saw the Colorado thing online, he said, he told my Mom that he felt one of these kids could be me'I am a resourceful geek, and I was back online before he got to bed that night. But I have to go underground now.
My guidance counselor, who wouldn't know a computer game from Playboy Bunny poster, told me was Dad was being a good parent, and here was a chance for me to re-invent myself, be more popular, to ?mainstream.? This whole Colorado thing, it's given them an excuse to do more of what started this trouble in the first place - to make individuals and different people feel like even bigger freaks."
From Jip in New England:
"Dear Mr. Katz. I am 10. My parents took my computer away today, because of what they saw on television. They told me they just couldn't be around enough to make sure that I'm doing the right things on the Internet. My Mom and Dad told me they didn't want to be standing at my funeral some day because of things I was doing that they didn't know about. I am at my best friend's house, and am pretty bummed, because things are boring now. I hope I'll get it back."
Some Free Advice. (Score:4)
Wow, pretty contradictory, eh?
The system is all around us in our culture. It is all about rules, controls, checks and balances. This system is implemented by the powers that be to keep things running smoothly. Powers fear change, and therefore need the system to ensure that everything runs according to the plan.
As an individualist, you have probably already dismissed the plan. You have probably already recognized it's shortcomings and weaknesses, whis is why you have chosen to branch off from it, rather than try to conform to the expected norm. I feel that this is a good thing, but you must realize that, because the powers fear change, they will resist you. They will try to force you into the system. They will become frustrated, and you will become angry. You wmay be branded as an "outsider" or "troublemaker". This is not a good thing.
You cannot simply go against the system. The system is like a fast moving river, and you are stranded somewhere along it. The current tries to push you in a certain direction. If you try to fight the current, you will lose the battle, and be swept away nonetheless. What you must learn to do is work the system, the current. No one is asking you to go where the stream pushes you, but by watching how the water flows, and observing and learning it's patterns and behviours, you can use the current to take you where you want to go.
As it is in the system. If you fight the system head-on, you will fall. It's not fair, but that's the way it works. What you need to do is look at how the rules of the system work, and learn to use, manipulate, and bend these rules to get you where you want to go. Don't reject the system outright, but rather use it's power to your own advantage. Don't let it change who you are, but rather find a way to make the system work with you.
You will need patience. The system doesn't always let you move where you want to immediately. You must learn that, if you move in the right way, at the right time, you can go where you want to through the system. Attaining a harmony with the system, but not letting it control you, is the path to success. Ever see The Matrix? Kinda like that, only without having to jab a probe through your brain.
So how do you make it through the system without becoming a drone? That's where the other point comes in: fuck it. No, I don't mean literally. You must also see that, despite the power of the system within mainstream society, it is not omnipresent. You must be able to "escape" the system every now and then. By reaching out and finding a peer group of people who are "on your level" and have also learned to see the system, you let yourself exist on an intrapersonal basis in an environment free of the rules of the system. The Internet is a great forum for this, as the deliberate environment of agreed anarchy precludes the intervention of the system. A warning though, don't let it become all-consuming. Don't let the Internet take the place of real intra-personal relationship, or the real-world skills that help you navigate the system will soon begin to decay.
Once I made this realization, life suddenly became so much easier for me. I am still learning the rules, but the more I know about the system, the more I can manipulate it to my own ends as a non-conformist. You'd be suprised how often the powers can look past your individualism so long as they can't detect a threat to the system.
In summary: The system is there. You can't stop it by fighting it. Don't give up your individualism. Learn how to work and use the system, and you will rise above it. Keep a few good friends, with whom you can relax outside of the system. Be yourself.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Adam Schumacher
cybershoe@mindless.com
Fight back; correctly (Score:5)
First, as regards those who are being mistreated in school as a result of this, the admininstrators are not your friends. Accept this. When you find this isn't true in the case of one individual or group of individuals (rare, but happens), treat them accordingly, but remember that they're there to make things run smoothly. If they can lower their workload by walking all over you, most will do it without hesitation. Expect it.
So what to do? You people are supposed to be smart. God or nature may not have given you beauty or strength, but one of the premises here is that you to have brains. Use them. The letters to Katz show several lawsuits waiting to happen. Be aware that you don't have to file them (I never did). Go to the library. Read the relevant areas of the Constitution. Find some court cases that set precedents that favor your position. When Joe Administrator tries to force you into counseling for speaking your mind, lay it on him calmly, coolly, and with confidence. He will turn tail and hide.
And if this doesn't work? Pick up a pen. "The pen is mightier than the sword" is an old cliche, but it's true. If you know how to use it. When my school implemented a draconian dress code (for no real reason that anyone could ascertain; the vice principal just decided to do it) I wrote a long editorial for the school newspaper. I pointed out the flaws in the reasons given for each specific rule. I did not call names. I did not use inflammatory language. I did use humor. I did cite legal angles. When the vice principal tried to kill the article, he was unsuccessful because he couldn't point to anything that was actually wrong with it other than it kind of made him look stupid. The dress code wasn't repealed as a result of this (it ain't a perfect world), but neither was it enforced. And if he had killed the article? First I would have offered to send it to the local paper along with an explanatory letter to the editor. This will usually work. If that hadn't worked, I would have gone ahead and sent them.
The point is, you need to do what the TCM didn't. Take responsibility for your life. If you can get help from your parents or a teacher do so, but if you can't (I usually didn't) don't just roll over. There is always a way to fight back. You'll have to work harder than you should have to to find it, and you'll lose some frustrating battles, but if you're smart (and you are, right?) and careful, you'll win most. It is worth it. And you'll find that you might not have to wait until you're out of high school to laugh at the people who are putting you down.
Thanks for writing this (Score:3)
This is exactly the kind of thing that needs to be written about the Colorado massacres. I just think it's a bit of a shame that we can't get columns like this into all the paper media.
School can be hell. I think most of us know this on some level. I didn't go to school in America, I went to school in New Zealand and every day I experienced the same thing, the nasty comments, the abuse (both verbal and physical). I remember one day when four successive people walked past me and simply spat on me for no other reason than that I wasn't a conformist, I wasn't popular. I wasn't like them and what they don't understand they fear.
The administration of my school, Riccarton High, in Christchurch, New Zealand, did nothing to stop this. What can you do when one of the people who teases you is the pricipals son and one of the people who spits on you as they walk past is the Deans son? Nothing, because you are different and they simply don't care and won't take the time to understand.
The experiences I had a school almost made me leave, there were entire mothns when I didn't show up to shcool because I couldn't bear the thought of what would happen when I got there. I ended up in deep depression and in counselling for a couple of years after that.
My only satisfaction comes from the fact that now I'm 23 years old and earning more than most of my teachers and have a hell of a lot more prospect that most of my fellow pupils, they may have been half-decent atheletes but they'll get old and slow and fat and I'll be sitting behind my terminal making their porn connection work.
To everyone out there who is getting hell at school, bear with it. Let it flow past you and get on with your life. It will be the one of the hardest things you have to do but if you get through it and don't let them break you then you will win.
We are not misfits, we are not dorks, we certainly aren't idiots. We are Morlocks and we will be the ones who make their world work when our time comes around.
Outcast (Score:3)
We do all have something in common, but we're not all the same.
I was a High-School outcast. I've often referred to that experience as "4 years of hell". I'm 31 now, and I've come to grips with what I went through, and why it happened. I dealt with it back then by kidding myself that I was smarter than them, better than them. Truth be told, I was at the exact 50th percentile in the class. Okay, I topped out all the standardized tests, and all the counsellors and teachers had these heart-to-hearts with me telling me how bright I am, how smart and talented I am, but really, I think at least some of that was a thin attempt to get me exited and involved in a world I had no interest in. Academics. So bottom line, I wasn't the "best and brightest" of my school, and now, 14 years later, I don't have the comfort of seeing all the jocks and preps working daddy's car dealership. (some of them)
But I eventually figured out, the problem was me. For some reason, even in the professional world, I just don't fit in. I'm just not very socially - fluent(?). I don't know what it is, but at least now, I don't carry a lot of angst over it, I just deal with it as best I can. At least here, in the professional world, the people I work with are grown-up about it, and the wolf-pack mentality that kept me excluded and ostracized from everything in High-School is no longer present.
I'm not as bad off as some of you. I've read about others in the "Why Kids Kill" column, some people have had counselling, drugs, and even "extended stays" at Arkham Assylum for the Criminally Insane.
I don't know how to solve my root problem, social ineptness. I know it's a problem that feeds on itself, because the more aware of it I am, the more nervous I get around people, and the worse I am. But I do know that being online, and conversing with others online - like-minded or not, helps a lot. I don't even know if THIS problem is what causes ALL kids to be excluded and ostracized. I know there are probably other factors (economics, parental "connections", acne, physical stature, and hobbies). But I DO know one thing: If I knew then, what I know now, I would DEFINATELY done many, many things different, and perhaps, I would be in a much better position in life now.
The main thing was, I couldn't see past age 18. When I was in High-School, I was so preoccupied with my misery, that I couldn't see my future at all. All I could see what I was missing out on. I think that this is a totally critical thing for kids going through this need to understand. That their situation is temporary, that the other kids are behaving the way they do because they're just kids. Most of them will grow up and stop being assholes. You can't wallow in self-pity like I did, because I ended up totally screwing up my life. And while things are going well for me now, at least financially, things could be MUCH MUCH better. (if only I had got good grades, and finished college, and not changed my major to art. ART?! What was I thinking? I don't know.)
I think about these kids and I see that at least they had a clique to be in, though some of the other TCMs say that these two were fringe members, that may be some defensive distancing. I did try sports, and I did play some sports, but I wasn't accepted by the "jocks". There were a couple of instances where I DID actually go postal, but I was unarmed, so I didn't end up in the news. Luckily for me, I had a big brother who used to tease me and beat the crap out of me, so at least I knew how to fight. Won some, lost some, luckily, never got in trouble over it. But I didn't fit in with the intellectual geeks, I didn't fit in with the stoners, I didn't even fit in with the theater kids. I was kind of a fringe member of all those groups (except the preps, that was an economic thing, pure and simple - mommy and daddy didn't buy me a BMW to drive to school). I wasn't even accepted by the D&D players. I did dabble in Paganism, I did have a gun, I did build bombs (take the Anarchist Cookbook with a grain of salt, some of it is just plain wrong), and I read Che Gueverra. I guess I'm just lucky I never decided to end it all and take some people with me.
(although - I wasn't ignored in a class of 400. I was voted "Most likely to blow up the world")
In the end, I didn't bear a grudge against any individual. I guess I still feel anger, but you know, life is what it is, and it's the way it is. You can try to change it, but it's not likely, and bottom line, at least I'm not some poor Rwandan kid, starving in the savanna, witness to his parents being hacked up by machettes in tribal violence. Kind of puts things in perspective.
And do I feel angry at how the press handles this shooting incident? You bet I do, but face it. These TV reporters and Politicians were all popular kids when they were in High-School. They have no idea, and can't possibly understand what we went through, and what you kids are going through now. And when they begin to understand, they HAVE to close their eyes to it. Can you imagine the guilt they must feel? (I do not feel sorry for them, but this is how I rationalize it).
So I welcome this "movement", of outcast kids on the internet. It's pretty crappy that this is turning into a witch-hunt, but I think maybe we'll all be a bit smarter from this experience, and maybe we'll all see what this can lead to, and maybe, the things that I've said can help some of you (and maybe some of those "sociologists and psychologists" out there will get a freakin' clue!). Maybe this gathering on the internet is something that can finally help this situation, something that wasn't possible before (I know I certainly had zero outlet for these thoughts and feelings when I was a kid - there was no internet back then. Not like today.)
So, for the kids who are getting their internet access cut off, I say, go to the library. Stay in touch with those who are going through the same things you are. I think it's the only way y'all are going to stay sane. (and by sane, I mean SANE, not "normal" or "conformist")
And please, stay away from this Nazi crap. That's just stupid. I'm not going to bad mouth Paganism (though I don't recommend it, it didn't get me anywhere, in terms of spiritual peace), This Nazi stuff is just plain stupid. It's SO 50 years ago. . .
Well, good luck.
Damn straight... (Score:5)
This system evolved to serve a purpose; by ruthlessly punishing difference, rewarding conformity and reinforcing an immutable status quo, it creates the preconditions of a modern industrial society; a population of predictable, conditioned worker/consumer drones, people who accept their place in the great machine of society and don't make trouble. The relatively small number of murders and suicides is well within the margin of acceptable loss.
Meanwhile, when the jocks and popular kids grow up, they take their places in the leader-caste of society; and while most of them are, by then, relatively decent individuals, they do not see that there is a problem. Hence, when a bunch of black-clad angstpuppies massacre some jocks and popular kids, the solution is obvious: sue the video-game companies, restrict the Internet. and ban aspects of outsider subcultures, such as black clothing.
And so, the invisible hand increases the pressure even further.
Sure wish we had a scapegoat... (Score:3)
It is far easier to run a school like a prison than to maintain a place of independent thought. Even teachers are kept on a leash. It is also easier to fault "deviant" lifestyles, like Goths, Geeks or Gamers, than to admit the utter failure of our school systems to engender social skills in our children. Is it possible that parents need to do this themselves? Please, mom and dad are already working two full time jobs.
In a fiercely capitalistic culture in which "greed is good", one's status increases by the number of people walked on. The outcasts deserved to be abused because they make the rest of us feel uncomfortable, right?
I saw VP Gore talking about how we need to reduce the amount of violence we expose our children to. He didn't mention NATO's "relief efforts" in Kosovo as one of those harmful influences. Clearly, real violence isn't as harmful to children as Doom.
What these Colorado kids lost wasn't their minds. It was hope. It's a shame what happened in Littleton. It's worse that our country won't learn squat from it.
Is it me or does anyone else see some parallels to the movie _Heathers_?
"What's your *damage*?"
The torture of high school (Score:3)
This is a human rights issue. I know many who had to drop out of high school because it was just too dangerous to continue in school, even though we lived in a famous suburban town (known for it's involvement in the revolutionary war -- how ironic). School administrators use the threat of being outcast and regularly assaulted in order to force mental obedience. Because of my experience I will never place my children (when I do have children) in public schools. I would rather homeschool or find a good private school than potentially subject my children to that environment.
Of course what those kids did was wrong. It pains me to know that they were pushed up against the wall and mentally twisted to the point where they murdered 13 others and then committed suicide. But the very fact that they planned suicide from the very start is telling: as far as they were concerned their lives were worthless because of the regular abuse they received. So they struck back by taking the lives of their tormenters. Kids who take enjoyment from dishing out abuse should take note of this event; they may reap what they sow in lead from their targets.
And yes, nearly fifteen years after my walk through high school hell I am still angry over how I was treated and how the school administration prevented me from living in a reasonable non-violent and non-abusive environment. So, while banning trenchcoats, video games, and access to the Internet won't stop kids from going on insane murder sprees, school faculty and administrators might consider providing a safe and reasonable environment to learn without danger; that just might bring peace back to our schools.
School can indeed be hell if you're different (Score:5)
As soon as I got to first grade, around 1963, the teacher heard the way I spoke and walked me down to the retarded children's classroom, where I stayed until my parents realized that my description of my classmates was a bit odd. No IQ tests or anything, she just dumped me in there. Once my parents found out, they tested my IQ (it was high) and put me back in the regular class, but the teacher resented it - she took every opportunity to tell me, in front of other students, that I was retarded and that I didn't belong in the class. This made me the school pariah until Junior High or so.
The problem with American schools is the awful pressure on students to conform, when they simply can not do so due to the misfortune of being bright, handicapped, or in some way unusual. The pressure to conform is the same sentiment that causes racism and religious intolerance - there's simply a different group being hated this time. It is enforced by the students but it must come from the instructors and parents - where else would the students be getting it?
Anger in our schools will be a problem until we can embrace our differences rather than try to iron them out.
Bruce Perens
Wow (Score:3)
Thankfully, I'm an adult and can't have my net access taken away by mommy and daddy. =)
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
I have a kid...I'm really dreading this... (Score:5)
I was blessed. I got to go through public elementary school in a 1-day-a-week gifted student program. Wonderful implementation. Freedom of expression was foremost. Most of those kinds of programs have dried up. I'm wondering if my child is going to have any way of expressing himself when his time to go through high school comes around. I doubt it. Parents are so quick to put on the Jackboots, and squash individuality. Supress individuality and expressiveness long enough, and it will find its own way out--in short, harmful, and explosive bursts.
As a postscript, my wife and I have raised Foster Children before (and shortly after) our son was born. For children that are truly destructive, harmful, and uncontrollable there are lots of warning signs. In practice, they differ from expressiveness and individuality as much as a shovel from a bayonet. Only when expressed in the dry, clinicians language used for describing behaviour do the differences fade. "Flat, sharp, metallic, with a handle". It's this dry description that's going to be used to hunt down the individualists.
(We had a Foster Child committed to a home for a while because of this kind of desctuctive behaviour, with good results. It's possible to tell the difference, and necessary to act on them.)
I don't think the murderers fit the profile here (Score:5)
What the people can't accept is that the massacre was utterly meaningless. You have to consider a few things:
I just think they wanted attention; they wanted to do something superlative. When life is meaningless (and most surburban youth are upset at meaninglessness of bourgeouis life), there isn't anything else left. This doesn't look like the "suffering chilld being driven over the edge" thing to me.
They were obsessed with Hitler. Hitler was definitely superlative. I guess they could have done something great, but slaughtering a crowd of helpless people is a lot easier than self sacrifice.
Hellmouth indeed (Score:3)
I REALLY hated high school.
High school, the act of getting up every
fscking morning to walk through hallways of
laughing happy people, to get shoved around
by people I didn't even know, to get called
names for the way I dressed, spoke.
I had friends, very close friends, but we
were a tight group because of the oppression
and crap that got thrown at us every day.
I remember getting slammed into lockers every
day for two years, over and over, for being
a little different. I remember teachers,
especially Mr Gunn, the coke head that stared
down girl's shirts, simply turning away, knowing
what was going on, but not caring.
In my high school, you got kicked out for
throwing a punch, so defending yourself from
physical agression lead to suspension.
I don't support what the kids in Colorado did, I
think it's repugnant, but I understand how they
were driven to what they did. The parents, guidance
counselors and adminstrators don't have the balls,
or intelligence, or compassion, to prevent this sort
of thing from happening. Unless people, that is,
teenagers in our schools, somehow start treating
each other like valuable human beings, instead of
social doormats, this sort of slaughter is going to
continue as more of the discontent snap.
Unfortunately, that does not seem to be what is
happening. It seems that, so predictably, there is
yet another backlash against the geeks, freaks,
nonconformists and kids who don't fit in. "Be normal"
they will tell you, over and over, "Try to get along",
failing to realize that it's not you, but the savages
that are stepping on you that are not being well
behaved.
To all
in high school: good luck with the next few years,
my heart goes out to you. It should get better
afterwards, it might not seem like it now, but there
will be a time after school when you can look back
and think "How did I survive that?"
My story... (Score:3)
With my 10 year high school reunion coming up, I'd been thinking a lot about my teenage years a lot. Now with the shooting, I can't think of anything else.
I was always the weird kid. I completely sucked at any sort of sports - I was on the school softball team for a while in Grade 4, but quit after it conflicted with piano lessons. I am pretty near-sighted, so I've had glasses since I was 7 or 8. The school that I attended from kindergarten to grade 8 was living hell for me, especially in the later years (actually, the school shut down one year after I left due to the number of parents pulling their kids out). By that time, I had a shattered self-image and no self esteem. I got into some fights with other students, and began bullying other kids who happened to be just a little geekier than me.
Grade 9 saw a new school for me, with the number of students at least a full order of magnitude greater than the previous school. Here again, I was ostracized and bullied. Gym class was a special sort of nightmare - eventually, I just skipped class. I took the grade 10 computer class along with a number of other grade 9 geeks, but wound up crossing paths with one of the grade 10 jerks in the class. None of the teachers knew me, or seemed to care.
Grades 10 through 12 were at a private residential school in a small town about an hour away from my home city. The total enrollment in that school was about 115 students - the teachers knew each student by name. I believe that the three years at this school is what kept me from becoming a complete sociopath. It wasn't perfect - grade 10 was a bit of a rough transition, my roommate in the dorm that year was a complete psycho, and I threatened suicide twice - but I don't even want to think what would have happened to me back at my old school. The social structure among the students wasn't very rigid - you had your jocks and geeks, but they managed to get along fairly well (I sang in the school concert choir, along with most of the members of the basketball and volleyball teams). I made a number of lasting friendships from those years (and a couple of people that I hope don't show up at the reunion).
I'd say I turned out pretty good, but I wonder what would have happened to me today? In grade 12, I grew a beard and dressed in camouflage. I read "International Combat Arms" magazine. I played computer games (Autoduel and Beyond Wolfenstein were favorites). I loved violent movies (Aliens, Predator, and Platoon were among my personal collection). I listened to heavy metal. I had an UZI water pistol. A kid like that today would be in serious counseling and/or surveillance.
Life after high school has been pretty good. Got into BBS-ing in the early 90's (under the alias "Suburban Commando"), went to university, got into the Internet and earned my B. Sc. majoring in Computer Science, married a girl that I had met in high school, and I'm now the father of a 1-year-old girl. I've got a good job as network admin for a small company (even if it is an NT network), and I'm happy with my life. I don't wear camouflage any more, but I still listen to loud music, play games like Quake and Jedi Knight, and I drive my car a little too fast sometimes. But I survived high school, and I'm happy now.
This shooting has hit me pretty hard. I can understand what the two shooters were feeling - I'm not condoning their actions, but I think I understand their motives. Revenge is a powerful drive, pain and hate are powerful emotions, and it's pretty easy to let them override common sense. To everyone who is currently in high school, I just want to say "hang in there". It'll soon be over, and then you can get on with the rest of your life.
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