“The reason why schools are the target of rampage shooters in small towns is that the school is the only real public institution that touches the whole community,” she said. “I think the reason why we don’t see rampage shootings in urban schools is because, sadly, in urban settings, schools are not that important.”
Video from the Columbine High School surveillance camera shows Eric Harris, left, and Dylan Klebold, carrying a TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol in the cafeteria. They later killed themselves in the library.
In more than twenty years I’ve taught in public high schools, I honestly have never feared my life would be in danger as a teacher. My husband sometimes fears that I’ll be whopped over the head by an irate parent or two or fifty. And, if I’m going to be “transparent” [the new PC buzzword], there’s a few I’d wish would engage me, just so I could justifiably respond…
I teach in the largest public high school in Louisiana. We’re small by Texas standards; they have schools the size of the town in which I live. But, in Louisiana, we’re smashing 2300 kids into a school built for 1500. The halls are so packed between class changes that, by comparison, Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras Day look like a breezeway.
Our students are remarkable in their capacity to handle the inevitable backpack mashing, foot stepping, PDA disrupting, and locker slamming at class change time. We’re not fight-free; but they’re rare.
I’ve never felt threatened by my students, and I believe that if I ever did, that would be the day I’d start filling out my retirement papers.
But like everyone else in education, I don’t believe I can ignore Columbine and the other assorted acts of terrorism that have happened at schools across our nation-and others. I’ve come to realize that the kids wearing black trenchcoats and pants weighed down with yards of chains aren’t the ones suspect. Often, I watch the kids whose arrogance is alarming. The ones whose quiet perhaps isn’t reflecting shyness, but a controlled anger. The ones who don’t fully grasp the meaning of “anti-hero” or at least not the consequences of that sort of warped “heroism.” The ones on the fringes, not because they’re shy, but because other students just think they’re “weird.” Sometimes, even the schmoozy students, the ones expert at saying exactly what they think adults want to hear, set off my radar. Because, often, I see them smirk after they walk away.
School shootings, praise God, are rare. But I can’t and won’t ignore my responsibility as an educator to come to know my students. For them to know me, to know I care, and to know there’s no crisis so huge that they can’t walk out on the other side. Except, of course, a school shooting.
Psychologist Peter Langman, the author of the new book Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, draws 10 lessons for parents and educators from his studies of school shootings across the United States.
1. Think carefully about children’s demands for privacy. Parents should know their children, who their friends are, where they go, and what Web sites they visit, even as children become increasingly private in their teenage years.
2. Do not lie to protect your child. According to Mr. Langman, the father of “Kip” Kinkel, the 15-year-old who shot 27 people at his Springfield, Ore., school in 1998, had assured police before the shooting that his son had no guns at home.
3. Follow through with due process, no matter who is involved. This lesson applies to school administrators, who, in the Kinkel case, may have ignored some rules because both of the young man’s parents were teachers, according to Mr. Langman’s review.
4. If the school is concerned about your child, pay attention. Mr. Langman said the parents of Dylan Klebold, one of the two students responsible for the 1999 attack at Columbine High School, had been alerted by a teacher before the attack that he had written a story about a student who brutally murdered his peers. They accepted their son’s explanation that the paper was “just a story,” Mr. Langman said.
5. Eliminate easy access to guns. Most school shooters get their guns from their homes, from their grandparents’ homes, or from friends or neighbors.
6. Assume threats are serious until proven otherwise. In 2007, eight years after the Columbine massacre, classmates disregarded threats made by Asa Coon, a Cleveland 14-year-old whose shooting spree at Success Tech Academy left five people injured.
7. Anyone can stop a school shooting. In two cases, store clerks—one of whom worked in a gun shop, and the other at a photo store—sounded the alerts that thwarted planned school shootings.
8. Recognize possible rehearsals for attacks. These can take the form of drawings, animation, a video, or a short story.
9. Punishment is not prevention. Suspending or expelling potential school shooters just makes them angry and gives them more unsupervised time to plan their attacks, according to Mr. Langman.
10. Know the limits of physical security. “If you expect to die in an attack,” writes Mr. Langman, “it does not matter if you set off an alarm at the metal detector.”
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