Dear Readers.
My apologies for not posting in a while. Things have been busy, but that is really no excuse. What brings me back is Wednesday's tragedy in Florida, and the myriad of responses I have seen to it online and in the media.
I have expressed my opinions on gun control and the issues surrounding that debate before, so I will not be re-covering that ground here. Instead, I want to take a brief look at what I believe is a deeper issue with these shootings.
It is has become commonplace after one of these mass shootings for critics on both sides of the political isle to stand up and use the event as a forum to express their opinion on a "hot button" issue providing verbal lip service to whichever institution pays best to get them re-elected. Note, both sides are guilty of this pandering, just as both sides are guilty of using tragedy as a talking point and then neglecting to promote possible solutions (note, I say "possible" solutions: the hysteria on both sides tends to make their proposed solutions extreme thus impossible to implement).
Before I look into possible solutions, however, I want to talk about what I see as the true root of these crimes. The issue here is not one that has a political solution. Imagine for a moment the complete banning of guns in the United States (leaving aside for a minute the impossibility of such a ban). There are still thousands of ways for a student to come to school and kill 17 people. He could drive a car through the crowd of students as they are leaving school. He could build a bomb in a crock pot and place it in a classroom. He could steal construction equipment and swing a wrecking ball into the side of a building. The list goes on (with some ideas being more probable than others, certainly), but the truth is if the student decides he is going to kill a bunch of people at his school, he will find a way to do so. I am not saying that the government should not take investigative steps, or restrict easy access to high power weapons to those known to be mentally unfit to carry them, but restriction and investigation can only go so far. The issue is not with the means to carry out such an attack, but with the motive behind such an attack.
Because, no matter how bad these shootings get, no matter how the rate has increased over the last ten years, the focus continues to be on guns, not on a society that is creating the monsters who perpetuate these violent acts. I am a substitute teacher, and in some ways, I see the best and the worst of what this generation has to offer. I go into classrooms day after day, and I am faced with students who are disrespectful to authority, unkind to each other, and who believe that life should be handed to them, regardless of the effort they put in. I was homeschooled, so my experience was a bit different than that of others in my generation, but I would never have dreamed of talking back to a teacher the way many students talk back to me when I give an instruction. The lack of respect for authority means that rules, school guidelines, and even morality mean nothing to these students; they are just lines drawn in the sand by "the adults" to "keep them down." It is a short, dangerous step from there to crossing those lines and disobeying the school, crossing those lines and breaking the law, crossing those lines and committing the morally reprehensible. The lack of respect for authority is further compounded by teacher's inability to effectively discipline students and parents apparent choice not to. As a teacher, the greatest disciplinary actions I can take are verbal warnings, separating students from the main group (time-out), and sending the student to the principle. In two out of three of these, the student is effectively getting what they want (to not be working on school), with no greater consequence than a verbal reprimand. The issue is compounded by parents who undermine the teacher through their lack of investment in their children's future or their unwillingness to discipline their children. As a substitute, I do not make calls to children's parents, but I have spoken to numerous teachers who complain that parents are unwilling to take their children's bad behavior seriously, even going to far as to cuss out and blame the teacher for their child's poor behavior. This lax attitude toward discipline and the tendency to shift the blame away from the individual students has created an atmosphere that is very difficult to teach in, an atmosphere that promotes the breakdown of all authority, including moral authority, which in turn leads to greater infractions from students, eventually evolving into the climate we have now, where school shootings are beginning to become "common."
The breakdown caused by the lack of respect for authority is further exacerbated by the students lack of kindness toward each other. Kids have always been cruel toward each other, I will grant that, but the lack of consequences for actions, and parental encouragement to shift blame away from the individual has resulted in a culture of verbal and physical abuse between children at increasingly young ages. I expect Jr. High girls to be catty toward each other. Hormones, changing perspectives on boys, beginning to view each other as potential rivals, I get the breakdown in jr. high. What frightens me is seeing third graders, eight year old girls gossiping about each other, making snide comments behind each others backs or to each others faces, bickering and backstabbing with a ferocity that used to be limited to pubescence. What frightens me is preschool and kindergarten children hitting each other repeatedly, and then responding with "he deserved it because he took my toy," rationalizing their violent behavior and shifting the blame to everyone but themselves.
Is it any wonder we keep seeing "mentally ill" young people commit violent acts against their peers? They have been treated as less than human by the very group of people that is supposed to be their "support" and their "friends." They have been subject to snide comments, sneers, and snickers. And to compound the issue, they have been reassured for years that their situation is "not their fault," that their inability to cope in class, or their tendency to respond with violent behavior is a perfectly natural response to the horrible actions of those around them. When personal responsibility becomes "a trick teachers use to get students to do what they want," and when the individuals around a student become nothing more than a faceless mob whispering behind their back, it almost becomes an inevitability that students will respond violently, without regard for others.
The issue isn't one that government can fix because you cannot legislate the condition of a person's heart. You can place restrictions, you can try to create programs, or sift through data, but in the long run, government can only punish bad behavior, it cannot promote good, and by the time the behavior has gotten bad enough to warrant government intervention, the character of the individual has already been shaped.
So is there, can there ever be a solution? Well, yes and no. There are a few steps that can be taken to try to offset the shaping of poor character in students. First, if parents are not going to take responsibility for their children, if the blame for the child's bad behavior is going to be placed on the students, then teacher's should be allowed to discipline students effectively. A light slap of the ruler on the hand of a five year old would go a long way toward making sure he doesn't punch another student again, regardless of what that other student did to him. In life actions have consequences, and if the role of the teacher is going to be to teach students everything they will need, then this should be an included part of education. Now, I am not talking about physical abuse. There are ways to cause a student discomfort that are not damaging to the student psychologically or physically. But teacher's having the training and the option to employ such techniques would go a long way toward making sure that students knew that rules cannot be broken without serious consequences, and that they are responsible for their own choices. If you are going to force teachers to parent their students, then let them do so.
Of course, this option is inherently limited. Teachers are not parents; they do not have time to build the type of emotional connection with every student in the classroom that a real parent would have with their own child. A wider solution would be for parents to act like parents again. It is not the responsibility of the parent to be friends with their child. It is not necessary for a child to always like their parent. In fact, it is the role of the parent to force their child to do things that they do not like; eat their vegetables even if they don't like them, go to bed on time so they are not tired the next day. A parent who truly loves their child disciplines them because it is only through learning to say no to their own selfish desires that children learn to be functioning members of society, to be truly human, and not slightly cleverer animals.
Again, however, good parenting cannot be legislated. It is again, a condition of the heart, not something that the government can force. Thus, the only true solution is to find a way of transforming the hearts of adults so that they desire to be good parents, and transforming the characters of children so that they learn how to be good human beings. I only know of one solution like that, and it is the belief in God. I will not even say a belief in Jesus Christ, although as a Christian, I believe that He is the only ultimate answer to this problem, but at the very least, the belief in some form of authority higher than the individual. If you believe that there is a moral compass that is greater than yourself, if you believe that there is something after death, and that, ultimately, actions have consequences. then you are more likely to chose a life of correct action. The Buddhist, who believes that if he treats others poorly he will be reincarnated as something horrible, or worse, sentenced to the void, will be more likely to treat others well than an individual who believes that this life is all there is, and that his own pleasure is the ultimate truth. The Christian, Mormon, Muslim, Jehovah's Witness, or Jew who believes that she must follow God's law or be damned to hell will behave differently than the woman who believes that morality is a socially constructed framework to promote the survival of the species. One of these frameworks of morality may not be violated without dire consequences to the individual, the other is simply a institution that may be circumvented should it prove inconvenient to the individual.
Whether or not you agree with my solution, I hope, dear Readers, that you will at least use this opportunity to recognize that the issue of gun violence, particularly of school shootings, is more than just a question of a legislative solution, but goes back to a deeper issue within the hearts and minds of students today. Such an issue cannot be solved merely by government intervention, but instead requires a major re-evaluation of the character of students and how to create a solid moral and ethical foundation in these children. Let us take a step back from the party lines, from the politicizing and melodrama, and contemplate the states of our own hearts, and the steps we can take to build up the our own characters and the character of those around us so that we can help diminish the likely-hood of future tragedies.
I hope this post at least gets you thinking, and I promise it will not be as long until my next post. Next time should be something a bit lighter, hopefully a movie review, and I am going to try to get back to posting monthly again, so look forward to that.
Well, back to reality.
