The Future of Our Schools

Today’s society has become a really dangerous place.  Kids are being abused at home, bullied at school and because of these things; they are bringing the violence into the schools in even more ways.  Just today, a story came up on CNN News about a teacher being shot by a student.  At a California vocational school, a 22 year old young man went to the bathroom, came back and kicked the classroom door in and began firing.  His target was his instructor and the instructor was ultimately killed.  Stories like these seem to be popping up more frequently. 

And just last year, almost a year to the date, in Tacoma, Washington a Special Education teacher was shot outside the school by a man who was infatuated with her. CBS News tell us about 30 year old Jennifer Paulson was shot by a man she went to college with.  There was no history of any romantic relationship between the two, but the killer, Jed Waits, would call her repeatedly in a day, sent her roses and a bear, and even showed up to her school unannounced (she claimed she had never told him where she worked.)

There is also the case of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado that unfortunately so many people recognize and know.  On April 20, 1999, Dylan Lebold and Eric Harris set a goal to kill hundreds in their high school with guns, knives and bombs.  They didn’t kill hundreds, but they did take the lives of twelve students and one teacher before they  killed themselves.  The young men had the massacre planned for close to a year before actually following through with it.  They used Internet sources to show them how to create these explosives and by the day of the attack, they had guns, knives and 99 explosive devices.  They set up a pipe bomb in the cafeteria, planning to kill all 488 students eating lunch (anyone who survived, they were going to shot) but for some unknown reason it did not go off.  It was said that in that the 47 minute ordeal, 188 rounds of ammunition was fired, 30 bombs exploded and 46 did not.  The men also planted bombs in their cars and at home but none went off.  So why do people feel the need to do this?

As a future teacher, this absolutely petrifies me to even begin to think about.  All three of these cases were sad and not completely explainable.  And I only picked three; there are hundreds upon hundreds of cases such as these that happen all of the country.  It seems to me that between media and bullying, these were some, if not all, of the causes as to why these students feel the need to do such a thing.  The media boasts violence in many aspects today and “if the media says it is okay then I can do it” seems to be the mind-set of younger children.  It scares me to imagine the future if these stories are already this bad right now.