My apologies if I left any implication that I think this is okay. I don’t. I know that parenting is a very difficult job. Unless I’m shown some evidence that the shooters’ parents were abusive or dysfunctional, or otherwise created a very negative atmoshpere at home (lots o’ drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, etc.), I’m the last person to say, “It’s the parents’ fault!”
I don’t think there’s much of an excuse for a parent not to know what’s going on in their own home. I was given to understand that at least one of the boys had weapons and explosive material in their room and in a workshop in the back yard. So while I’m not saying everyone should jump up and sue them I think they may have good cause.
Does anyone here remember what they were like as a teenager?! Despite the fact that I lived in a small town and my folks were strict watchdogs of my behavior, I still did all kinds of things they will never know about. I know there were some pretty obvious signals that the parents failed to pick up, but that does not make them utterly responsible for the deaths. Parents are not going to be an obsticle for someone determined to go through with this kind of thing.
We should be glad they were so unskilled in the use of their weapons. To rampage unchallenged through a school full of unarmed victims and only make 13 kills?
Thank God!!
If either of them was the least skilled shooter, there could have been deaths in the dozens or even hundreds.
I can see homeschooling for academic reasons – that is, if the quality of the actual education offered in one’s public school district leaves something to be desired, and one hasn’t the money for private schools but has the time to educate their own kids.
If, on the other hand, one is homeschooling to shelter Jay and Jane from the ‘evils of the cruel world’, I personally feel that is a really bad idea:
Surprise can be good as well as bad. Not every thing that one discovers or learns through being in a not completely controlled environment is negative. Or, to use a homey phrase, keeping a child out of the sandbox stops them from sitting in dog poop but it also prevents them from building sandcastles. Specific to schooling, the child that avoids the problems that come from dealing with (gasp!) other kids also avoids the healthy relationships that arise from dealing with certain people day after day. No enemies, but no real friends either.
Even if all the world, and school, had to offer was negative (a rather dark view of life), shielding kids from it will only backfire. They will eventually have to face the world, but without the body of lessons we learn from experience. Most children by a certain age learn from supervised exposure to the media what’s fiction and what’s reality, to tell the difference between an advertisement and a news story. Most normal children learn by committing minor wrongs as children (lying, cheating, stealing, getting into fights, etc.) what the true consequences and effects of such actions are. Setting an isolated child out in the world is like putting a “bubble boy” out of their isolation chamber – they have no “immunity” to even minor temptations and negative influences that the average person shrugs off due to experience.
I apologize for the long posting, but this is one of my pet issues.
Slight hijack. I was reading about another school death where the parents sued the school and said “It’s not about money, we just want people to know about the injustice”. I think there should be a law where if someone sues and says “It’s not about money”, then the damages should be limited to $1. What a bunch of hypocracy.
Actually, if either of them had been better at making bombs, the deaths would have been in the hundreds.
They had originally planned for dozens of pipe bombs to go off as a start to their killing spree… the bombs were “strategically” placed for maximum damage, and their guns were to be used to “clean up” whoever was left.
Quite horrible, I know…
MGibson…
I’m in total agreement with you here. While I understand a parents’ desire to allow their kids some space, this just showed either total gullibility or total apathy… or both. However, I don’t think it’s makes the parents responsible.
We have a serious problem when it comes to minors and crime in this country. On one hand we say they’re not mature enough to buy a beer. On the other hand when they engage in criminal activities we want them to be treated as adults.
I thank God every day that I live in Canada, where guns are not too plentiful among private citizens.
Otherwise, I would have done the same thing; walked into my middle school, shot the Principal first, a few teachers, and a handful of students (they know who they are), then blown my (presumably) worthless head off. It would have been enormously satisfying. And I would have done it without hesitation. It scares me that I could have been so destructive. But humans can be driven to quite alot when all they encounter is cruelty and humiliation, at a time when all they need is love and belonging.
I thank God every day that I live in the US, where the rights of the many are not decided by few nut jobs who would abuse them, and the rights of the few are not decided by a tyrany of the majority.
SNORT I was being facetious! Yes, we will home school, but not just because the rate of homeschool shootings is so incredibly low. (Humor, ar, ar, ar.) It’s just better. And if you think that homeschooling involves never leaving the house and no peer interaction, then your “pet issue” needs more research. Socalization is certainly not an issue among any HS kids I know.
Yikes! I wasn’t trying to debate gun control, I was just sharing my own experience. The only reason I didn’t commit a massacre at Adam Scott Junior High was because I didn’t have the means. My parents did not own any guns, and neither did my friends or their parents. So I had zero access to firearms, no matter what the law in Canada might have been at the time.
If I’d lived in Northern Ontario, where many people hunt to survive, the story could have been different. :o
I never imagined I would be misinterpreted that way. I wasn’t blaming Columbine on the availability of guns. Frankly, I think that those boys had a choice and even if they had come to school with firearms, they could have chosen not to fire them. The responsibility rests on their shoulders. No matter what had happened to them prior to the moment where they started shooting, no matter who had wronged them or what they had seen in the media, they always had choices. And they chose homicide/suicide.
I was very good friends with a group of siblings who were homeschooled until High School. So was I not “real”? They were the most engaging, lively, social and well-adjusted kids I knew, before they began going to public school, and after.
I also saw a television show where they spoke to five or six homeschooled teenagers who said that they had active social lives outside of school hours.
Who says that children make all their friends at school? Ever heard of playgroups? Boy/Girl Scouts? Swimming lessons? Summer Camp? Church groups? Playgrounds? There are many ways to meet other kids, other than school. Sometimes, it’s even better to meet kids that way, because they might be from a different ethnic or socio-economic group (which is not always so at school due to districts and such).
What about the students who teased and harrassed the to and others and drove them to the point to where they became irredemably homi/suicidal. Should they have been sued too?
To be fair, the two had experienced a scintilla of what I went through in school. Let me just say that with what I’ve been through, no jury would have convicted me if I went homicidal. But I had self-control, which the two evidently lacked.
YES! High school students get away with all sorts of atrocities that, if committed in a workplace, would result in disciplinary action and/or charges being pressed. High school is a little world of its own. It’s time that sixtenn/seventeen year olds be held responsible for their actions. They are not stupid.
Well, logistics-wise, if every harassment, etc. in high school was brought to trial, the court system would be overwhelmed and the school system would be ineffective, because at any given time a quarter of the students would be sitting in a courtroom.
However, not every harassment in high school warrants a call to the sheriff, even if it violates the letter of the law.
example: Someone spills a Snapple on your notebook. You say “You are so dead, man.”
Is the spiller going to call the police? I’d hope not. Sure, it’s technically assault. Sure, you’re POed, especially if you had a paper in there. If it was very important, your hands could be balled up into fists as you say it, but the other guy knows that you don’t really have any plans to fight him.
Likewise, not every workplace harassment is serious enough to deserve a trial. It’s just that adults have enough time, money, and legal resources to bring others to court.
And it’s not only kids shooting up schools, so don’t say that the lack of trials is breeding killers. There have been more workplace shootings in the news recently.