Our schoolchildren just follow examples
Why are we shocked and horrified that young people in our schools use guns and bombs to express their anger at a perceived enemy? The leaders of our nation, indeed of the western world, after only a modicum of negotiation, decided that violence, destruction and killing with readily available high tech weapons was the most effective ways to deal with bad guys in the Balkans.
When will we ever learn? Spending $1 billion to train our nation's parents, teachers, students and politicians to deal nonviolently with conflict would save lives and cost much less than the many billions of dollars we now spend on prisons and wars.
But then gun and weapons dealers would have to find a new line of work. Maybe they could be retrained to be paramedics and relief workers in refugee camps or school counselors.
Phyllis S. Yingling
Baltimore
In the Colorado shooting, the news media once again rushed to the scene of yet another great American tragedy. When will they realize that they become part of that tragedy by shoving microphones in the faces of children who have just experienced the most horrific episode of their lives?
David Erb
Baltimore
I watched the grief-stricken parents in the aftermath of the Littleton disaster. I watched the stunned TV anchors who, with furrowed brow, asked how such a thing could happen.
My reaction was, "Why are we surprised?"
After all, our society has taught young people that God is dead. We have taught them that there is no right or wrong, only preferences. We have taught them that there is no absolute truth, only what works for you; that life is no longer sacred and it is acceptable to murder millions of unborn or consider the disposal of the aged and ailing; that our leader can commit perjury, lie to the American people, cheat on his wife with no consequences -- so long as the is economy booming.
Why, then, are we surprised when young people do what they want, what feels good, what meets their needs. The surprise is that it has not happened more often.
Stanley A. Smith
Millers
Shooting incidents like the one in Colorado seem to be happening with more frequency and, as a parent, I am frightened. As I watched the news reports from Colorado, the sense that something like this could happen in Carroll County became all too real.
Many have their own theories about why such incidents happen. Some will stress the cruelty of peer interaction at school, sensationalism in the news media and increased violence in movies, or perhaps the availability of weapons. For whatever reason, a higher level of violence is found acceptable every day.
As parents, we have to accept responsibility for our children.
It is our duty to know our children, to be involved in their lives, whether they appear to want it or not.
Children learn by example, not just from classes at school. Children learn kindness, empathy and understanding by watching their parents. Basic human decency is something that a child learns from the day he or she is born. So perhaps parents should ask themselves: do I treat other people with kindness and understanding, even if they are different from me?
Peggy Malcolm
Manchester
If we compare the frequency of events like the school shooting in Colorado to their frequency in other countries, or in our own nation before the current culture of violence became so pervasive, It's clear that we are in the midst of a true epidemic of violence in our schools. Our children are not safe.
What should be done to curb this epidemic? There has been much talk about how to recognize and help those individuals likely to engage in violent action. This is unrealistic. There will always be people who are mentally disturbed, have severe personality disorders or are just plain angry. It is difficult, if not impossible, to control these people's actions, and even harder to identify in advance who among them might really be dangerous.
Even if we could do so with reasonable accuracy, we believe that citizens are innocent until proven guilty. Constraining the actions of those who wear unusual clothes or who talk enthusiastically about guns and Adolf Hitler is not acceptable, either socially or legally.
We are doomed to recognizing the dangers posed by such individuals only after the fact.
However, as a nation, we must summon the moral courage to recognize that everyone can't be trusted with guns, and to greatly restrict access to guns.
Not only will this lessen the risk of death by gunshot, it may bring an end to our culture of violence, by sending a message that violence is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
Katy L. Benjamin
Ellicott City
In the wake of the appalling Littleton school massacre, we have been subjected to the same media blatherings we hear after every school shooting: How could this tragedy be prevented? What can we do so that no one ever has to suffer like this again?
Until we, as a society, take an honest, hard look at the violent culture in which we live, and the moral and ethical vacuum in which our children grow up, along with our love of guns at any price, we ought to quit kidding ourselves and stop the hypocritical breast beating. No society is immune from sociopaths, but must we consistently deny our violent society's contributory negligence?
We need instead to ask how we as a society can nurture, protect and defend our children while maintaining personal freedom for our citizens.
Anne T. Booher
Baltimore
President Clinton said, speaking of the Colorado school shooting, that "violence is wrong." Did anyone else notice the hypocrisy of this statement?
Need we remind Mr. Clinton that he is embroiled in a war in Yugoslavia and that he is seeking to address the atrocities there through combat and violence?
Our young people need strong guidance regarding the use of violence to solve problems. They need to see that violence is almost always answered by violence. The president should lead by example. Teen-agers notice hypocrisy in an instant.
Yes, learning starts at home. But leaders of communities and nations must realize they too are shaping the next generation, with every word and every action.
Laura Cline
Pasadena
Listening to the news coverage of the Colorado high school shooting, I heard one teacher say that such a thing should never have happened in Columbine -- not in a community that supports its schools, is upper-middle-class and very stable. She went on to say that, after all, "this is not an inner city school."
Too often we regard wealth, manicured lawns and places where everyone looks and acts like everyone else as signs of sanity, safety and goodness. Such communities assume a sense of well-being: a sort of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude. But often it is broke, and we are so immersed in our own comfort zone, that we don't recognize the brokenness.
Deborah Wainwright
Owings Mills
The question everyone from Littleton, Colo., interviewed this week seems to be asking is, "How could it happen here?"
The irony is that this disaster occurred on the eve of the National Rifle Association convention in nearby Denver. It happened in a state that is lined with billboards with the likeness of Charlton Heston, president of the NRA, extolling the benefits of gun ownership. It happened the day before Colorado's legislators were to vote on a allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons.
The shooting happened in a state that has no minimum age for the ownership of rifles or shotguns, like those used in the assault on the school. It happened in a state that, to best of my knowledge, has no law against assault weapons, a state where the governor has been backing several bills to ease access to handguns.
How could it happen here?
John P. Kimball
Baltimore
I'm sure psychologists will be very busy analyzing the most recent school killings in Littleton, Colo., but, as the parent of one teen and two preteens, I'd like a chance to put in my 2 cents about why contemporary kids are more frequently acting out.
Over my lifetime, I have seen increasing disregard for others and more emphasis on self and doing what feels good at the moment. We have become a valueless society that makes up the rules about right and wrong as it goes along. This, I believe, directly stems from the removal of the Bible and prayer from the classrooms of our nation.
It is also connected with the appalling lack of time families spend together -- time necessary for parents to connect with their children and to pass on to them the responsibilities kids will need to carry as people and citizens.
I think when all the investigations are over, you will find that these kinds of crimes (school killings) are done by kids who think no one loves them. They have not been helped to see their potential or do not understand their incredible value in God's eyes.
These young people have been desensitized to murder through movies and video games. They have learned through the study of evolution and the practice of abortion that life is cheap. They do not see themselves or others as valuable, but only see the "unfairness" of things that life can bring.
This all happens during the vulnerable teen-age years. It's so easy to be confused at that age. Our teens and preteens need older people to talk with them, tell them they care about them, and show them how to value and care for others. They need us to tell them that the bad times get better. They need us to tell them about the hard times we had as teens, about our feelings, and how we coped.
And they need us to affirm them as works in process, tapestries not yet completed.
Joni Hartman
Ellicott City
Institute prepares creators for world
The reality of the Maryland Institute, College of Art stands in stark contrast to the picture of art colleges drawn by Daniel Grant in the article "Art schools a different academia" (April 11).
The Maryland Institute's curriculum integrates liberal arts and studio course work in a program that encourages students to develop their own visual vocabulary through a scholarly understanding of culture. The importance of a firm grounding in liberal arts and sciences is recognized by our studio faculty, and our curriculum features many examples of interdisciplinary cooperation between the studio and liberal arts faculty.
Far from downplaying the humanities and sciences courses required for a bachelor of fine arts, as Mr. Grant's article suggests art colleges do, Maryland Institute's promotional materials, emphasize the primacy of the liberal arts in our curriculum. The strength of these offerings has been the theme of our admissions materials for many years. Our liberal arts program deserves such attention. Virtually all liberal arts faculty members have a doctorate. The percentage of Ph.D.s on our liberal arts faculty is higher than at most liberal arts colleges.
We recognize that there is no such thing at the end of the 20th century as a great but inarticulate artist. We expect our students to leave the Maryland Institute with three important sets of abilities: a thorough mastery of traditional studio skills; the ability to think critically and articulate ideas in visual, written and verbal forms; and an ability to express their experience and talents in personally and culturally meaningful creative pursuits.
Our students, far from being the narrowly focused artists described in the article, are well-rounded and intellectually gifted men and women. In fact, a growing percentage of the students who come to the Maryland Institute were also accepted at some of the nation's top liberal arts colleges and comprehensive universities.
These students demand more rigorous liberal arts offerings. They would not tolerate a professor who assigned them dumbed-down projects simply because they are artists. These students come to us from high schools with challenging academic programs, expect the same in their undergraduate experience, and are fully capable of academic success.
It is quite true that our students' work in the studio takes an enormous percentage of their time. After all, the Maryland Institute, College of Art is an art college, and our students' primary goal is to build careers as artists.
But the strength of the academic program offered here has been proved again and again in the high percentage of our graduates who are accepted into the nation's most prestigious graduate programs -- from Yale University to the California Institute of the Arts.
In short, the article does not in any way reflect the Maryland Institute, College of Art. I invite our neighbors to learn more about this college, which has been a cultural and educational resource for our city and our region for nearly 175 years. One way to start is to visit our galleries. Over the next two months, we will be exhibiting the best work of our students. Seeing the thoughtful and masterful work they do provides insights into the nature and quality of the education they receive.
Ray Allen
Baltimore
The writer is vice president and academic dean of the Maryland Institute, College of Art.
Littleton and questions for our own back yard
The events in Columbine High School afford us a window from which we can look at our own schools and students in Baltimore and Maryland.
We start from the premise that every child and every teacher has a right to feel safe in school and every parent has a right to expect that his or her child will return from school alive. Further, that parents and the larger community share with schools the responsibility for educating and socializing children. We know that children thrive best when they are supported by their community.
If provided a supportive web, children will grow up feeling safe and loved and have a much better chance to negotiate childhood and adolescence successfully.
In recent decades, we have seen dramatic increases in life span in this country, but we have also experienced a shortening of childhood. Advances in technology, and their mastery by our youth, result in children being exposed to events and information at an unprecedented rate -- without the ability to absorb and make use of what they are experiencing. Our institutions haven't kept pace.
Given the sophistication of contemporary kids, the problem of youth violence must be addressed at many levels. Forms of community intervention should include:
The community must make a commitment to ban assault weapons in general and ban all weapons from schools.
The business and faith communities must work with the school board and principals to assure a school climate that fosters education.
We must address the excessive violence that our children are exposed to in the media.
We must develop pathways that will enable every child to become a productive citizen. Resources must be distributed equitably enough that children from all socioeconomic groups can become major contributors to society.
Schools need to provide activities not only for athletes, but for students who can be active in other organized activities, such as the arts, science, math, as well as social clubs and sponsored groups that are innovative enough to attract students who are on the fringes of the school society.
Health and mental health services must be made available to students and parents at every school.
Another level of violence prevention is individual contact with the youth, for instance, through mentoring programs.
The need for mentors in Baltimore is staggering. The Baltimore Mentoring Partnership has found that of about 100,000 youths in city schools, at least 50,000 are living in at-risk conditions and are in need of mentoring. The existing network of mentoring programs provides services to only 6,500 Baltimore youths.
We know that mentoring works. An independent study found that children who are mentored are 52 percent less likely to skip a day of school, 46 percent less likely to start using drugs, 27 percent less likely to start drinking and 33 percent less likely to hit someone.
Finally, what would we suggest to the social workers and other mental health practitioners rushing to the aid of the families in Littleton and those affected here locally?
Whether it is a teen in one of our local schools who is affected by the news, a student at Columbine who was in the room while a friend was being shot, a sibling at a nearby school or a parent at work or home who heard the events unfolding, all have been traumatized.
When people have has been traumatized, it is important to let them talk to you, and listen to what they say. Ask them where they go for support and how they have coped in the past. Help them to connect.
Suggest that a range of reactions to a traumatic event is normal and they are not supposed to feel a certain way. Ask if a religious leader could help.
Do not push them to talk until they are ready. Have a group meeting so that those who wish to come can find validation from others. And, three or six months from now, go back to them again and ask them if they want to talk.
We can't promise that an event like the Littleton shooting will never happen again. To some extent, we are all victims of such tragedies. But, to a greater extent, we are all part of the community that can improve the situation.
Dr. Jesse Harris Baltimore
The writer is dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He wrote this piece with five other faculty members.
Tell us your view
What should be done to curtail school violence? How should government and communities fight this frightening problem? The Sun is seeking readers' views, which should be no longer than 200 words and should include the name and address of the writer, along with day and evening telephone numbers.
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