January 30, 2005
It has been five weeks since a young lad
committed suicide with a handgun in the commons area of the local high school.
The incident made the front page of the local newspaper and was the top story
for several days running on local news channels. It wasn’t long before
recriminations were flying fast and furious, many accusing the local media of
overstepping the bounds of ethics in their reporting of the incident. The local
school district superintendent wrote, “… media were irresponsible ― the
line was crossed. Shame on you.” This
in reference to the reporting of the name of the suicide victim and material
from the victim’s website including a picture.
Yet on the very public school district
website, this same school district superintendent engaged in what can only be
termed the melodramatic, going into great detail about the aftermath of the actual
incident, lock down procedures, securing the scene, shielding students from the
scene, a dramatic description of the potential danger to those who “ignored
their own safety” in the giving of first aid to the victim, and a detailed
description of what was discovered in a backpack found near the scene of the
suicide ― all information that served no relevant purpose other than to
dramatize. The superintendent’s letter was also sent to every parent with a
child at the high school. And the superintendent thinks the media stepped over
the line? As if the incident itself were not tragic enough, the superintendent
had no qualms about dramatizing the incident and further broadcasting his
sensationalism through the whole of the already shocked and saddened community
just as did the news media. Rather like the pot calling the kettle black.
However, in all of the back and forth
since, not one word has been published concerning why this young lad took his
life. In a journal he published on his website, he wrote, “As tragic as it is,
I have very little to live for. But as long as I have nothing to die for, I’m
okay.” He wrote that he felt guilty about wanting to kill himself and made
reference to wanting to go to church.
In the next few days the district is
sponsoring a “community meeting” to receive “input” from the community on how
to make the schools safer. The invite contains all the usual buzz words for the
facilitated meeting in which the outcomes are predetermined and the purpose of
the meeting is to
I can predict at least two of the
predetermined outcomes:
And will all of this have the desired
affect? Yes, but the affect isn’t what people would suppose: curing the
problem. The affect will be more government intrusion into the home and family.
Recently, the Presidents New Freedom Commission on Mental Health issued a report on mental health,
establishing goals and recommendations for mental health. Goal 2 of that
particular report recommends:
“Strengthen early
childhood mental health interventions: Implement a national effort to focus on
mental health needs of young children and their families that includes
screening, assessment, intervention, training, financing of services.”
The “recommendations” of the report are
being implemented in the states right now via federal block grants. To see
where your state is in this process, click here. All of this, of
course, is the next step in achieving Goal 1 of Goals 2000: readiness to learn.
And the groundwork for implementing the above recommendations was laid in
school districts across the nation via the federal Readiness to Learn Grants to
states and school districts in the 1990’s.
Is any of this going to help or cure the
problems facing our society today concerning guns and violence in schools? No,
it won’t. The only thing that is going to cure the problem is to get rid of
psycho-education (aka, systems education, progressive
education, outcome-based education) in which the goal is not to discipline the
mind of the child such that the child has a vast knowledge base on which to
draw in articulating a reasoned conclusion as an individual, but rather to use
the classroom to alter the child’s belief system such that he/she will
accommodate the “created future” as “no deity will save us, we must save
ourselves” — the “world class worker” (as in “workers of the world, unite”) of
tomorrow.
Sources:—
Goals 2000; Public Law 103-227; 103rd Congress;
March 31, 1994.
Humanist Manifesto II; 1973.
Laszlo, Ervin; A Strategy For The Future; The Systems Approach To World Order;
New York: George Braziller; 1974.
Report
of the Presidents New Freedom Commission on Mental Health; United States Department of Health and Human
Services; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration.
© 2005 Lynn M. Stuter
- All Rights Reserved