WHAT THE PEOPLE HAVEN'T SEEN

What the people haven’t seen

April 21, 2005

One of the goals of the “Safe Schools” program is to avoid “sensationalizing” school violence such as happened with the minute by minute coverage of the Columbine shootings in 1999. The reason given is that sensationalizing these incidents produces copycats. And recent “studies” by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are pointed to as supporting this claim.

The flip side of the coin, however, is that in providing no media coverage whatsoever, the impression is given that the federal “Safe Schools” program has been effective, that school violence has decreased since the Columbine shootings in 1999 and the subsequent nation-wide youth safety summits. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A recent incident in Spokane, Washington, speaks to the enormity of the problem. A 14 year-old boy was expelled from his school in January because he wrote a threatening e-mail to his English teacher. He was then enrolled in another school in the same district.

On March 24, 2005 after classes had been dismissed for the day, this 14 year-old boy took his step-father’s handgun, walked to the school he was expelled from, entered the building, and got within feet of his intended victim — the English teacher to whom he had written the threatening e-mail. He intended to kill her then himself. The reason he didn’t accomplish his goal was that other people were standing in proximity to the teacher and he didn’t want to hurt anyone else. As this was occurring, his mother found the suicide note he had left in his bedroom and called police who converged on the school. The boy is now in custody.

State	Number of Incidents	Ranking
California	22	1
Texas	21	2
Florida Washington	15	3
Pennsylvania	13	4
Georgia	11	5
New York	9	6
Illinois	8	7
Alabama Maryland Ohio	7	8
Louisiana Massachusetts Michigan North Carolina Tennessee	6	9
Virginia	5	10
Indiana Iowa Kentucky Minnesota New Jersey Utah	4	11
Alaska Missouri Montana New Mexico South Carolina	3	12
Arkansas Colorado Mississippi Oklahoma Washington, DC	2	13
Arizona Connecticut Idaho Maine Nebraska Oregon	1	14

This incident is but one of a myriad of like incidents that have happened in the Spokane area in the last several months. If this is happening with this frequency in this area, is it safe to assume that this is just a coincidence or is it a better bet that this is but a microcosm of what is happening nation-wide? The chart to the left shows the number of incidents by state in which a student has taken a means of violence (be it gun, knife, or explosives) onto a school bus or into a school building with the intent to injure or kill self and/or others. Bear in mind, as you look at this chart, that the perimeters are very specific and only represent a percentage of total incidents that have occurred in proximity to or on school property.

Broken down, year by year, the figures look like this:

1992: 1	1997: 5	2008: 8
1993: 3	1998: 8	2003: 35
1994: 3	1999: 10	2004: 76
1995: 5	2000: 12	2005: 28*
1996: 5	2001: 26	*to date

There are twelve states that have not had any incidents of the type specified: Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

It is pretty obvious that the number of incidents is increasing year to year. Why? What has occurred during these years that could affect how students behave? What is the commonality?

The answer to that is education reform. Proponents of education reform have made no secret of the fact that the new system of education is not about content, but process — does the child demonstrate the wanted process. Process is defined as “behavior/procedure.” In other words, does the child demonstrate the wanted behavior? How is this measured? By assessments.

An assessment scorer recently broke the silence regarding how assessments are scored. The term “assessment” has long been associated — by the media and educational establishment — with the term “test”. Historically a “test” measures objective material. Not so with an assessment. An assessment is a subjective measure of performance — does the child demonstrate the wanted behavior. The term “test” has been redefined by the educational establishment but parents are largely unaware that such has occurred.

Are teachers clinically qualified, trained and licensed, to use behavior modification techniques to alter children’s belief systems? Doesn’t a psychologist or psychiatrist have to have special training and be licensed to do this? Such being the case, why are teachers being allowed to do this? Isn’t this the very definition of medical malpractice?

Who is really at fault when some children, subjected to hours of behavioral modification a day, go off the deep end, take means of violence to school, and go on a killing rampage?

It is long past time that parents open their eyes to what is really going on in their children’s classrooms and do something about it. This wouldn’t be happening if parents refused to allow it. It’s long past time that pressure be put on Legislators, state and federal, to do away with systems education in total. It can be done, but it is the parents who are going to have to rebel to the point that Legislators take their rebellion seriously. In the mean time, parents need to get their children out of harms way which means parents need to find some other way to educate their children besides sending them to government schools.