Killing At Columbine High School – What Happened?
The Napa Sentinel
Napa, California
Editorial published on May 14, 1999
Upvalley Editor
In the aftermath
of the killings at Columbine High School in Colorado, people are scratching
their heads wondering what influences pushed these children and other children
into violence.
Will More Gun Control Laws Solve the
Problem?
President Clinton has admitted that his
newly proposed gun control legislation would not have prevented the bloodshed
at Columbine High School. But at
least he's doing something he argues. So, according to our president, it is
better to do something even if it doesn't work. Would you use silly putty on a leaking
dam?
And why pass more laws when the laws
already on the books are barely enforced?
According to a number of state studies, juvenile offenders pass through
the legal system several times before ever serving any time in jail.
Some of the laws that were broken
during the shooting rampage at Columbine High school include premeditated
murder, murder, aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to
commit a felony, gun on school grounds, possession of explosives, use of
explosives, providing handguns to minors, concealed weapon, and the list goes
on.
All of the above laws did nothing to
prevent the killings at Columbine High School. Do you think for one moment that someone
who is about to murder someone gives a hoot on whether or not he/she obtained
the weapon legally? Get real! Criminals don't comply with laws. That's why they are criminals! Gun control laws do not change the
hearts of murderers. The killers at
Columbine High School laughed as they killed their classmates.
Children have had access to guns for
decades! I grew up in Montana where
practically everyone had access to guns.
But we did not carry guns to school and we did not shoot our
classmates. The mere thought would
have been unthinkable. The changes
in our society compared to then and now are dramatic. The changes in our society have resulted
in children killing children.
What about the other kinds of weapons
that are used to kill? Should we
require a 21-year legal age limit before a youth can shop at a hardware store
because hardware stores sell pipes and nails? Why not pass laws restricting the
purchase of knives, hammers, ice picks, screwdrivers and other such tools that
can and have been used as weapons.
It was a bomb that killed people in Oklahoma City. It was a knife that killed Nicole Brown
Simpson and Ron Goldman. And
17-year old Christopher Churchill used a hammer when he killed his half-brother,
his brother's girlfriend and her three young children.
Holding Parents Legally Responsible
I find it very interesting that all of
a sudden society wants to hold parents responsible. For years the government, and that
includes the public school system, has done everything it can to undermine
parents. Parents have been
spoon-fed a bunch of psychobabble on how we must raise our children. The schools parrot Hillary Clinton's
mantra, "It takes a village to raise a child." Children are given birth control and
abortions without parental knowledge or consent. The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) is demanding legal powers to force parents to raise
their children the way CDF sees fit. Parents are asked to sign
"contracts" or "compacts" with the school/government making
them "partners" in raising the children. Parents have little to no input as to
the way our children are "educated" unless we send our children to
private schools or homeschool, and lawmakers are busy trying to regulate or
eliminate those options. In St.
Helena (Napa Valley), an abstinence-based sex education program was presented to
teachers and the school board but the parents who favored the program were
informed, "Kids are going to have sex anyway, so the school is going to
teach them how." The school's
logic is incredibly flawed. Would
they tell parents that children are going to drink and use drugs anyway, so the
school is going to teach them how?
Whatever happened to telling children that there are some things that
they should not do?
There have been hundreds of reports
from students whose teachers have told them, "Keep this to yourselves, kids.
Your parents are old-fashioned and they wouldn't understand."
A couple of years ago, former U.S.
Congressman Frank Riggs (R-CA) was confronted by angry
parents because of his Goals 2000/School-to-Work legislation. He spoke patronizingly to the parents,
"I'm working very hard in Washington to empower parents."
One parent quickly responded, "But
Congressman, it's not your power to give."
In order for a politician to empower
parents, laws had to have first been passed to take that power away. Society should not hold the parents of
these killers legally responsible after society and Mrs. Clinton's village has
told them that the state knows what is best. And, unfortunately, too many parents are
all too willing to hand over their children to be raised by someone else.
Hollyweird
The average 11-year old child has
witnessed 8,000 homicides and 100,000 acts of violence on television. Surveys of young males revealed that 22
to 34 percent attempted to copy the crimes they had watched on television. The Hollywood crowd is screaming for
more gun control. How would the
Hollywood activists like it if everyone started screaming that Hollywood's
First Amendment rights be taken away because of the crap they put out?
Look in Your Own Backyard
Let's take a brief look at the school
curriculum and what children are being taught, what they are required to read,
and what classroom activities they are engaging in.
The 2,000-Pound Goldfish is a favorite required 5th grade reading book that can be found in
many classrooms. The book is about
a mother who abandons her children because she is being pursued by the FBI for
planting pipe bombs in nuclear plants and for throwing Molotov cocktails at
limousines.
A "game" called "The
Gathering" is used in some schools under the guise of teaching math
concepts. "The Gathering"
teaches children to cast spells to kill, sacrificial
rituals, the conjuring of demons, and to curse Christians. I wonder if the Columbine killers played
this game. I have a lengthy article
written by a licensed psychologist and certified school psychologist, Dr.
Steven Kossor, who calls these kind of magic games
"dangerous."
An article about "The
Gathering" appeared in the Napa Valley Register on February 28,
1999. The Register reported
that the game cards "bear images ranging from innocent fairies to a lurid
depiction of a woman about to be sacrificed."
In Calistoga (Napa Valley), a local
businessman came to school to show the children how to cast spells and put
curses on people. Voodoo dancers
came to the school to teach children about Caribbean "culture" and
taught the children to sing chants.
A teacher had a crystal on her desk and her students were instructed not
to touch the crystal because it would interfere with the "positive
aura" that it emits. Children
were required to sit in circles and do chants to the rain gods. When clouds appeared overhead, the
children were told that their prayers were being answered.
President Clinton and other politicians
wring their hands – or bite their lips – while acknowledging that
Hollywood has a negative influence on our children. Why can't they recognize that there are
schoolbooks and school activities that are also having a negative impact?
Death Education
Death education is commonplace in many
classrooms across the country including classrooms at Columbine High
School. Death education is
introduced in a variety of different ways and under a variety of names. Death education is taught to an entire
classroom and it is taught by a teacher who is not a licensed psychologist.
Thanks to Goals 2000, the National
Association for the Education of Young Children is targeting preschool children
with an "Anti-Bias Curriculum."
Under the guise of introducing different cultural and religious beliefs
(Christianity is never included), children are
introduced to death and the afterlife.
One classroom book entitled Death:
A Part of Life, by George G. Otero and Zoanne Harris, deals with various burial customs and
includes a variety of exercises for children to perform. Student assignments include visits to
the local cemetery, reading obituaries, and writing their own obituaries.
Students are forced to answer questions
such as,
What kind of
funeral do you prefer?
What would you like
written on your gravestone?
What does death
mean to you?
And, if that weren't bad enough, the
teacher is instructed to pass out a Kamikaze type suicide note that reads,
Dear Parents, It is
my great honor to be selected for this duty… there are no feelings of
remorse or sadness here… death and I are waiting.
The same book recommends that students
build a "communal alter" and that the class "works
cooperatively" and they "collectively" decide what items to
place on the alter. The Rev. Jim Jones and some of his followers
"collectively" drank spiked Kool-Aid. They died. Children are forced to perform these
activities under the guise of religious customs and cultural diversity while
the politicians sit around and agonize over whether or not to allow prayer in
school. One thing is certain, there was a whole lot of praying going on at
Columbine High School the day of the killings.
It should be asked why the two
Columbine killers targeted students who believed in God. Several reports indicate that 11 of the
12 student victims were Christians, and that one of the killers asked a girl,
"Do you believe in God?"
She responded "yes" even though she knew she was going to die
for her belief. It is doubtful that
the killers learned to hate Christians from their parents. Why is it those
who preach tolerance and diversity are the very ones who are intolerant of
people who believe in God?
In Calistoga, students as young as 2nd
grade were taken by school officials to the local cemetery without parent
notification and/or permission. The
children were brought back to the classrooms and instructed to write their own
obituaries. One child refused but
then complied when her teacher would not let her go to
lunch. Students were also forced to
draw pictures of tombstones that included their predicted dates of death.
In St. Helena, students were required
to read a book on how to commit suicide and then to write a report on their
preferred way of doing it. Only one
parent objected to this deadly assignment.
The teachers proceeded to openly ridicule this parent. And manuals on how the school can get
around the parents and the public are usually furnished with these
death ed curriculums.
The Los Angeles Times
(March 10, 1997) reported that California students spend more time discussing
suicide in the classroom than in any other state. ABC News 20/20 reported
(September 21, 1990) that students are taken on field trips to visit morgues
and are encouraged to touch the "still warm human remains." Children are being desensitized to
death.
Death Education Taught at Columbine
High School
There have been numerous reports that
death education has been taught at Columbine High School for a number of years
now. According to a 1991 transcript
from ABC News 20/20, a Columbine High School student named Tara Becker
attempted suicide after attending death education classes.
Anchor Hughes Downs said,
Your child could be
in a class that only a few years ago might have been unthinkable – death
education. These classes are
supposed to prepare young people for coping with death, and while most schools
make it part of a health class, some actually make it an entire course.
Reporter Tom Jarriel
stated,
Graphically
introducing death to impressionable young minds is at the core of the
controversy over death education in our public schools. Will students walk away from here with a
clearer understanding of death or with nightmarish memories that might haunt
them for life and perhaps, inadvertently, suggest death as an answer to
adolescent problems?
Tara Becker told 20/20,
I had thought about [suicide] as a possible option for a lot of years, but I never
would have gone through with it, never, because I wasn't brave enough. The things we learned in the class
taught us how to be brave enough to face death.
Moral Relativism and the Culture of
Violence
Our society sends many disturbing
messages to children. We have told
them by both actions and words that character doesn't matter. We tell them there are no real consequences
to actions. We hand them a box of
condoms and by our actions tell them if it feels good, do it. We tell them in a variety of ways that
life is cheap. We tell them to make
decisions without parental input.
We say nothing when the schools have the students work together
"collectively" and to think "collectively" rather than
encourage them to think for themselves and not to follow the crowd. We are afraid to tell them that there
are things they should not do.
Children need discipline. Children need structure. Children need boundaries. Children need rules. Children need to know the difference
between right and wrong. Children
need to know that life is valuable.
Children need love. Children
need their parents. And families
need the government to butt out!
Who Is Ultimately Responsible?
Parents! We've been too busy, too lax, too lazy
and too willing to let someone else (the government/village) raise our
children. Every single one of us
has heard and read that there are very serious problems in the education
system. Rather than face the
problems, we deny them. Facing
these problems would make life uncomfortable, someone
could become offended or make fun of us.
Just like the parents and students at
Columbine High School, we foolishly close our eyes and tell ourselves,
"That stuff happens in other schools.
Not ours. Our school is a
good school. There are not any
problems in our school."
That's what everyone thought in Colorado.
We have closed our eyes to the impact
the media has on our children's minds.
Mothers hung their heads in shame when society told us that being a
mother is not a "real job."
We have brought into the lie that quality time is better than the
quantity of time we spend with our children. Next time you want a day off, try
telling your boss that you don't need to work for the full eight hours because
of the quality of your work and see how far you get. Children need their parents to be there
and children need their parents to be responsible. Children need their parents to be
involved in their education, and by involved, I don't mean attending sport
events or baking cookies for the PTA.
The parents in Littleton, Colorado,
just like the parents in Napa Valley, have heard and read the media reports
about death education in their children's schools. But the parents have said little to
nothing and they have done absolutely nothing to stop it.
Anyone who defends or denies what is
going on in classrooms in Napa County and around the country – make no
mistake about that – are either fools or just plain evil. Can we justify sacrificing our children
to the public school system and to Hollywood? It should also be mentioned that there
are some private schools and even some "Christian" churches who are
teaching the same kinds of death and suicide courses. Young impressionable minds are
vulnerable to almost any kind of input, particularly when it comes from an
authority figure such as a teacher.
Readers may telephone or fax Karen
Anderson at (707) 942-4018 or send her email by clicking on her name above.
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