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From guest columnist Diane Petryk
A New Idea on School Shootings September 7, 2024 We've had another school shooting; four dead. The usual political responses; “It's just a fact of life,” from Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D.Vance, and Democrat Kamala Harris promising “It does not have to be this way” if only we had reasonable gun safety laws. I have a new idea. Frequent compassion assemblies in our schools, with continual emphasis on putting that learning into practice. I don't mean after-tragedy hand-holding. I mean pre-emptive dialogs on the value of compassion toward our fellow human beings. Ask kids if they would rather have active shooter drills or learn how to prevent shootings. Because here's the thing. After 417 school shootings and 203 children, educators and adults killed and 441 injured since Columbine in 1999, statisticians and social scientists have concluded that 75 percent of all school shootings involve a young male who felt bullied! There are other factors, of course. The availability of guns and a perpetrator's history of childhood abuse, for instance, but isn't it time to make bullying flame out? Not by rules and punishments. That doesn't work. The evil bullying does has to be studied and taught. Adults have to show kids the reasons a decent human being does not bully. The time has come for a relentless, never-let-up program on anti-bullying like we have never seen before. And after we explain the morality, common sense, and humanity in compassion, then we reach out to the kids' self-interest. Tell them how just being decent human beings could save their lives. There are other safety messages that have to be sent as well, like substance abuse warnings, but let's try to elevate compassion. Have guest speakers. Have writers and social scientists and people who survived bullying talk and talk and talk some more. Like Aaron Stark who's Ted Talk, “I Was Almost A School Shooter,” has moved so many. Have essay contests. Make random acts of compassion as laudatory as some high schools make volunteer service. Show compassion for all its worth, and that's everything when it comes to curtailing school shootings. Whenever my son, Walter, preceded me in a given school or social situation, I went in with a good reputation because of his innate compassion. I do not take credit for it. Of course I taught him to say “please” and “thank-you” and to be kind, generally, but it was he who came out with full blown compassion when it involved others' feelings. At a parent-teacher conference when he was in 7th grade, one of his teachers said to me: “You know, Mrs. Petryk, I had a student who no one would work with until Walter raised his hand and said 'I'll work with him.'” I don't know how you teach that, but I bet we have a lot of social scientists who can start to figure it out. Perhaps you start by asking students to imagine themselves as the bullied person. Then remove the rewards for bullying, like popularity. Make students aware what harm they could be doing by admiring the bullies and the bad boys. And girls. Girls can be wicked bullies. But they are rarely shooters. Shooters are 96 percent young males who have been taunted because of their gender preference or their perceived weakness, small size, lack of trendy clothing or gadgets, disability, or inability to achieve acceptable classroom performance. In third grade, in St Ignace Michigan, my son's classmates were all joining together to boycott a little girl's birthday party. They pressured Walter not to go to it. I asked him what he was going to do and he said: “I'm going.” I think he had a good time at least in part because he did the right thing. And because of him, that shunned little girl had someone to talk to on the playground. It made a difference, if not to her entire life at least it made those particular school days more bearable, perhaps even enjoyable. We should all be looking for ways we can make others feel good and have a better day. We all fail at times, but we know how it hurts when others fail us and can always continue to try. Boys who have access to guns are likely to use them to express their resentment. Let's tell kids to make them less resentful by a little kindness and compassion. And continue to hold responsible those who give them access to guns. Sociologist Michael Kimmel, author of Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era , says that in indiscriminate mass school shootings, one can find correlation with conservative political ideology. In years he studied, 1982 to 2008, he found out of 32 school shootings, 22 occurred in conservative states and the remaining in conservative counties. This, Kimmel postulates, was because the conservative value of gun ownership was widespread and supported, and conservatives encouraged a tough masculinity inside school cultures that tolerated bullying and gender-based harassment. Perpetrators of mass shootings have been taught a sense of entitlement that justifies violence and revenge against people who have harmed them, Kimmel observes. If that sounds a lot like the current Republican candidate for president, you see what I see. A study by Robin M Kowalski two years ago, published in Brookings Institution, found that the majority of school shooters are 95 percent male, 61 percent white and half of those who perpetrate K-12 shootings report a history of rejection, along with bullying. “I feel rejected,” one 16-year-old perpetrator wrote, according to the Brookings report, “not so much alone, but rejected. I feel this way because the day-to-day treatment I get...the negative is like a cut, it doesn’t go away really fast.” Prior to the Parkland shooting, he wrote, “I had enough of (people telling me) I'm an idiot and a dumbass.” According to the same report, a 14-year-old shooter stated in court, “I felt like I wasn’t wanted by anyone, especially my mom.” A typical bullying interaction creates public humiliation for the victim, says Dorothy Espelage of the University of Florida. Her research showed victims try to repair their image by joining groups. When rejected by their peers they try to “restore justice” by shooting. Of course blaming bullying is simplistic. Many who are bullied don't become assailants. And there are other factors that may push a shooter over the edge. Early childhood trauma is frequently cited. But imagine what a compassionate school-mate and friend could do to help a student with a history of childhood abuse as opposed to what happens when they are bullied. So an all-out campaign pitting compassion against bullying is as good a place to start as any. Again, I'm not talking about rules, but changing young hearts and minds through education. We've seen students join “Gay-Straight” alliances. Why not something similar here? Stark's first person story shows that helping someone feel that they have value and that they matter can go a long way toward altering that individual’s life and, maybe, saving it, and the lives of others. Author Diane Petryk can be reached at bloomplanet@gmail.com.
Send comments, questions, and tips to stevenrharry@gmail.com or call or text me at 517-730-2638. If you'd like to be notified by email when I post a new story, let me know.
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