Americans - maybe I’m just being dim. But why are these kids going in and shooting their schools specifically?
Like what’s the point? What are they trying to achieve?
It makes our news sometimes, and I read about their home life being absolute crap, and them crying out for help in the only way they know how. But why a school? Like are some of you guys schools really properly bad or something?
I work in an American high school with a demographic of students who are a mix of slightly wealthy and pretty extreme poverty. Our area is simultaneously rural and becoming more urban. Our county and town in particular are well known for drugs, gangs, domestic violence, and child abuse being overlooked.
My school district is one that does what it’s wealthier and doesn’t actually live in the area school board wants rather than what students need. Which means new football fields but no staff for the extremely large number of students that are legally required to have educational support. The staff that exists is stretched so thin that students are consistently overlooked whether it be educationally (passed on to next grade even if failing), at home (reports of bad home life are largely ignored), and bullying at school (again, unless really solid evidence is largely ignored).
There are a lot of angry, isolated, ignored, neglected students that come through here and we are definitely not the only district like this.
When you look at the history of the majority of the students that end up shooting their schools, almost always someone has tried to reach out for help, they themselves have reached out for help. But they get ignored time and time again because the resources aren’t there. They are almost adults, they are being pushed to act like adults (working after school, preparing for college maybe, deal with their own problems because their parents aren’t going to help them if their parents are even around, not to mention not understanding or being ashamed of any mental issues they may have going on) so in their under developed hormonal mind- handling their own business like an adult means fighting. Whether that’s with a knife or a gun or their fists.
When you look at the domestic violence rates, is it any wonder that’s what they consider the *adult* way to handle things? People here are in and out of jail constantly because the way they handle issues is through violence. They don’t care that they are passing it on to the children that are watching and are high or drunk half the time anyway.
There is so little support.
There’s virtually no mental health support. Our school counselors are flooded with nonsense work and don’t actually have a chance to talk to and check in with students.
There’s little educational support. Tutoring hours interfere with work hours, teachers have classes too large to accommodate the needs of a very diverse student base, and there’s no budget to hire more paraprofessionals who are supposed to be in those classrooms alongside the teachers.
There’s no home support. Between parents working multiple jobs and having their own mental, domestic, and financial issues, they aren’t there for their students. You’d be surprised at the number of parents who get high right alongside their kid and think nothing of it.
There’s no systematic support. We are set up to fail. Teachers are set up to fail. Students are set up to fail. It’s become an assembly line of passing students through just to get them moving with no regard to whether they are actually learning or being cared for.
I won’t say bullying is at an all time high because I don’t think it actually is. But I think it’s changed. With internet, social media in particular, it’s far easier to eliminate the humanity of whoever you’re talking to. Just look at the comment section of just about any video or post and there will be a litany of *adults* being so disgusting with each other. Things they would never have the balls to say in person. That’s so normalized and the teens see it and absorb it and carry it on. Online and in person. Before, you’d be bullied at school and it would be horrendous but most would be able to escape out of school hours. To some degree at least and definitely not everyone if someone lived near you. But now, there is no escape, there is absolutely no escape and no one to turn to for help.
I could go on but I hope this gives an idea of the world our kids live in today. Everything around them is an advertisement, a pressure, a loneliness. Is it any wonder they have no idea how to regulate what they are feeling?
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