Is it really that hard?

How many more Columbines do we need before the social structure of schools get some sort of serious look?

Is it the social structure of schools that has changed, or the people (and thus families) in them?

Because I see the institutional school as pretty much the same as it has been. Well, softer and gone wacked-out PC, but that's about it. The format, the social structure, is the same as when I was a kid. You take 30 kids, pack them in like sardines, put a person of unknown moral and intellectual quality in charge of them, smother them with rules and regs...and hope for the best.

So I'm with Rod. It is the people who are really different today. Goths are not Hippies - the former generally comes from wrecked families, the the latter from intact ones. And as we know that people don't change much biologically in 50 years, the cause is indeed cultural. I would expect nothing less from kids growin up in this world - I'm simply amazed there are not more of them. I've noticed libs tend to defend the libertine culture, but don't want to pay the piper.

Regarding the deathworks part of culture, just flip on TV programs in 1950 and compare to 2000. We have become so used to this culture, it's easy to become dull to how extreme are the changes. We have entered uncharted waters.

Is it the social structure of schools that has changed, or the people (and thus families) in them?

Um, nothing has changed really. School shootings haven't really even increased, we just pay more attention to them.

Because I see the institutional school as pretty much the same as it has been. Well, softer and gone wacked-out PC, but that's about it. The format, the social structure, is the same as when I was a kid. You take 30 kids, pack them in like sardines, put a person of unknown moral and intellectual quality in charge of them, smother them with rules and regs...and hope for the best.

Actually, the rules have changed, greatly, almost entirely toward fascism. Even since I graduate ten years ago. It started with Columbine, and I listened in horror at the rules my younger brothers had to put up with, and stupid 'zero tolerance' policies.

So I'm with Rod. It is the people who are really different today. Goths are not Hippies - the former generally comes from wrecked families, the the latter from intact ones. And as we know that people don't change much biologically in 50 years, the cause is indeed cultural. I would expect nothing less from kids growin up in this world - I'm simply amazed there are not more of them. I've noticed libs tend to defend the libertine culture, but don't want to pay the piper.

So you blame vicious bullying on the 'libertine culture'? I'm honestly confused as to how that works.

Regarding the deathworks part of culture, just flip on TV programs in 1950 and compare to 2000. We have become so used to this culture, it's easy to become dull to how extreme are the changes. We have entered uncharted waters.

I utterly reject the concept that school violence has anything to do with a 'deathworks culture'. Culture does not make people snap. Torment and desperate unhappiness makes people snap. Culture might have something to do with how they snap, but I'm not sure that trying to adjust them from 'shooting up a school' to 'suicide' is a good idea. (Just look at Japan if you wonder what I'm talking about, although that is due to immense pressure to succeed.)

In fact, if 'culture' is influencing them, I suspect at this point it's self-perpetuating. It is, if you will, the culture of school shootings. Unless you can convince the news not to report them for two decades or something.

The root cause here, the very first thing, is social rejection by people you are forced to be with 8 hours a day. Solve that, and you've stopped every school shooting. How to solve that, I don't know.

Solve anything else, and maybe you can stop shootings on school grounds, but it wouldn't stop knivings or baseball battings or suicide.

The core problem is our society's immaturity and ignorance about mental illness. So long as it remains badly understood, a stigma on the ill person, and a source of "illness by association" for the person's family and friends, there will continue to be denial of the symptoms until the ill person explodes in violence.

Case in point: here in Philadelphia, teachers are barred by district policy from "invading privacy" by discussing the mental health of their students with the students' guardians. It prevents them from being a "first alert" source of a developing problem, ties their hands when attempting to make accomodations for a student under medication (including participating in the effort to make sure they are taking their meds appropriately), and forces them to just watch until they have a reason to have the student arrested. A bit of hyperbole on that last one, but not so far from reality.