eventually someone will figure out how to stop adolescent cliques from driving people into mental infirmity, then truly stop a shooting before it even begins to happen. not only that, a large portion of suicides, self harm, and academic disadvantage would be stopped, before it even begins to happen.
this should be just as elementary as storing weapons properly, and modeling responsible usage.
it should be pathetically obvious when an individual is being systematicly ostracised, schcool year after school year.
The adolescent cliques are a result of the artificial age segregation of students. Separating them from siblings or making friends of different ages, was likely a very bad decision, made in the interests of efficiency?
Evidence shows that violence and other bad behaviour among boys is highly concentrated around the 14 year old mark. Statistically, older boys (16-18) are a lot better behaved and can act as a moderating influence.
I wish there were more said about the bullies and other student who made up a rumor about him.
Each of these is a story in their own right as often these actions stem from other sources of injustice. I'd love to reqd more about evidence based bully reduction programs.
Outside of corporal punishment, which is a divisive topic, the only thing I can think of are a) not making school compulsory, and b) not tying government money to headcount.
If you have problem kids, expel them immediately and let the parents figure out the education. Which goes back in a way to my initial point - you have to at some point pick who's in charge. We've decided as a society it's the parents, so make public education an easily revokable privilege.
Right now we seem to have chosen the worst of both worlds - forcing kids to spend time with untouchable psychopaths all day every day.
> If you have problem kids, expel them immediately and let the parents figure out the education.
This is a non-starter if homeschooling is also as unregulated as it currently is in the States. Parents who abuse homeschooling to intentionally undereducate their children is a serious and growing problem.
Then let the military run the schools and cede power to the educators for discipline. You can't have it both ways.
I don't blame most homeschool parents for not wanting their children indoctrinated by what's been happening the last few years.
At some point, we need to pick a sane path. Today's system is literally the worst of every world to where we have daily school shootings and parents with any money at all opting out.
And that's for parents who choose to homeschool. If you start trying to force parents to homeschool their (poorly behaved) children, most of them probably won't (and/or can't) follow through.
While not common, it used to be a thing to see kids suspended and sometimes kicked out of school for being troublemakers.
There has to be consequences and pushback for kids who cannot help themselves but interrupt class and make trouble inside the hallways and outside the school grounds.
Even if you snapped your fingers and eliminated bullying from the world, you will still get school shooters, due to the intersection of mental illness rates in the population and gun access.
Are you saying that if we cannot solve the problem entirely that even incremental improvements are not worth employing? I'd like to find a more charitable interpretation.
Bullying happens in other species outside humans even. It is very deep evolutionary behavior. It isn't going away, unfortunately.
However, when we look at places outside the US that have very low rates of school shootings, they generally have stronger gun controls and better mental health care. To me, this is more realistically achievable than rooting out bullying. The vast majority of victims of bullying do not murder people. The vast majority of school shooters (100%, surely) are mentally ill and had access to a gun.
> Bullying happens in other species outside humans even. It is very deep evolutionary behavior.
In animals, male parents often kill weak children. Doesn't really mean we just say "oh well, its in our DNA". Over and over society has managed to successfully surpress biological behaviors to nearly zero.
I hope we can agree its an endeavor worth putting effort into. Right?
> The vast majority of school shooters (100%, surely) are mentally ill and had access to a gun.
1. Having a mental illness does not make a person violent. Step one of better mental health (illness or no illness) is reducing bullying.
2. Saying "100% surely" is not very convincing to me. What percentage of shooters are suspected to be born with a mental illness? (Rather than forming one from environmental factors) what data/sources is that conclusion based on?
> Having a mental illness does not make a person violent. Step one of better mental health (illness or no illness) is reducing bullying.
Why are you saying something this silly in public? Bullying is not the primary cause of mental illness, and mental illness can cause violence. You must be caught up in having an argument, because you wouldn't deny either of these things if you took a moment.
You're just buying into the every school shooter is a victim argument that has been thrown around since Columbine. Those boys were not bullied, they were bullies. It's one of a cluster of vile narratives about youth that have been going around for a decade or two: telling children that 1) if they take a gun to school and start shooting people, that it's the school and the students who got shot who were at fault, and 2) if you kill yourself, you'll get revenge on the people who "made you" kill yourself; they'll be shown to be cruel, and punished.
People who spread that crap hate children imo. They will believe it, and can feel very helpless because growing up is tough.
There are many behaviors that other species do that we don't, even behaviors that we used to do that we've collectively decided are socially unacceptable - rape, cannibalism and infanticide easy come to mind. The longstanding history of such behavior, I would hope, reflects the difficulty of reducing it, and not our stance on whether it should be reduced. Often the most difficult part of change is confronting the fatalistic position that nothing can be done.
The vast majority of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, still it was a worthwhile effort to reduce asbestos use. Likewise, and generally, we can address issues by targeting a wide array of causal factors. How many of those school shooters do you recokon were also socially outcast or bullied?
We're in the age of AI and maximum surveillance state technology, and nobody here thinks we can't train AIs to do deep and continuous social analysis of schoolchildren?
As a start there should be common-sense gun control, like, if you get any kind of mental illness or violence on your record you lose your guns. Secondly, if a kid does get access to your gun in any circumstances you should also be charged with manslaughter.
Agree with the second point, but the first point would have an unintended consequence of discouraging people from seeking mental health treatment for fear of losing their guns, thereby exacerbating the problem.
Then you perform the mental health evaluation before you are allowed to even own a gun in the first place. Along with regular evaluations thereafter to continue to be legally qualified to own a gun.
Yep. Bullies are generally looking for a response. Someone who can deal with bullying in a level headed and appropriate manner isn't an interesting or easy target. Someone who "freaks out" is fun and interesting to torment, and their response is more likely to bias authority figures against them and insulate the bully from consequences and even twist the bully into the victim.
this should be just as elementary as storing weapons properly, and modeling responsible usage.
it should be pathetically obvious when an individual is being systematicly ostracised, schcool year after school year.