I am schocked to see the frecuency of violence in american schools. What do catholics think about this:

- what is the cause of such violence?

- what would be the remedy?

Enrique

-- Enrique Ortiz (eaortiz@yahoo.com), November 26, 1999

Answers

I don't know why you would be shocked. Have you looked at the American family lately? Parents have no control over their kids--any discipline is out the window because they could be charged with abusing their kids. Teachers have no control either and when they point out problems with the kids to the parents, the parents usually take the kids side. There is no structure left in society, or not much anyway. When children get everything they want, they have no need to work for it. It then follows that they don't value it very highly because, after all, they didn't work for it, it was handed to them. This society is all me, me, me and they other guy be damned. When kids are in school they act the same way, it all has to be their way. When they don't get their way, some of them resort to violence. Violence is a persons way of venting his frustration at not being able to get something or get his way. Society has taught kids that they can have anything they want, so when they don't get it, they react, sometimes violently. Respect of others is something that used to be taught at home from parents. Now parents are to busy in their own lives, working for the almighty dollar, so they and their families can have everything (material). Morals can't be bought, they have to be taught and children need to see their parents adhering to the moral code. When parents aren't home because of working or whatever, children pick up their moral code from whomever they are around---daycare, TV, friends. If you want to stop the violence, start with the home setting because this is the first and strongest influence on kids. Teach kids that there is a whole world out there and they don't always come first. And another thing, discipline your kids, don't wait for the schools to do it or worse yet, the juvenile authorities. Ellen

-- Ellen K. Hornby (dkh@canada.com), November 27, 1999.

Ellen, after your answer we all should pray that the family be again what it used to be and apply at home the directions you give us. Parents, we have a tremendous task ahead.

Tahnk you, Ellen

Enrique

-- Enrique Ortiz (eaortiz@yahoo.com), November 27, 1999.

I think you have to put the violence into perspective. There has been a run of shootings by alienated individuals in the US recently, but it is worth pointing out that the situation could be much worse. In a country where there are almost as many privately owned firemans as there as are people one might expect these atrocities to be much more common.

I'm from the UK. Earlier this year someone planted several nail-bombs (imagine a home made fragmentation grenade) in the City of London. He killed three people and injured many others before he was caught. This might not have been news in the US, but I'm sure that you all heard about the mass-murder in Dunblane, Scotland: a gunman walked into a primary school and killed 16 children and their teacher before shooting himself. These were both horrific crimes, but extremely rare. The same can be said about the recent mass-shootings in the US.

It is amazing most of us don't realise how much we depend on most people's goodwill and co-operation. There are lots of lonely, unloved and unhappy people in the UK, as there are everywhere else. If I were tell an extra-terrestial that the odds of someone deciding to go on a bombing spree in London were 60 million to 1, it probably wouldn't believe me. But it is true. The potential for individuals to resort to violence is enormous, but something stops us from giving in to murderous impulses. I think what is happening now though is that this culturally imposed restraint is beginning to weaken - people are no longer hopeful because they know that being hopeful is not a realistic option anymore. The "American Dream"(and its equivalents) always was a lie; it just isn't possible for everyone to become a Bill Gates, but as long as people believed they _could_ succeed they were prepared to put up with all sorts of failures. People are now faced with jobs and competition that offer no promise of success; playing by society's rules is only going to benefit other people, so why bother? It's a kamikase attitude. The Japanese in WWII believed that surrender/co-operation was not going to benefit them. When faced with inevitable defeat they decided to dig themselves in and take as many Americans with them to the grave as they could. I'm sure this is what the Colombine students were thinking: "I have lost, therefore I see no reason why you should win at my expense".

The Church in the former Soviet Union fell to Marxism because it tried to bribe the peasantry into compliance with promises of a blissful afterlife, and did nothing about their real poverty. Trying to make people content with being exploited is a very deceitful thing, but it is something that secular and religious authorities have had to do it for centuries. People need hope, even it is false (but they mustn't know that). The reason why the violent incidents I have mentioned are so rare is the fact that marginalised people still believe that they have something to gain by refraining from violence. Those who are successful have everything to lose from such violence, which is why they work so hard to keep everyone else in their place.

I don't know how the situation can be remedied without genuinely altruistic behaviour, but everyone still thinks they that can help people without putting their own expectations/ambitions at risk. We are taught to throw people lifejackets/presevers instead of jumping into the water to help them, but this is a very self-centred way to think. The parable about the poor woman who gave what she couldn't afford being better than the rich man who only gave what he could afford comes to mind.

I don't how you can remedy the situations brought about by what I call "bad losers". Just be thankful that are still extremely rare.

Here's a sad bit of trivia for you which shows how an increased awareness of violence can lead to behaviour which results in more deaths.

In the UK, the number of children that are abducted and subsequently murdered per year has hardly changed since records began. But because every case is now publicised in a way that was previously unheard of, parents now refuse to let their children walk to school or do anything else by themselves sadly. The risk of a child walking to school unsupervised being aducted is the same as it was 20 or 30 years ago, but now they are much more at risk from being killed or maimed by other parents driving their children to school in their cars. The children being driven to school are much more at risk from being killed or maimed by the actions of other drivers(including other parents driving their children to school). It is absurd, but a tragic example of how the information age has made us create greater risks in our attempts to avoid much smaller, but much more publicised ones.

I really wish there was a remedy to the schools violence issue, but I don't think there is. I loathe firearms(and the NRA), but if you take those away then other ways of taking revenge on society will be found. I don't think more religion is the answer too; whenever I account it these days it seems to be just another form of self- centredness (personal Jesus) that propogates the insincerity and mendacity that is the cause of the problem.

-- Matthew (matthewpope@aol.com), November 27, 1999.

What I hate is the yuppie mentality of blaming everything on violent video games, movies, and Maralyn Manson records. It's stupid. The whole thing was started by the parents of kids that went nuts and shot up their schools to take the blame away from them--the parents. It's not a difficult thing to make sure your kid doesn't go psycho and blow his classmates away. You may just want to--I don't know-- check his closet periodicaly for assault rifles. Here's tip--when your kid and his friend videotape themselves discussing plans to murder their schoolmates over a bottle of vodka, it's time to take your kid to the psychiatrist.

Here's something nobody considers: On the morning of the Columbine shootings, the U.S. led the biggest bombing campaign over Baghdad of that decade. The primary targets were civilian--schools, hospitals, residential areas. No one talks about that, though. It's gotta be Maralyn Manson's fault. If your kid starts shooting the other little children because some idiot with a guitar tells him to, you have to wonder if your kid wasn't so screwed up he would have done it anyway.

-- Anti-bush (Comrade_bleh@hotmail.com), November 29, 2003.

while i dont agree with your anti military action policy because it is often misinformed...

What I hate is the yuppie mentality of blaming everything on violent video games, movies, and Maralyn Manson records. It's stupid. The whole thing was started by the parents of kids that went nuts and shot up their schools to take the blame away from them--the parents. It's not a difficult thing to make sure your kid doesn't go psycho and blow his classmates away. You may just want to--I don't know-- check his closet periodicaly for assault rifles. Here's tip-- when your kid and his friend videotape themselves discussing plans to murder their schoolmates over a bottle of vodka, it's time to take your kid to the psychiatrist.

i must say i am proud to agree with you for once on this issue. parents should/NEED to take an active role in their child's life, and stop letting the TV raise their child for them. the problem isnt games, movies, etc... its the fact that children today cant tell the difference between reality and fiction...

-- paul h (dontSendMeMail@notAnAddress.com), November 29, 2003.

I believe the problem of this violence in children begins in the womb.

The message that American children get these days is that if you are visited by an...inconvienence - *get rid of it.* Get rid of it no matter what it takes. If this "inconvenence" takes the form of an unborn child, no problem, you can dispose of that too. Spouse you're not getting along with? No problem, just get rid of the spouse and find a new one. Grandma's starting to babble incoherently? No problem, just shuffle her off to a urine-scented nursing home. Someone will be sure to change her soiled bedsheets...when they get around to it. If that's too much of a drain on your bank account, Dr. Kevorkian's services can be considered.

For children today, nothing is permanent, nothing is so sacred that it can't be destroyed. Nothing is worth working out. An "unplanned" baby can be gotten rid of. The family structure can be destroyed if someone isn't happy with it. Old people can be can be treated much like an elderly, ailing dog. In sum, if life isn't working the way *you* want it, deal with it the easiest and quickest way possible - destroy all that gets in your way. If it means squeezing the life out of someone else, so be it. Nothing is more important than *your* happiness and satisfaction.

With all this going on, why are we surprised and shocked when a child takes matters into his own hands and destroys whatever it is that challenges him? He's merely behaving like the adults around him.

-- Regina (Regina712REMOVE@lycos.com), December 01, 2003.