Slapping a Bandage on a Bullet Wound

I have been prompted by today’s school shooting and Kevin Wignall to break off the blog holiday, again, and post.

The events of today are tragic and beyond comprehension to most people. However, it is human nature to try to make sense of the senseless. This is what we all do. In the wake of the news soon comes the question on everyone’s mind: Why?

This isn’t news. I blogged about this months ago, in the hours following the reports of the Montreal school shooting. You can see how fresh the post was relative to the news: The number of dead was reduced in that case. Unfortunately, today, the first report was one dead.

Then 21. And now, it is believed 33 are dead, including the gunman.

I would encourage you to read Kevin’s post, because I am really processing my thoughts on a few things he touched on, and do not want to do him the disservice of rehashing what he has already so aptly stated. However, there is news today that I want to look at, in relation to what Kevin said about the environment of US high schools and universities.

We are approaching the anniversary of the Columbine shooting, and Kevin has elaborated on that as well. There have been reports of planned recreations of the massacre over the years. Today, news that in Calgary a fourteen-year-old was arrested after his parents alerted police to the fact that they believed their son was planning a killing spree in his school.

The article includes quotes from Diane Lang. What many Americans may not know is that, a matter of days after Columbine, there was a school shooting here in Alberta. Diane Lang lost her son. He was the only fatality, which is why fewer people know about it. The way school shootings get reported makes it seem as though one death just isn’t enough for it to be taken seriously, unless it’s a slow news day.

I do not say that to dismiss the extreme tragedy of losing 32 people, or 13, or any other number. It’s just that, in my opinion, one is too many.

As I started to state on Kevin’s blog, I don’t believe that gun control is the root of the solution. People always debate gun control when these events occur. While I am not commenting for or against the right to bear arms, what I am asserting here is that addressing gun control is the equivalent of treating the symptoms instead of curing the disease.

I had tried on Crimespace today to start a discussion about supportiveness, but somehow it got skewed off my original intent. Part of the reason was that I was trying to be vague enough to not identify anyone I was thinking of when I made the post. But really, what happened was, I relayed something a while ago to an author that I thought they’d appreciate. They didn’t, and took my head off for the effort.

Last night I couldn’t sleep, so at something like 2 or 3 am I was reading blogs and such, and saw a review of a book by an author I know. I forwarded it to them, then started kicking myself, wondering if they too would berate me for bugging them with it.

Instead, their reply made me aware that they were having a hard time lately, and I felt like shit. Where the hell had I been, that I hadn’t realized…? Of course, it made me think, again, of the fact that we authors live solitary lives, and we don’t check in at an office every day. Who sees when you’re having a hard time? Only those you let see. And what this often means is, unless we tell someone we’re having a tough time, nobody knows.

It made me think that we’d do better for each other if we found little ways to encourage each other. Reality is, we get so hell bent on our work that we can focus on it almost to the exclusion of all else. I know authors who flip out if you email when they’re writing. I don’t. I might not get back to you right away but I always appreciate people who think of me enough to drop a note. I love hearing from friends, but some of you guys go to work or school and have plenty of social interaction. My world is pretty limited to the computer, especially since the time of Evil Kev's* car accident: I’m grounded. I talk to the cats all day.


This ties in to what I see as the root issues behind school shootings, and in fact, many other things. When I did Wordapalooza back in January I focused on school shootings as part of the discussion, and one of the teachers there had been working in Taber, at that school, the day Jason Lang lost his life. I worked in education: I can’t imagine any teacher who hasn’t thought at some point about whether it could happen at their school.

Kevin is right in alluding to the hell that high school is for most people. I’ve always talked about things with candor. I was bullied in school, for years. I had a knife pulled on me in elementary school – not something I ever told my parents or teachers about. When I was 14 I was assaulted, ultimately ended up in the hospital, suffered permanent damage to my jaw and that doesn’t touch on the emotional impact of such an event. It was determined that my school could not ensure my safety and I was transferred to a high school in a different town.

There was one other thing that happened, for me, that may have made a difference. My original high school guidance counselor recognized the impact this had had on me emotionally and didn’t ignore it: I was referred to Children’s Aid and became a case file. CA has had its share of knocks in recent years about failures where kids have died, but I feel I had a good social worker who helped me with other things that had happened prior to the specific assault that was being addressed in this situation. Colleen tried to intercede with family counseling, and any failure to see progress there wasn’t for lack of her efforts. She was able, rather astutely, to pinpoint problems I was still suppressing.

This is the key. When people express any vulnerability at all, so many others are willing to jump on them and use it as leverage to attack them. In our society, particularly with boys, we tell them to buck up, be a man, a tough guy… Boys don’t cry. What do they do with their feelings? We don’t encourage boys to talk them through and we dismiss them or frown on them when they get emotional.

I say this as someone who worked in education, and dealt with children from the age of 1 to 15 over a number of years: It’s systemic. It starts early. And it’s a real problem.

Face it: So many kids are being raised in daycares here, and the ratios aren’t ideal. When there’s a problem in the room supervisors are glaring in, expecting staff to deal as quickly as possible. Solutions are pushed, not always explored.

For example, you would think that if there are repeated incidents between children that eventually a face to face meeting between parents and staff would be established to work through the issues. I did a lot of ‘in daycare’ support to children, so although I wasn’t responsible for an entire class and didn’t work for the facility I had a responsibility with my child. In my case I had a close working relationship with the parents and that involved daily reports and full disclosure of all areas of concern. It was a delicate balance to strike, because parents would become aware of ongoing daycare issues the facility staff weren’t informing them of. The reality is, the daycares just don’t have the time or resources to handle the problems they see.

Add in other dilemmas. I’ve worked with violent children, something else I’ve discussed on here in the past. However, there is policy about diagnoses before a certain age for children. I have known parents who’ve refused the autism diagnosis for their child because they didn’t want their child getting labeled. The result? The child doesn’t get funding. I have seen this happen with children with conduct disorders and oppositional defiance disorder as well… and these kids are already demonstrating unhealthy levels of aggression as young as four or five years of age. I’ve reported children who’ve abused animals… and nothing happens. Most of us here know the road that can lead to, and when you add in other extreme behaviours (drawing all pictures in black with red blood, and assaulting facility staff) there’s cause for concern.

And the solution? Maybe medication, but not counseling. That takes time. Takes money. Don’t want Johnny pulled out of class occasionally either because then Johnny looks different and classmates will pick on Johnny.

So we put pride and convenience ahead of the best interests of kids. We are failing our kids, on multiple levels.

This is where it starts. In an ideal world kids would have healthy relationships with their parents and be able to talk to them about their problems. We all know it isn’t an ideal world. Kevin refers to parents praising kids, even when their children have done something wrong. This, too, feeds an unhealthy self image. I have worked with children who’ve been aggressive, hostile, posed a danger to themselves and others, and then said, “You can’t do nothin’ to me, na na.” They know you can’t touch them. And in one case, where a child proved a repeated danger, the parent said we had to stop calling her to pick him up from school because she’d lose her job… and the decision was to do nothing. Should a school ever be forced to have a student on site who poses a threat to himself, staff and other students? Of course not, but there we were.

There are a lot of things that happen – or don’t happen – long before a person picks up a gun as a solution to their problems. I had ready access to guns and it never occurred to me to take one to school.

In my eyes, the real problems stem around the fact that we’re letting kids be raised second-hand, are too busy to deal with them when we do get them home, and in so many cases kids are an item on a checklist. Having kids is what you do. You never stop to consider if you’d make a good parent or not, or how prepared you are to deal with all the issues that families face. And so kids get slotted in to boxes, expected to fill a certain role, pressures to succeed or live up to family expectations, and then go to school and get pressure there as well. Teachers are often overworked and can’t deal with class sizes, and there are so many issues to address anymore. One classroom I worked in had 25% of the kids diagnosed and receiving additional aid. There were two other children who should have been assessed but we didn’t have the time or means to get that done. We were tapped, working from behind, in crisis management mode.

I’ve also dealt with social services on child removal situations and it is excruciating. The paperwork and legal issues are staggering, and they will deter lesser beings who don’t want the headaches. Spend six months removing kids for sexual abuse, neglect, physical abuse and then walk back to the classroom and realize you’ve still got the child with asperger’s who hasn’t been receiving due attention, and the two dealing with divorce, and the three ESL students who’re struggling with their reading and you can understand why I got to the point where I never felt I was doing a good job. For every one sign of progress there were ten signs of failure.

This may sound like another excuse to get back on my soap box about it, but I really don’t believe that tightening gun laws is the solution. It’s the band aid. The solution has to come with more mental health intervention earlier for young people. When schools are struggling with budgets counseling staff are often cut. Focus on those three R’s and everything else is a luxury. Sounds great from an academic standpoint but a lot of children are coping with extreme situations at home, at earlier ages. The gap between the haves and have-nots widens and the taunting and school teasing issues compound the problems. From the time I was in grade one I had a girl routinely try to steal things from me at school. She stole my Christmas present in grade one. I told on her. I still remember she said, “I had all my stuff in it too” when she had to give it back.

End of issue for the teacher, but not for me. She was one of my constant oppressors on the playground at school all through my elementary years.

As much as I admire the Lang’s for speaking out about school bullying and trying to bring awareness to the issues as a result of their son’s death, the reality is that until there’s funding and education to change the way people think about working on healthy conflict resolution this will still happen. I mean, look at us. We can’t fathom the thinking that goes in to martyrdom, why some people believe it’s okay to kill others and yourself. Is it really so different? Young minds are being conditioned from an early age to think that violence is an acceptable solution. This is reinforced by parents who ignore their whining, fighting children and fail to grasp what really happened and make an aggressor give what they stole from the other child back (I sympathize with how hard it is, believe me) and teachers who do likewise by turning a blind eye to problems. Or the solution to complaints at recess is ‘walk with me’ but they don’t deal with the bully who moves on to the next target. And when the bully is getting that snack out of your lunch kit or your milk money or peer validation for their behaviour, it’s being reinforced.

And the bullied see that violence produces results, and following the rules doesn't solve the problem.

Unless you counter the conditioning to aggressive behaviour with alternatives other kids begin to see that’s what works. I’ve mentioned working with violent kids, and I have seen other kids throw temper tantrums out of character for them and admit later that, “It works for X to get attention.” In their minds, X misbehaves, X gets attention from staff, X wins. Therefore, if they want attention from staff they should misbehave.

We do a poor job of talking up role models, of giving guidance and nurture to youth.

Anyway, before this descends further into a rambling mess that lacks any cohesion, I’ll say one last thing. First, in no way does this justify the actions of any school shooter.

But I understand what it is to be afraid to go to school. I understand having repeated assaults at school escalate to the point that I had to be transferred to a different high school.

And I understand wishing I’d had the guts to hit back, to find a way to defend myself, to take the power away from the people who made my life a hell. And when I acknowledge those feelings I had back then, I begin to see how short the road is between feeling that way and looking for a weapon. If I was attacked now, and I had access to a weapon, I think I would defend myself with deadly force. Nobody knows until they’re there, but I have no desire to be a victim again. (By this, I mean if I was being attacked as an adult - adult to adult. I can't imagine taking a weapon to school, and don't carry one now either, but I do know how to fire a gun. I'm just saying that I wouldn't let myself be victimized now.)

Maybe what made the difference for me was having one person to talk to, so that I didn’t feel it was hopeless. I survived high school by being friends with a lot of adults.

When you’re a teenager the angst is extreme. Everything seems so much more important than it really is, but try telling a sixteen-year-old girl it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t have a date to the prom or a nerdy boy not to worry, he’ll fill out in time to play football in college. We have all these external measures by which we validate people’s self worth, and in order for some to be popular others must be geeks.

Anyway, it’s just my 2 (likely incoherent) cents. I believe we have to get to root issues. Part of the reason is that not every child who’s bullied picks up a gun – we’ve had one case where a girl committed suicide and, in a landmark ruling, one of her tormentors was convicted of uttering threats and criminal harassment.

This is the kind of innovative action we need on the side of the law – we need people to take these behaviours seriously.

And we need to take the very legitimate feelings of kids seriously too and start listening to them before it’s too late. Dysfunctional families, emotional abuse at school and feelings of alienation compounded with a lack of healthy coping skills is a deadly combination, and the way society is going we're only going to see more of it, not less.

* Kevin is this post refers to Kevin Wignall - Evil Kev has been referred to as Evil Kev to try to avoid confusion. Of course, I could just call Kevin Wignall Wiggie...