The Real Reason Why School Shootings Happen

in #voluntaryism7 years ago (edited)

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It's not the availability of guns. It's not a failing of mental health services. It's not the gratuitous media attention paid to shooters.

The real reason why the United States has such a high rate of school shootings is much harder to accept, because it's not something we can change by passing a law. To accept the truth means to accept part of the blame for the problem, and to personally shoulder some responsibility for fixing it--whether we are gun owners or we support gun control, whether we have kids in school or not.

The real reason why school shootings have proliferated over the past couple of decades in the U.S. is painfully but simply this:

Our education system creates environments that make children want to die.

This truth is perhaps most evident in the climbing rate of suicides and suicide attempts among young people. Suicide rates are even rising among elementary school aged children. Depression rates among teenagers has been on the rise for years, and children as young as 5 are being prescribed antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs. These statistics demonstrate the sickness of our society.

In addition, the drug overdose death rate among teens climbed 19% between 2014 and 2015, the last period for which data are available. Most of these teens were casualties of the United States opioid epidemic, which I see as another symptom of a sick society that is particularly obvious in our public schools, because that is where the illness begins.

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While most children who find the unhealthy environment of school too much to bear will exhibit suicidal behaviors or turn to drugs like opioids to escape from their brutal reality, a few demonstrate their death wish by orchestrating massacres. School shootings can be seen as extreme suicides. Almost all school shooters have either killed themselves after committing their atrocities, or been shot by cops on the scene. Not only does the youth perpetrator want to die, but their pain and turmoil manifests as anger and hatred, and they want to take others out with them.

Society is composed of people, and the wellness or sickness of a society depends upon the aggregate wellness or sickness of its individual members. If the majority of individuals spend the formative years of their lives forced into psychologically unhealthy environments, this creates a lifelong tendency toward psychological sickness which radiates throughout society, being passed on from one generation to the next. The negative effects of conventional education show up in the workplace, on social media, in churches, and in families.

What makes school so bad?

Why is it that modern schools inspire this fervent death wish in so many children? One popular theory is that bullying is the culprit. Much media attention has been paid to suicide rates among teenagers (without ever connecting the suicide statistics to the school shooting statistics), and researchers have seized upon bullying as a common factor shared by many of these cases. Indeed, bullying is rampant in schools across the country, but it is not the primary cause of the death wish. It is yet another symptom of the true problem.

In our society, minors are treated as an unfree subclass.

Both at school and at home, the majority of children have little to no autonomy. People under the age of eighteen are severely restricted in their day-to-day lives. They cannot decide for themselves where to go to school or what to study. They are legislatively prohibited from earning money. The majority of their activities are predetermined and scheduled for them by parents, teachers, and school administrators. During the school day the situation is even more dire, as they are not free to make even the most basic decisions for themselves that adults take for granted, such as: what to wear, who to surround themselves with, and even when to use the bathroom. The rights we expect as adults--freedom of speech, freedom of association, and privacy--are not afforded to schoolchildren. Their behaviors are controlled down to the most basic bodily movements: don't fidget, stay in line, ask permission to get up from your seat. Naturally, many of them rebel, and are punished, or worse, put on psychiatric drugs to make things easier for the adults at the helm of their lives.

School is prison.

I've said it before and I'll continue to shout it from the rooftops as long as I have breath in my lungs.

If, as adults, we were subjected to the daily torment that students must endure in American schools, it would not take long before the death wish took hold of us, before we started to become depressed, antisocial, perhaps even psychotic. And these children are forced into the terrorizing school environment nearly every day for twelve years of their lives. Is it any wonder that many of them become bullies in an attempt to exert some measure of control over their lives? Or that some turn to drugs to escape that reality? Or that others develop a desire to die, and perhaps even to take their tormentors out with them?

Modern schools are designed to break the spirit and produce conformity. Humans are naturally resistant to such efforts, and will rebel in whatever way they can. With suicides and opioid overdoses and school shootings, we are reaping what we've sown.

The reason it is so difficult to acknowledge this core truth is because it implicates all of us as aiders and abetters.

We, the adults who were assimilated as children into such environments of terror and who "turned out okay". We, as parents who send our kids off to prison each day because "what else am I supposed to do with them while I'm at work?" We, as taxpayers who support these public institutions that reduce innocent children to automatons, and then to statistics.

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So how do we reduce school shootings?

Passing stricter gun control legislation is not going to cut it. Mental healthcare reform might help, if the focus is shifted away from medicating and toward supporting the holistic development of persons. But the real solution, the solution that will address the root cause instead of slapping a bandaid over a bullet wound, is to fundamentally change the way we treat children, both at home and in educational environments.

In order to survive to adulthood with their psyches intact, children must have at least one adult in their lives who can provide loving support and guidance. If you know a child who does not have a person like that in their lives, be that person.

In order to flourish, children must be given autonomy to make their own decisions and pursue their own interests. If you have a child in school, consider alternatives like homeschooling, unschooling, or alternative schools that do not so much resemble factory farms.

If you are a taxpayer, you must begin to see school shootings as an extreme but natural consequence of forcing impressionable humans into involuntary systems of assimilation. The money stolen from you through taxes literally funds school shootings. You must opt out in whatever ways possible.

Finally, if you are reading this as a teenager who has been forced into the public school system, know that your mental stability is worth protecting. Your happiness is important. Your freedom is non-negotiable. Persuade your parents or guardians that it is in your best interest to leave school. Show them this article. Share with them the resources listed at the bottom of this page. There are multiple alternatives to educational prison. If your parent does not have time to homeschool you, you can direct your own learning experience through unschooling or online schooling. Do not allow your spirit to be crushed. You are much more valuable than a piece of paper that certifies that you've met the educational requirements of the government. In most states, students can withdraw from school on their own recognizance at age 16. If your parents will not hear you, DROP OUT and never look back.

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Resources:

John Taylor Gatto: The Purpose of Schooling (YouTube video)
Teenage Liberation Handbook
Dayna Martin, speaker and writer on Radical Unschooling

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As a teacher for 10 years now in various capacities and even internationally, who opted to not enter the public schooling prison system after graduating college where I studied ostensibly to do so, I have to say that your article is right on. Actually, what is being done to children worldwide under the label of "education" in public schooling systems is a travesty, a tragedy, and a failure by design.

If there is a hell, someone will be answering for this. What a rape of lives and potential of one of the world's most precious and innovative treasures--children.

Resteemed. Thanks for the great and much need article.

You're right, it is by design. The whole system is designed to produce insecure adults who will accept farcical authority over their lives. School shootings and suicides may be unintended consequences, but they are seen as minor expenditures, acceptable within a certain margin.

Thank you for the resteem!

And tragedies are even used to increase funding and power of the police state...Disgusting!

Totally agree with the comments that it is by design.

That's a small part of the reason we've homeschooled now for 14 years, and now 4 of our 5 kids in. And shockingly (sorry, that sarcasm slipped out) the two oldest have transitioned to college just fine...actually better than fine.


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WRONG!

The real reason is fatherlessness. Of all the school shooters in recent times, most have been fatherless. You can't comment that school making people "want to die" is the reason there are shooters because there's no evidence to connect school shootings and school conditions.

There is clear evidence that fatherlessness and school shootings/other violent crimes are linked. Charles Manson, for instance, was a very evil man and was fatherless. Inner city black gang violence occurs with almost exclusively fatherless young black men.

There is a problem with schooling. Education doesn't need to last nearly 20 years. Standardised testing is terrible. The education system is controlled by the government to brainwash children to think a certain way. But these problems have no clear link to violence.

I think you're right that fatherlessness is a factor. I was probably overly-simplistic in writing this post because I was really trying to drive home the point that I think suicide rates, drug overdose rates, and school shooting statistics in the US are connected, and all are surging because of the way children are treated in our society. Primarily, that treatment occurs in schools since primarily, schoolchildren spend most of their waking time at school and much less time at home or with their families. However, it does have a lot to do with what goes on at home, and fatherlessness has a part to play in that.

There's no evidence to connect school shootings and school conditions.

But there is. All of the mass school shootings on U.S. soil in the past two decades have been at public schools. Not private schools, not homeschools, not charter schools. Public schools.

Could this be due to the security factors, though? Charter schools are more likely to have advanced security systems.

Charter schools are more likely to have advanced security systems.

I highly doubt this. Most schools with advanced security systems are those with huge student populations, and most charter schools have smaller student populations. I think public schools win the school security race by far.

That's interesting and a fair point. I would assume that charter schools have more resources available to them, but perhaps they don't.

You have said it!!!!! This is what I have been screaming for years. The public school system, for most is basically free day care so that the adults can work their jobs that may be just as restrictive. Somehow, the feeling of life itself needs to come back into everyday life. I know I want to homeschool my daughter so her beautiful spirit isnt broken. I know for some people school is a beautiful place, but I believe that number is far less then the majority. I moved quite a lot growing up, perhaps once a year to every two years until middle school and saw everything from Brooklyn NY to the most rural back woods Bryson city schools and the problems in all were pretty horrible. If things werent happening directly to me then they were happening to others. I heard many children over the years chant "kill them all" . No joke. Rascism, sexism, frustration, being confined, hunger, thirst and the relentless BOREDOM. I'll stop here.
How do we as a society fix this? The only school I loved was one that I went to for one year, a charter school, that focused on the arts. Quite frankly gave me hope for the rest of my life. Perhaps there are some answers there.
Resteemed! This needs to get out there and sunk in.

Yeah, I can't help but look at modern public schools and see the resemblance to prisons, from tall fences to rigid schedules to crappy cafeteria food. And I just wonder, how can people think that sending all the children to facilities like that for twelve years of their lives and not expect some seriously fucked up adults to come out of it?

Thanks for the resteem!

I enjoyed your article and perspective. I'm slowly leaning towards anarchy and voluntaryism. I still have much self education to do to get there, but I have a strong intuition that I will get there.

The reason I am this way today is because I see something that must be done first. We must raise children without aggression, without violence or even the threat of violence. We must stop imposing adult will on children to govern ourselves.

I read an interesting book on the subject of raising human beings called, oddly enough, Raising Human Beings, by Dr. Ross W. Greene. That book inspired me to write this article:

https://steemit.com/humanity/@digitalfirehose/plan-b-for-humanity

It's an old article, but upon my reading your article, I could not help but see the connection. True reform of our schools will come, but it will take a generation of kids raised on non-aggression to bring it about.

Perhaps then, we can finally have peace in our schools.

I only have two objections to this. You should've ended this post with "Mic Drop". And secondly, I'd have to disagree on advising students to drop out. I've seen the struggle that creates for a person in life. So I wouldn't recommend it as a route for anyone, except for maybe on a case by case basis where it might be the best option, or a last resort. Maybe sometimes it is. I wouldn't doubt that. All that you've said, otherwise, I do believe to be true. This is closely linked, intertwined, with social/mental health issues. It's just easier to ignore the truth. Because the truth exposes some ugly things about us as a society. We say we care all day long, we swear we care, but we don't make any large scale changes to help, much less mentor people who might need personal help. That does happen, and those people are human angels, but they can't fix a broken system. I don't think we're proactive about helping these kinds of things. We react in shock and terror after they've happened and then we go back to living how we were. And because of that they'll keep happening.

With all this said, if I ever do have a child, they won't be enrolled in the public school system. I'd never do that to any child of mine. There are wonderful teachers there, no doubt, but the system is not the best for the children or the teachers. I believe it hinders them both.

Hey, thanks for the comment, @intspekt. Actually, by the time I read it, I'd already begun work on the series I just completed about why kids should drop out of high school. In Part 2, I get into the specifics about how dropping out of school (at least in the United States) doesn't have to turn your life into a struggle to get ahead or make ends meet. Check them out and let me know what you think.

Drop Out of High School to Succeed in Life, Part 1
Drop Out of High School to Succeed in Life, Part 2

Thank you for your insightful comment!

Thank you, will do. :) Yeah, it could be a good move with decent parental guidance/involvement and/or a plan set forth. Not so much when it's aimlessly done. I'll go read...

Well done and I can agree. Sitting 8 hours in a room and not moving is un natural for anyone.

It's ridiculous. Most sane teachers and most students agree that education system DESPERATELY needs to be changed but IT'S NOT HAPPENING!!!! WE NEED CHANGE NOW!!!!
About this topic....I would want to mention my experience as well. i come to this topic of school shootings as a complete outsider. I live in India and I go to a private school. There are literally no alternative schools available for a reasonable price here. There was this story about a 11 grader murdering a kid by slitting his throat. Rest in peace Pradyuman (just google ryan school murder and it will show up) and I don't know where I read this but I read on one of the articles that he did that so his exams would be delayed. When I read that I felt sick to the stomach. First reason why I felt sick was the obvious one, "who could do such a thing" I thought but the second reason was the main reason why I felt sick to the stomach because, I do get where he was coming from. And moreover, I could see myself in that situation and justify slitting someone's throat so my exams would be delayed. I remember, I just cried that evening. I know it's immoral and cruel but..... I do saw where he was coming from. I also felt that anger and hatred inside me that justified this atrocious crime. I guess I really should make a blog about my experience and how I even though being stuck, feeling like crap, feeling that anger and hatred inside me that I so desperately wanted to get out of me I am now able to function and be happy once again.

Potent! This is why we chose to unschool our kiddos.

If there was real consideration put into how to curb school shootings, I think we would should look for the simplest solution as in; kids who are not in a public school can't be shot... We need to ask why we are sending our progeny to a sterilized indoctrination camp for the most impressionable years of their life to begin with.

Society cannot be well until children are treated well. Society cannot be free until children are free.

I cannot wait for, nor wish for more, the day when humanity wakes up to the reality of what schools, education, and success are in their current portrayal. I hope I am here for it but, the status quo runs deep and I am currently a heretic by the accepted standard.

Today's govern-cement schools = light security prisons.

Of course children are depressed.

For real. Pizza day is only like once every three months, and that only helps so much..