Self-accountability continues on the downhill slide in this country.

When someone can actually get paid for spilling hot coffee on their lap…blaming the restaurant that served them instead of themselves first…well, it’s just sad.

Educational institutions clearly want safe and secure schools. Administrators are perennially queried by parents about the safety of their schools. The commonplace answers, intended to reassure anxious parents, focus on the school resource officers and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing school violence, nor do they make a school safe and secure.

Traditionally school districts have relied upon the mental health community or local police to keep schools safe, yet one of the key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves teachers, administrators, parents and students in the identification and communication process. Recently, colleges, universities and community colleges are forming Behavioral Intervention Teams with representatives from all these constituencies. Higher Education has changed their safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems, yet K-12 have yet to incorporate Behavioral Intervention Teams. K-12 schools continue spending excessive amounts of money to put in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, they are reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot, which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors. Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.

Some law enforcement agencies use profiling as a means to identify an aggressor. According to the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education’s report on Targeted Violence in Schools, there is a significant difference between “profiling” and identifying and measuring emerging aggression; “The use of profiles is not effective either for identifying students who may pose a risk for targeted violence at school or – once a student has been identified – for assessing the risk that a particular student may pose for school-based targeted violence.” It continues; “An inquiry should focus instead on a student’s behaviors and communications to determine if the student appears to be planning or preparing for an attack.” We can and must assess objective, culturally neutral, identifiable criteria of emerging aggression.

For a comprehensive look at the problem and its solution, http://www.aggressionmanagement.com/White_Paper_K-12/
Continue the dialogue: http://aggressionmanagement.blogspot.com/

The only thing I heard when the media discusses the anniversary of Columbine was the one person present called for tougher gun legislation, of course they wouldn’t mention this guy. That is outside the agenda.

What is not allowed is third parties, be it school administrators, teachers, parents, student groups, or any others, to force their prayers on students. No students should be subjected to the explicit message that they must conform to the prayer norms advocated by some other person.

Prayer is an internal family value, and must not be subject to contamination or interference from other people’s religious values. Jewish and Islamic kids should not be forced to participate in Christian prayers, nor in any activity that implies that one religion is the norm and others are the exception.

Attempting to use the tragedy at Columbine as a basis for an effort to undermine the separation of church and state is unfortunate.

The blame game, finger pointing, pass the buck mentality in this country has to stop right now.

The Columbine issue has nothing to do with prayer in schools, the Government, the NRA or other lawmakers. It has everything to do with Eric and Dylan and the insanity that went on in their minds that no laws or
prayers could have prevented.

This issue is really only about one thing and that is responsibility. Everyone (with a sound mind) and who is old enough to understand is 100% responsible for his actions. There is no second option.

Yet no one seems to get that. It’s always someone else’s fault.

When it comes to organized religion, more killings and more wars have been done in the name of God than anything else I am aware of. That’s not God’s fault. The responsibility is on the people who believe that what they are doing is in the name of God. It’s not the religious leaders fault either. People do have the ability to think for themselves. I believe that’s not outlawed yet.

I don’t know if the families of Eric and Dylan were religious, but if they were, where does the blame go then? It goes exactly where it is supposed to go. It goes to the perpetrators, Eric and Dylan. If their families weren’t religious, the responsibility still goes to Eric and Dylan.

We as a society, have to start to take 100% responsibility for all of our actions and start to think for ourselves and stop begging the Government for help. If we don’t do that immediately, I am deeply concerned and frightened to think about what this great country will become.

Darshan S.
Albuquerque, NM