Time magazine recently reported that an average of twenty percent of teenagers attending high schools are taking medication to treat either depression or another psychiatric disorder. Latest government findings show that one out of five adolescents have seriously conside

FBI statistics conclude most students who shoot their classmates are not maladjusted loners, but do rather well academically and have not been identified as problem students by faculty or school officials. As a society, we have a responsibility to educate students in compassion, tolerance, and empathy. Once students are taught to appreciate differences, they will come to view them as “sources of joy and excitement, rather than as automatic triggers for aggression and rejection” (page 72). Aronson stresses that armed guards and metal detectors will indeed reduce the number of mass shootings within our schools, but will not reduce the magnitude of emotional and social problems found at the root of the shootings. Metal detectors will not make our schools a happier place for students who feel rejected and excluded on a daily basis. The shooting themselves are not the problem, they only serve to alert us to the underlying problem, and often times how a topic is learned is more important than the content of what is learned.

Unfortunately, such “cures” are, more often than not, based on emotion, wishful thinking, and political expediency than on solid evidence. Immediately after the Columbine killings, Congress voted to

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Left Hate, Harrises Klebolds, Ten Commandments, Law People, Eric Harris, Littleton Colorado, Eric Dylan, Immediately Columbine, , Dylan Klebold, metal detectors, students feel, left hate, eric harris, overt violence, peripheral intervention,