Education Template Of The Future?
School lock-downs as a result of very real fears of armed invasion by emotion-wrought youth bent on destroying a system and a representative of social and cultural mores through which by some aberration in adjustment that young person has become estranged are steadily becoming a reality in countries throughout the world.The supreme expression of disaffection, loss and social estrangement where the self-avowed 'outsider' expresses his contempt for human life.
On the other hand, there are those in the professions who consider these murderous rampages a desperate cry for help not from social deviants and psychopaths but young people who have lost their way somehow, youth who have suffered the indignity of exclusion, of mockery and derision, fighting back the only way they know how.
Their very identity as part of the social fabric to which they were born or within which they were raised, twisted beyond redemption.
Does this act of final and deliberate revenge represent a condition which society has imposed on the sensitivities of a human being incapable of fending for himself by other means? Or does the anger, the hatred, the repressed emotion finally exposed unveil the prevalence in society of lost souls incapable of emoting, of relating to others, holding others responsible for the misery of lonely existence?
In the end, what matters is that lives are needlessly lost, young people in the full flush of future promise are forever stilled, their families left in grief and confusion, the greater society stunned by the insanity of lives wasted, floundering in fear of future such events, wanting to protect their children from the possibility of swift and unexpected death.
The City of Ottawa has experienced a rash of emergency calls to report the presence of armed intruders in school precincts, resulting in school lock-downs, students sequestered for hours on end while emergency personnel and police rush in to take charge only to discover in each and every case that it was a hoax.
Ambulances required elsewhere have been tied up, as have been police; a costly result to the response of a spectre of a real emergency.
"You have no idea what it's like to go into shock two days in a row because people are calling 911 saying there's a man with a gun in your school" writes one affected girl. "You have no idea what it's like to be helping your fellow students during a lockdown and look out a window and see the police running with sniper rifles."
As a result, schools are increasingly subjecting their students to mock safety alert drills.
The memory of tragic events like the Dawson College shooting, and others occurring in various places within Canada and the United States send shivers down the spines of anxious parents. As with the more recent school killings in Finland, the perpetrator posted his intent on the Internet prior to the massacre. Is it a search for fame: the message representing its purpose?
Media reports inform that the killer held Hitler, Stalin and Nietzsche in great esteem and admiration. He would have been then, inspired by other similar earlier events like the carnage at Virginia Tech in the U.S., and that which took place in Dunblane, Scotland. The Finnish killer explained in his video that he was acting on behalf of his cause, prepared to kill and die for it.
"I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection. You might ask yourselves, why did I do this and what do I want. Well, most of you are too arrogant and closed-minded to understand." At one and the same time a self-avowed avenger and a victim, charging those who would judge him as representing everything he detested yet reflected.
Societies feel under siege, that their most vulnerable charges are in dire and direct danger. Yet Statistics Canada figures demonstrate otherwise, with statistics taken from 120 police forces in eight provinces showing a steady decline in school violence over the last three years. Trouble is, it is property crimes, assaults and drug offences that have dropped.
Deadly assaults by deranged sociopaths excluded.
Labels: Particularities/Peculiarities, Realities, World News
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 08, 2007
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