In the wake of recent deadly school shootings, educators have been
takingdrastic actions to increase student safety. But will their efforts
prevent more trouble--or promote it?
Tension in the classroom had been building all year. The English
teacher was fresh out of college and her pupils, about 15 of them, were
seniors on the advanced-placement track at South Fayette High School
outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These stellar students weren't
accustomed to pulling grades below an A, but the teacher was
infuriatingly tough, frequently returning papers marked C and D. "It was
kind of like a little war," says Matt Welch, the class president and one
of the students. "It just seemed like she was out to get us."
If there was one person the teacher really seemed to have it in
for, it was Aaron Leese. A bold 18-year-old with short red hair, Leese
was popular with his classmates, if not exactly your model student.
Police had busted him in the park with a bottle of bourbon. In school, he
had a habit of embarrassing the teacher by asking her questions in front
of the class that she found hard to answer. Leese also didn't take kindly
to low marks on his assignments. Once, he was so riled by a grade that
the teacher asked him to leave. As he was walking out he muttered
something like "troglodyte bitch," which earned him a three-day
suspension.
The relationship between the two became increasingly strained. One
morning in spring, she handed back one of the year's last big
assignments, a 10-page essay on a book of one's choice. Leese had written
his on Thomas Moore's Utopia. He needed an A to pass the class, but he
received a D. "I said, 'Man, if I don't pass this class, I'm going to be
mad enough to kill,'" Leese recalls. "It was something I said out of
frustration. After that the teacher said, 'That could be misinterpreted,
you know?' I said, 'Yeah, my bad. I take it back.'"
The exchange went so quickly that a student who sat directly behind
Leese didn't even catch it. But it made a distinct impression on the
teacher. After class ended, she reported it to the principal, who pulled
Leese into his office and phoned the police. By noon, Leese was being
escorted off school grounds by two officers from the South Fayette
Township Police Department. He was now facing criminal charges. "I was in
tears," Leese says.
Had Leese made his comment just five years ago instead of in spring
1998, it might well have gone unnoticed. But a string of deadly shootings
at schools around the country is radically altering how these
institutions interact with their students. Since February 1996, the
massacres, seven in all, have left a total of 35 students, teachers and
principals dead. In the latest tragedy at Columbine High School in
Littleton, Colorado, two youths killed 13 before taking their own
lives.
Alarmed by such incidents, educators are changing the way they go
about their mission--and the steps some are taking go far beyond a
heightened sensitivity to violent language. They're installing spiked
fences, metal detectors, emergency alert systems. They're hiring security
guards and imposing searches of students' bags, lockers and desks. And
they're insisting that teachers learn skills not included in any
syllabus: how to run lock-down drills, how to strip a student vigilante
of his weapon.
No one would deny that educators have a right make that an
obligation--to do all they can to protect themselves and their charges
from what has become a prime threat to their safety: students themselves.
But worrisome questions have arisen about the effects such measures are
having on the education which is the schools' purpose to provide. More
disturbing still are suggestions that the efforts may not be effectively
preventing trouble and may even be promoting it.
The change most immediately apparent to students has been the move
to punish those who use violent language. It's hard to fault
administrators for paying close attention to such outbursts. Reporters
delving into the lives of the young killers invariably have surfaced with
tales of suspicious remarks made before the carnage. Like Barry
Loukaitis, the 14-year-old who killed two students and a teacher at
Frontier Middle School in Moses Lake, Washington, who told a friend how
cool it would be to go on a shooting spree. Or Kip Kinkel, accused of
killing four people at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, who
talked frequently of shooting cats, blowing up cows and building bombs.
And more recently still, Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters, who
posted a message on the Internet saying, "You all better hide in your
houses because I'm coming for everyone, and I will shoot to kill and I
will kill everyone."
Remarks like these, recalled with remorse after the fact, have led
principals and teachers to be on the lookout for more of the same. But
when do such comments represent an actual intent to kill, and when are
they merely the product of an active fantasy life?
Tags:
advanced placement,
bitch,
bourbon,
children,
class president,
classmates,
deadly school shootings,
education,
english teacher,
habit,
leese,
little war,
model student,
page essay,
pittsburgh pennsylvania,
pupils,
school violence,
security,
south fayette high school,
student safety,
thomas moore,
utopia,
violence
