By: Sheri Werner, BA, MS, PPS
Director, Foundations School Community (K-8)
Why? Determined to make sense of yet another profoundly senseless incident in the wake of the tumultuous Virginia Tech tragedy, we seek answers. Why? We want a magical explanation to quell the increasing anxiety that haunts us—intellectually, morally and spiritually. Why?
As a parent, a longtime educator and director of Foundations School Community (K-8th), I constantly grapple with issues surrounding the physical and emotional safety of children.
While no amount of facile conjecture or professional gobbledygook will bring back the lives of those ill-fated human beings, aren’t there lessons to be learned in order to truly honor their truncated lives?
There is no excuse for the grievous crimes that Seung-Hui Cho or countless other perpetrators before him have committed, but perhaps his actions that day at Virginia Tech will sound one more wake up call for those of us who are determined to live in a safer world. While schools across the nation continue to focus on testing and pushing students cognitively by preparing them for Ivy League schools practically from birth, we continually fail to address the urgent needs that ultimately nurture a thinking and feeling human being. As an educator, one can’t help but wonder if we can integrate these tragedies as springboards for implementing some critical changes both in our society and in our school communities.
Undoubtedly, there are countless factors that lead to a person’s decision to act out against society. While nobody will ever know exactly what goes on in the minds of people who commit violent acts, we can certainly pinpoint contributing factors that result in a young person’s heightened anger, desperation and hopelessness.
Among those factors are the ways in which society (including our school systems) fails to embrace and support people who experience deep feelings of being “different” and are ridiculed by peers; society’s lack of respect for diversity; and our steadfast determination, when these tragic events engulf us, to demonize, isolate and stereotype the people who commit these acts.
Imagine spending seven hours a day in an environment where you are teased, demeaned, and humiliated. Now imagine experiencing that as a teenager who is struggling with the vicissitudes of puberty while simultaneously trying to find, understand, and gain a sense of selfhood. It is unacceptable that any human being should have to endure that. Yet it happens everyday, in every state across the nation: in our schools, on our playgrounds, sometimes in our classrooms and, yes, in our households.
While educators are focused on becoming “Blue Ribbon” schools, determined to be touted as having the “best test scores,” and working feverishly to push their students to higher cognitive levels, we are not addressing the most critical developing aspect of our students: their humanity. When will we begin to see that we can have the best cognitive minds in the world, but if we produce children who are intolerant, unkind, hurtful, and mean, we will never be able to have a healthy and peaceful society? In order to stop the intolerance and violence in our schools, we must implement and support programs that address peer pressure, teasing/bullying, and acceptance of diversity in its myriad manifestations.
In the months preceding the Virginia Tech slaughter, we were exposed to numerous examples of hurtful slurs, delivered from the mouths of political pundits, radio talk show hosts, and television stars. Diversity comes in many flavors—physical, economical, cultural and sexual. It is easy to separate ourselves from others by knee-jerk labeling. They are the “Koreans”, the “mentally ill”, the “disabled,” the “effeminate,” and the “poor families.” By labeling others, we separate “them” from “us,” clinging to a delusional notion that we are not like them.
We seem to find some false comfort in demonizing, labeling, and isolating people who engineer such vicious acts. We analyze their lives and scour for clues as to why they became these “pariahs” of society. Were there clues that we could have seen? Should we have known this was coming before it happened? Will the perpetrator’s first grade teacher or next door neighbors have some insight as to what turned him into a monster? On and on it goes. While we frantically seek ways to explain away the reasons these human beings somehow became inhuman, we are distracted from looking at a critical truth: we all feel different, hopeless, depressed, lonely, and desperate at times.
As a society, as part of a bigger world picture, are we not all in this together? Are we not all complicit to the degree that we turn our backs on “them?” We demonize rather than empathize. While we label these perpetrators as mentally unstable, do we not cast them aside as outcasts of our society, freaks that we are not responsible for? Guess what, folks? We are responsible, each and every one of us. We are responsible for learning to embrace diversity. Most importantly, we are responsible for teaching our children to do the same.
The actions taken by Seung-Hui (and countless others before him), were unconscionable; the feelings he had, however, were universal. Rather than vilify, isn’t it time we started to take an honest look at the pain some human beings are experiencing on a daily basis? How many homeless and hungry people do we pass by in any given day? Rather than allow ourselves to feel the pure and utter sadness of their situation, we quickly jump to labeling them as mentally ill, addicted, or too lazy to hold a job. What if we were to allow ourselves to feel their pain, imagine living their lives for a day? Wouldn’t we then be forced to understand their situation and act on their behalf? This is the only way we will reach those “demons,” “loners,” and “psychos.” As long as we distance ourselves from these human beings, we will be unable to reach them, and our society will continue its downward spiral into more violence, hatred, and war.
