By: Steve Trubilla
The carnage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland, Florida deepens the national wound. The question again is: Why did this happen? If there is one thing today I am sure of, it is this question will be asked again.
I do not know where it will be asked. It could be Anywhere Town, USA. Will it be Franklinton, Bunn, or Youngsville, or another place most of America has never heard of? What a terrible ponderance to place on the community shoulders. Even the possibility of this anathema is too dark and painful to consider.
On April 15, 2007, was it possible the next day 32 students and teachers would be gunned down on Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University? Surely it was not, and yet it did.
What is causing children to pick up a gun in school and kill? I am told highly educated people, the smartest in the country, are working to find the answer. It appears they have concluded it must be the gun, so the focus is on guns.
Some say we need more gun laws, less gun laws. Some are even calling to have teachers armed.
Others want to turn the schools into fortresses. Fortifications, no matter how strong, can always be compromised.
Maybe those really smart, highly educated people are not asking the right questions, and maybe they are not talking to the right people. What we do know is what they are doing is not working.
Here is a question: What has changed for the kid in school that was bullied last year that is still scared this year? For most of them, I will tell you what has changed: Nothing! They are looking more forward to leaving school than they are to getting there.
Well, something might have changed; maybe he or she is now among the estimated average 30 percent of children in school today on some type of medication. Guess who in many schools is responsible for administering and controlling that medication during the school day? It is not always a school nurse, it is the teacher.
Call me out on this. Check it yourself and see if this is happening in your school? I have had some local teachers tell me it is, even though they have been told not to talk to me about it because of my writing ways. While you are checking, ask just what qualifies that teacher to administer those drugs. Remember we are not talking about vitamins or aspirin. These are serious, mind-altering controlled substances.
This is a window to another story for another time about something called Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Much of what you do not know about this and the struggle parents are having would anger you.
Research shows that as many as one out of six people in America may be on some type of antidepressant. You have to wonder how many of them are involved in the lives of school children.
Did you know a study found that children's hospital admissions of patients 5 to 17 years old for thoughts or actions of suicide more than doubled from 2008 to 2015?
No other generation of teachers in history has been asked to do what we now demand of them.
To get a real measure of this, read Jamie Vollmer's book, "Schools Cannot Do It Alone."
It is a recognized premier work on today's education system. It should/must be required reading for everyone with anything to do with the schools, including law enforcement.
Maybe it is not the guns after all. Maybe the social engineering has finally hit critical mass.
Everyone, even the most hardened of people, can be broken. When people break there are pieces. Pieces can cause a lot of damage.
Often there are simple answers to big problems. Maybe just talking to the children about what they are living with day to day and attentively listening to what they say is the answer to this.
Children are told to listen to adults. Maybe it is time for the adults to do a bit of listening.
What would it cost? Think what it could be worth.
I do not mean just do this one on one. I mean do it in a major and continuing way.
It is more than a different time, it is a different world. Your world may have been school days, school days, dear old golden rule days. Theirs is much different.
We now live in a world that starting the school day with a prayer, even a moment of silence is found to be offensive. Maybe before more guns we should consider more prayer.
Get them off the drugs, stop the bullying. I promise you there will be fewer tears. I promise you if you do not, there will be more.