Not to hijack this thread, but I've been spending more and more time in juvenile court these days. They've got the biggest case load in the county. Anyways, I see kids whose parents don't give a crap about them. Daddy's in jail for beating mommy (like the shooter in Chardon). Mommy doesn't care about Junior unless he's in trouble and she has to take off work to come to court, and then we have the audacity to order that she take drug tests. By the time you place the kid with a relative or in foster care, the damage has been done. You hope the new place is better than the old one, and you hope counseling and a new home can make things better. Looks like that's what tried with this T.J. Lane boy. Too late.
It's oversimplistic to say "it's all because of bullying," just as it would be over simplistic to blame firearms, as they did after the Columbine shootings. The abusive home, the bullying, etc., are all facets of this disaster-in-the making. I've now read how it wouldn't have happened if they just put armed guards and metal detectors in all of the schools. And maybe if school officials were monitoring all of the students's Facebook pages, they could have stopped it before it started. And maybe if school officials had stopped the bullying, it wouldn't have happened. One posting actually said that if the school principal had done his job right, gone to the boy's home and talked with him one-on-one a few times in private, he could have stopped all of this. Yeah, what would we all say about a school principal showing up at the home of a young man or woman wanting to have a private conversation.
I'm not lilke a lot of you. I don't hate on public education. Sorry, I'm the son of two career educators, one a school principal. Both in public schools. I saw how hard my father worked to do everything that his job required, from investigating truancy issues, to handling child abuse situations, to managing the teachers and staff of the building. And they keep dumping more and more on teachers and administrators because of the needs of the students, and budget cut-backs. So, before we indict every public school administrator for this shooting, and the consequences of every bully in America, remember they aren't all gulity.
