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May
27
It’s happened again- a kid killing a kid. On Wednesday, May 23 2007 , a 15 year old kid was shot to death in a hallway in the middle of the afternoon in a Toronto school. That’s scary for kids, for parents, and for teachers. Parents send kids to the safety of school to learn the three “R’s. Kids go to school, albeit sometimes a bit reluctantly, to learn the three R’s. Teachers go to school, I go to school to teach the three R’s. No one expects anyone to get killed in school. Why are kids killing kids anyway, in school or out of school. What’s going on? How can we stop it? These are puzzling questions that need answers. One answer I see is : it all depends on who you ask. Ask different people; get different answers. Ask some people; get no answers.
I’ve been following this story in the local media where questions around the shooting are being raised. The answers given by the various players in this tragedy like the family of the victim, the friends of the victim, the administration of the school that the victim attended, the police, the politicians, and the experts in the area of youth violence remind me of the answers given in the story about the six blind men who are asked to identify something by touching different parts of it. The something happened to be an elephant. The story goes something like this
Six blind men who touched different parts of an elephant were ask to describe what they thought it was.
The first blind man touched the trunk of an elephant and said “It’s like a snake”.
The second blind man touched the body of an elephant and said “It’s like a wall”.
The third blind man touched the tail of an elephant and said “It’s like a rope”.
The fourth blind man touched the leg of an elephant and said “It’s like a tree”.
The fifth blind man touched the tusk of an elephant and said “It’s like a sword”.
The sixth blind man touched the ear of an elephant and said “It’s like a fan”.Each of the six blind men described the elephant from his own perspective. Each description was valid given where each man stood. The problem is, of course, that because the men could not see the whole picture (well of course they couldn’t see the whole pictures, they were blind but you know what I mean) they could only describe their individual part thereby they failing to see the essence of the elephant. I believe that when we are asking the question “What is to be done about kids killing kids”, we get answers from individual players based on where they are coming from and consequently miss the essence of the problem and hence miss the essence of the solution.
The poor grieving mothers can never understand why someone would want to harm their children because they were such dutiful sons or daughters. Friends of the victims always talk about what wonderful friends and people the victims were. Everyone loved them. The police talk about the need for people who have information about crimes to come forward with information and tell police what they know. People who are in the know won’t tell because they are worried that they will suffer retaliation for ratting someone out. In this case, the incident happened in school, school officials talk about what they have done to make schools safe and then talk about what they are doing to make them safer like installing more cameras and installing more people to supervise the halls. The mayor talks about the need for tougher gun controls to stop all those guns from the United Stated entering into Canada. Experts on youth violence suggest that kids enter gangs looking for the emotional support their families didn’t give them. We should be giving them this support so they don’t join gangs.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s all the different parts of the elephant. These individual interpretations aren’t capturing the essence of the problem. The individual player’s interpretation of the problem and its solution is not going to make the problem go away by itself. It’s back to that village thing. You know the saying that it take a whole village to raise a child. Well it’s going to take the whole village to stop kids killing kids. Everyone needs to do what needs doing ,as unpopular as that might be. Or, we’re going to continue to read about kids killing kids and continue to hear the different members of the village interpreting the elephant of kids killing kids from their individual perspectives or agendas. We need to see the whole picture before we can get rid of the whole problem.
Some of the comments made by the media regarding my question of what is to be done about kids killing kids have been very insightful. An editorial in The Globe and Mail date May 25, 2007 notes that
It has been clear for some time that a large number of young people in the city’s toughest neighborhoods have guns and feel a sense of impunity in using them… There are many young men in (some of them boys,really) who, when challenged or insulted, will begin shooting. A bus shooting happened after someone asked a young man to stop swearing.
You know, I see that bit about violence stemming from a real or perceived challenge or real or perceived insult at school everyday. I was going to say almost everyday, but then upon reflection realized it was everyday. Just today in my class one kid said something that another kid took offense to, and I had to step in and verbally deescalate the situation. I couldn’t believe it. In a nano second they were both ready to throttle one another. I guess these kids have nothing but their honour and so will protect it at any cost. It just boggles the mind. So many of these kids get themselves into problems because they have poor impulse control and act before they’ve had an opportunity to think things through.
I had another student tell me a month or so ago that he had been stabbed in his upper thigh. I was shocked, but then as the details unfolded the stabbing itself took on a less shocking light. This kid, my student had accidentally stabbed himself in the thigh. He explained that he had been carrying a knife in his pocket and forgot about it, and when he sat down, as fate would have it, the knife stabbed him in the thigh. Now of course ,he and his friends didn’t want any adults to know about this, so they tried to fix the wound themselves by buying some stuff at the drug store and bandaging the wound up. But as he told me, it was bleeding so badly the bandaids wouldn’t stick on his skin so they had to go to emergency room at the local hospital. He commented on all the blood and that his good jeans had a hole in them now. At the emergency room at the hospital, he told the story that he’d accidentally sat on a knife that had been carelessly left on a chair, and it stabbed him when he sat down. That explanation worked for him at the hospital and at home with his mother. I asked him why he was carrying a knife to begin with. He look at me incredulously and told me that everyone carried a knife to protect themselves, and some of the other kids in the class told me that you couldn’t leave the house without a knife for protection. Just think of what that means- a knife in the hand of a kid with poor impulse control and nothing to lose but his honour, or even better yet, a gun in the hand of a kid with poor impulse control and nothing to lose but his honour.
My school has cameras installed in the high traffic areas and many of the 20+ doors in the building are locked during school hours and unlocked in the morning before school to let kids in. You can exit all of the doors but enter only a select few during school hours. That is a major pain in the butt. I’ve gone to my car to get something after classes were over for the day and have to walk way around the front to get back in. The locked doors help keep intruders out of the school and the cameras act as a deterrent and catch kids committing crimes. They really do. A couple of years ago, one of my students who was expelled from school because he took a baseball bat to another kid at lunch over a gambling debt asked his friends, still at school,to say hi to me. Apparently, I was his favourite teacher. But, he was afraid to come into school because of the cameras. He would be in big trouble if he got caught on school premises. Same thing happened just last March. A student of mine who got kicked out of school and wanted to come to see me to say hi but was afraid to, again because of the cameras. He too would be in big trouble if he was caught on camera. So, cameras do work. I’ve got more stories like that, but I’ve made my point already. I’m starting to get spooked out thinking about all these kids. Fortunately, these kids are a minority or no one would want to be a teacher.
I’ve said before that I wouldn’t want our schools turned into jail-like fortresses. I don’t want bars and metal detectors in my school, and I don’t want my school board to have its own police force like they do in Boston. I’ve taught young offenders in jail and in an open custody facility and believe me the atmosphere was so oppressive. I hated the atmosphere. Ironically, the kids were better behaved in jail than in regular classrooms because they had only two choices. They could do what I asked in the classroom or the guards could escort them to their cells. It was their choice. I’m trying to remember. It was a long time ago, but I think that only one kid ended up going back to his cell. I couldn’t stand the guards in my classroom, so I had them removed. That took some doing. But, I had the support of my administrator who was responsible for the school in jail,and he made it happen. They installed a panic button in my classroom just in case something happened, but nothing did.
When I first started teaching in jail, I was a bit concerned about maintaining discipline because, well, the kids weren’t in jail for good behaviour. But what actually happened was this: when I first started teaching the kids kind of checked me out and gave me a few tests I had to pass, and when I passed them I was deemed OK. So whenever new kids came to class, they didn’t act out because the other kids had done some positive PR for me. I was amazed and quite honestly thankful. Sometimes I tell my classes at work that it’s easier to teach kids in jail than it is to teach them. They don’t believe it, and they have a hard time believing that I taught in jail. I tell them I was younger then and we all laugh.
The Globe and Mail article I quoted from earlier makes some good points I want to share
- The money spent on metal detectors etc. would be better spent on social workers , psychologist and special programs that could reach these kids before they reach for knives .
- Schools that looks orderly and well maintained are more secure.
- Vandalism and theft can be almost as harmful to a school as actual violence because they can create a fertile environment for loss of control and community confidence.
- If it appears that there is no strong adult authority intruders come and create problems
S o there are some lessons here. Ones we need to pay attention to. If the solutions to the problem of kids killing kids were simple, we would have would have implemented them long ago and ended kids killing kids. We, the villagers, need to get together, learn the lesson from the blind men and the elephant and get at an accurate picture of the problem so that we can develop the solutions that get at the problem and finally stop kids killing kids. At least, that’s the way I see it.
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6 Responses to “What’s to be done about kids killing kids?”
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Really appreciated the insight and the thought on this. These podcasts are a must listen, not just for teachers but for people who care about the future of our world. My heart feels saddened by the thought of armed children in a “civilised world”.
Hey Mom, I remember that some students did carry knives around with them when I went to high school, but that was almost 20 years ago (can you believe that?!?). I think that if you create a jail-like environment where only the shortest amounts of bad behaviour can survive (like a 30 second fight) then you end up with a lot of what goes on at schools now, I would think.
We can stop violence in schools by listening to our students. By giving them the education they deserve and meeting their needs. Let’s stop shoving them into our traditional molds and start creating a culture that appreciates them for their creativity and for their gifts. We need to change everything - after all, they have created a society for themselves. A society that is destroying itself because it lacks guidance. Let’s start guiding and stop trying to force change.
Amy, thanks for taking the time to comment. I find what you have said very intriguing. How do you propose we start to guide them ? I would really appreciate it if you would share your ideas. I agree that we are not meeting their needs. How do we do meet their needs?
Elona,
This is no doubt a thought-provoking post. Though the level of violence you describe in your school is not so high in mine, I find that a major contributor to trouble is impulsivity. Whether they pick it up from the adults in their households, from what’s modeled by celebrities through the media, or from ubiquitous instant communication, I often wonder how much better off kids would be were they to experience more frequent wait-time in a variety of situations. How might that impact youth violence?
Of course as you suggest, teaching kids patience would only be just one part of the elephant.
Ms Whatsit,
You ask an interesting question about the wait-time- the old fashioned idea of counting to 10 before you do something. Some kids’ brains are wired so they are more impulsive (I saw this on TV once. It has something to do with the amigdila and the frontal cortex. I can’t quite remember the details. Maybe someone who knows can tell us) and those kids have a harder time. I see that impulsivity all the time, especially when kids are angry. Training the kids to be patient and not act until they have had time to think would certainly help.