Rant & Rave
Rant & Rave
What does it mean when school shootings are commonplace? What does it mean when you hear about kids that kill kids and push it out of your mind a couple of days later? Is this the society that you want to live in? No, it probably isn't, but this is the society that you do live in. School shootings
show society’s dark sideI was talking about a school shooting in California to someone, when this person calmly informed me that only two were killed. Only two? How is it that two teen-agers can be murdered with little concern because it was such a small number?
It is ludicrous that these shootings are happening at schools. Not only is it just incongruous, but I remember a time when schools were sacred places of learning and development. Children were being taught morals and now we know them as places of learning and development and firing ranges. What has the world come to when our learning is second to the tug of a trigger?
And it does happen that way. Before, I didn't even know a school called Columbine existed. Or Santana High School. Now these names are synonymous with the horrifying death of too many teens who are just like you or me.
I don't believe these schools will be able to retain the reputation they once had. Nor will the surviving students ever regain the innocence they lost during the fateful days students walked on campus with guns. The only way the world remembers them is of the blood that fell upon their hands. I can just imagine their shock and horror as one of their own, someone they knew, would decide to end lives of friends or foe. What becomes of them, the traumatized who witnessed the catastrophe or the families that are shattered? How does anyone even start to piece back what is left of their torn lives?
The act of killing has been a problem for thousands of years. It's the classic story: one person murders another, and back then, that was bad enough. Now, we have children who take the lives of multiple children. Is that progress?
This is a time of fantastic technology and increasing knowledge. We have computers, and fax machines and CDs and digital cameras. We have created remarkable medicine and antibiotics that save peoples' lives every day. Yet on the other side of the spectrum, we can't even stop our youth from killing each other.
We have all these reliable solutions for all kinds of problems, except for the surefire answer to stop the bloodshed we create around ourselves. Am I the only one that sees a problem with this? Is the biggest threat to ourselves really ourselves? The scary thing is, perhaps the answer is yes.
The fact is, life is precious. To our knowledge, everyone gets one chance at it. You gain nothing if you take someone else's life away except jail time or possible death. Yet, you lose something irreplaceable. Murder is a lose-lose situation. It is preposterous that massacres take place in the one place children should feel secure. Before, the question was, "What if?" Now it is, "What will you do?"
When will people realize it should be, "How can we prevent?"
Tiffany L.W. Ching is a ninth-grader
at Punahou School.Rant & Rave allows those 12 to 22
to serve up fresh perspectives. Speak up by snail mail:
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