It has been two days since five Amish children were slaughtered
in a one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. By the time people
received their morning papers on the second day it was old news for
many. Cable news shows were well past delivering facts and well
into analysis and commentary.
It has been two days since five Amish children were slaughtered in a one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. By the time people received their morning papers on the second day it was old news for many. Cable news shows were well past delivering facts and well into analysis and commentary.
Today, columnists will catch up, wringing their psyches to bleed a few drops of fresh meaning and tell us that some way, somehow, there must be a way to make it stop. They will remind us that no matter where we live, no matter how small and seemingly invisible our children’s school may be, the killer can find them.
The usual call and response will issue forth, stale as the last office donut. Gun control. National Rifle Association defiance and defensiveness. School security. Decaying morals. Alienation. Collapse of community. We’ll get it from a lot of angles and viewpoints.
Then, we’ll wait for the next occurrence. We know it will come. We don’t know where or when.
Lately, we haven’t had to wait. In one week there have been three deadly school shootings. In the past month, four. Colorado, Vermont, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. The twist in this year’s shootings is that they were carried out not by students, but by outsiders who in some cases also sexually attacked children. So in that sense there is something new to analyze and for the media to talk and write and lecture about.
Which is all positive, of course. It is communication. Getting things out in the open.
The problem is that as a nation, we’re dead to it. We are so saturated with screened images of killing that it means nothing to us until it happens in our backyard. Until we get a physical look we might as well be watching one of the many “CSI” episodes.
Is this a dark, cynical view? Absolutely. Maybe it is a necessary view.
Can it happen here? Ask yourself. Even better, ask local educators. While they likely do not go about their career in fear, do you think they would be shocked if a shooting took place on their campus?
And if the answer is yes, we all have work to do. Placing the onus on keeping our children alive while they attend school is way, way more than the responsibility of our teachers and administrators. Or the police, for that matter. It is something to think about. Or something that doesn’t affect us, at least until it happens here.
