schools safe

Making Our Schools Safer: our shared responsibility

by Barry Bittman, MD

As the dust begins to settle and the reality of the Colorado school massacre begins to unfold, the question before us is how to make our schools safer. As a nation, we're troubled by the needless suffering of the families whose lives have been shattered. We're also perplexed by the underpinnings of a premeditated incident that caused two boys to do the unthinkable. Yet, before this tragedy fades into oblivion, we, as a society, must take the necessary steps to understand and prevent further devastation in our schools.

It is not enough that we remember and mourn the dead. It is our responsibility to ensure the safety of our schools through the creation of local and national programs. We must work together to nurture our children and support the enactment of laws that can potentially safeguard our children's future.

We live in a society that turns its back on the problems that brew beneath the surface. Teachers and students recognize the threat but are afraid to take action. They know who to fear. Yet, teachers and students do their best to get by, knowing that making a statement or sounding the alarm has serious potential consequences. The system is not at all like real life. Adults can leave a job to avoid an unpleasant coworker. Yet, students often feel like captives in a school where threats and torments from the same group of kids sometimes persist from junior high through graduation.

School administrators are often powerless to take a stand that can make a difference. Fear over civil liberties violations sometimes promotes the destruction of what is so dear to us.

The Trench Coat Mafia exists because it is tolerated. The writing was on the wall and on the Internet for all to see. We hide behind our right to free speech, and we settle for threats that seem unrealistic until our lives are impacted by what we should have recognized all along. We bury our heads in the sand. When the funerals are over, those not directly involved forget the incredible pain and suffering that endures.

This article is a call to action, not in Colorado, but here in our communities where we can make a difference. It's time to encourage our teachers and our children to speak up, while ensuring the support they need. It's also time to identify problems that can potentially emerge as catastrophes we can never undo. Now is the best time to make a difference in the lives of our children. It may be our only time.

It is our responsibility to:

1. talk to our children, discuss this incident, and ask them to express the way this situation relates to their lives.

2. nurture and take responsibility for each child as if they were our own.

3. teach respect— encourage our children not to single out or ridicule others who are different.

4. set up a series of community meetings with parents, students, school officials, teachers and law enforcement officials to support decisions and actions that can prevent such meaningless killing.

5. write to your congressman/woman or senator and encourage them to create laws that eliminate Internet sites that foster killing, destruction, bomb manufacturing, or violence. Encourage them to remove the right to public education for those who openly threaten our children. Urge them to apply a portion of our nation's surplus to rehabilitate those whose actions can only be construed as forewarnings of similar potential disasters.

The well-being of our nation is at stake. Let us not allow the children who were murdered in Colorado to have died in vain. Realize that this was not an isolated incident, and know that someone taught these young people how to commit their crimes. It is frightening to consider that in some circles these killers are considered martyrs.

Take a stand for safe schools, commit yourself to ongoing efforts for ensuring a bright future for our educational system, and know that you are not alone. In a recent meeting with James LaScola, Superintendent of Crawford Schools, I was encouraged by his commitment, dedication and structured approach to making our schools safer. Supporting his initiatives is an important step for safeguarding the future of our children—Mind Over Matter!