Columbine Remembered

Two months back saw the five-year anniversary of Columbine. And in the interest of timeliness (ha ha), read this. The (anonymous) author here is angry, self-righteous, and extrememly snarky, but also absolutely right on.

Five years later, though, I wonder if we've learned the lesson. At the time, everyone wanted to look to music or movies or video games, and not the day-to-day tormentors of these two kids.

But then I can't help but notice that there hasn't been a school shooting in a long, long time. So maybe the message DID get through. I suppose picking on the helpless loses some of its allure when faced with the possibility that one's victim might come back to school with an assault rifle. Just like Eric and Dylan did.

I actually have a lesson plan on school violence (Strasser's Give a Boy a Gun, Van Sant's Elephant, etc.), but maybe it's not necessary. Maybe Eric and Dylan's message was received: bullying leads to school violence; stop bullying and you stop incidents of school violence.