As a Survivor of a School Shooting, I Suggest That We Ban All Public Schools
I was recently asked-- as a “school shooting survivor”-- how I felt about these recent tragedies that seem to be happening frequently here in the USA. My answer was not what they expected to hear.
The Question:
“Paul, as a one of America’s first ‘school shooting survivors’ back in November of 1974, what are your feelings today about that incident?”
My Answer to the question went something like this:
I think that it should be clear to everyone by now that this madness has gone on for long enough, and that if we truly cared about the children’s safety, well-being, and education, that we would do the sensible thing by immediately banning all public schools.
I didn’t say anything about guns.
I was then told that I had ”earned the right to my opinion”, and the conversation pretty much ended there.
A School Shooting in Little Rock, Arkansas- 1974
This discussion had all started based on an incident that happened to me when I was at school in the 8th grade.
It was Thursday, the 21st day of November, and was the day that many of the students at Booker Jr. High School heard their first real gunshots.
It was when an angry gunner emerged from a classroom and took a shot or two at me with a real pistol. He missed me, but two other students had already been tragically shot a few moments before.
This was the day when I watched a fellow student die in the hallway at school.
How I Felt About School Already
Back when I was in the 8th grade, I didn’t want to go to school anymore.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but at 14 years of age, the public school system had already lost me, having taught me all that it could. The lessons had become repetitive and dull, and with the addition of my being rather socially inept, I dreaded each day wasted in and around those 8th-grade classrooms.
Somehow I knew that there was a real world happening just outside of those cubicles that we were forced into each day.
Somehow I knew that the Public School system was designed to kill my spirit; I saw a device that was formulated to crush my imagination with military precision, and thus I resisted.
Military-grade Division of Humans
Crammed into concrete boxes all day, deprived of nature for weeks on end, we suffered as students in the Public Schools.
Being mere children, we had no choice in the matter; our parents would be punished if we were not properly enrolled, and few parents would question the traditions and cultural comforts of the Schoolhouse, while even fewer would dare try to educate their own child without government assistance.
Divide and Conquer by Grade Level
Aside from the obvious division of groups by age, wherein all of the students are assigned ‘grades’, from first grade to twelfth, the divisive tactics become acute as the difference in a single grade is emphasized by using terms such as freshman, sophomore, junior, senior-- terms which are then used by the students as a way to further divide themselves from one another into exclusive social groups.
GO TEAM! (Dividing the Population Further)
The US Public School system goes beyond dividing the students in their individual schools.
By pitting the sports teams associated with particular schools against each other, a vicious patriotism is encouraged in the student body, and peaceful communities will simply accept the fact that the games lead to vandalism, fights and injuries around the schools and local neighborhoods.
By design, nearly every American Public School cultivates aggressive mentalities that wouldn’t have necessarily been part of the community without the warlike nature that their sports teams and the games inspire in otherwise peaceful beings.
Et tu, Alma Mater?
This calculated division of the American society-- a war tactic that the Public School System was designed to maintain-- continues well past those twelve years of mental conditioning.
Colleges in the USA have traditionally used this same military hierarchy to divide the student body into classes, while the college-level sports teams then further spread the war drums across even larger regions, until whole states in these ‘united states’ are intentionally kept in conflict by the various schools, all trying to maintain their legacies of victory.
Often these college games are supported and funded by society’s most prominent members, making it seem like these constant regional and interstate conflicts should be encouraged by all.
The World Is Going to Change, Again
As awareness of the true purpose of these institutions is finally reaching the mind of the population, there is a chance that soon, the USA Public School System will become obsolete, it’s tentacles finally withering from disuse.
Even 'higher learning' is feeling the change, as young people who do manage to graduate from high school are wary of enrolling in college at all. Many of them simply don’t want to go to college or to participate in the archaic system that’s been handed to them in any way, while others have been warned that they will never be able to pay back the student loans that they might accrue, and that the chances of getting a job in their selected field are slim.
Since 1974, there have been some dramatic changes in the world, yet our education system still fails to educate, and many will spend their hours trying to devise ways to fix it.
Those who hope to fix the system may not realize that the Public School System is doing exactly what it was intended to do; to condition each new generation to believe that their war habits are part of human nature, and that surely we must fight, or assist in a fight, somewhere.
Schoolhouse of the Internet
These young people of today are correct by not wanting to go to school; there is no need for it anymore now that nearly all of the combined knowledge of the planet’s population is available for free on the internet.
Even now, many colleges offer free courses on the internet, so that the only incentive anymore for paying to go to college would be to gain a diploma, a document from the old hierarchy that may or may not be valuable in the future.
Already there are home-schooling programs that can be downloaded for free, and with the internet there is now the chance for a better education in a shorter amount of time than the Public School system could ever offer. Now parents can provide their children with an education at home, without having to fight school traffic, wait for school busses, or worry about school gunfire.
The Future May Take a Few More Years
In the USA, we suffer from the public school’s tendency to create warriors, obedient workers, and perpetual conflict within local communities, but the sentimental attachment to the comfort and authority of the schoolhouse makes an emotional mess out of everything logical and rational that might come along as an alternative, so off to school the kids will go again.
America is not quite ready to give up on it’s failed Public School system just yet.
From sentimental attachment and the comfort of long-held tradition to the convenience of having a free babysitter for their children, it might take a few more years before the practice of sending one’s children to be raised by strangers is seen as a bad idea by the general population.
I Earned the Right to Complain About School
I am a school shooting survivor. I watched an innocent human being’s life end in tragedy at the bottom of a short staircase in a dim school hallway, and it is not something that I can just forget.
One student tragically died, another was wounded by gunfire in a classroom, and a lot of people were rightfully very shaken up over the incident, but when an entire culture is trained for perpetual conflict within every realm of their society’s structure-- a training that starts with public school-- then one possible solution to stopping violence might be for us to find a way to stop sending children to these public schools.
School Survivors
When I suggested that Public Schools should be banned, I was making a serious point. I was probably expected to talk about guns, but it wasn’t about guns then, and it isn’t about guns now that I complain. My concern is the deliberate replacement of our children’s imagination with a habit of violence and conflict, their minds being so molded during a time when their innocence is still intact.
I'll insist that it is the perpetual war that is being baked into the school systems of the USA that is the problem, and I'm saddened by the fact that twelve years of precious life are devoted to absorbing those aggressive cultural habits into each new generation. Yes, I’m complaining about it. I earned the right.
PS: As a witness and supposedly a victim of 'assault', I was taken out of my class after the shooting that November day by the police. They took me downtown where I was asked to provide a witness report, and then they suggested that I might "press charges" against the student who shot at me. Having already forgiven the assailant, I decided that-- for my own safety-- I would not press charges for assault. I recognize that I am merely a survivor of school, because I still consider the true survivors of that 1974 incident to be the victim's friends, and the family who lost a beloved child on that day.
This is an AMAZING post. You have hit on so many good points.
It is awful that you had to go through a school shooting and see someone die in front of you.
There are MANY, many reasons to homeschool, and being more safe at home is definitely one of the reasons why I prefer it.
I have given you a full upvote and a resteem!
I appreciate it @canadian-coconut, the events certainly changed me, though my memory of the event itself is more surreal than terrifying. As you may see by those newspaper clippings, I've had some time to think this over, and I'll admit I'm using my status as a 'survivor' to make my point about the outdated public schooling system that I was forced through like so many others.
Looking forward now, I imagine the necessity of the invention of community learning groups forming within neighborhoods, with groups of parents even hiring their favorite teachers to guide the students, and where teachers will likely be better rewarded for their work than the old system could offer. In these more organic home and local classrooms, the ages of the students might be less emphasized, so that they could learn from each other naturally, like a family.
I used to be told that I lived in a world of fantasy, as if that was a bad thing. I'm still imagining a future that... well just wait 'til you see it! ;)
I'm a bit late to the post here (8 days). I completely agree and appreciate the eloquence you use to convey your message. Is there no way to resteem after a week? No button presents itself here.
This post was just awesome. I think that it should be clear to everyone by now that this madness has gone on for long enough, and that if we truly cared about the children’s safety, well-being, and education, that we would do the sensible thing by immediately banning all public schools.
Epic response :)
I'm putting this in my son's suggested reading by mom- I look forward to his impression being he's about the age you were when that happened.
haha, well they thought they wanted to know how I felt, until I got to the end. ;)
As a barely 14 year old American boy, if there was any trauma from the incident for me, it was buried under a bravado that I probably had to feign. Such tragedy though, up close, does stick with a person.
The American Education system is a weapon of mass destruction.
There, the whole thing in a few words! This comment gets an A for accuracy, and a plus for brevity.
Well as a teenager getting ready to enter high school in September . I want to say if we ban guns we need to ban cell phones. I say this because every year there are about 1.6 million accidents involving texting and driving. There are about 6,000 injured children every year as a result and that’s only here in the USA. Also stats have it that every day 11 kids die with texting and driving accidents . Some get killed in a car , some are riding bikes , some are just run over. That is a lot more lives lost than what is lost with semi auto matic guns. Bottom line is guns don’t kill people it’s the sick people that do it. Also cell phones don’t kill people it’s the retarded people who text and drive . So to all those protesting for a gun ban , think about it next time you are texting and driving ! Enough with the Double standard . Steem On Steem Nation!
Resteemed
Thank you for this post, @therealpaul. These are uncomfortable ideas for the average American, but if they want to reduce school shootings, they need to start getting uncomfortable. Public schools are designed to break the spirit, and sometimes broken spirits retaliate by perpetrating massacres.
I covered the topic of school shootings in a recent post, The Real Reason Why School Shootings Happen, and my conclusions were very similar to yours.
Resteemed!
Thanks for the resteem, I appreciate that. There is a lot of sentimental attachment to the little schoolhouse for the culture, but that may be a sentiment that the newest generation of parents won't really cherish. A few unbroken spirits using one internet might retaliate in their own way against the old slave system that their parents lived in, and the old mind-control devices will be recognized and properly rejected.
I am really happy that you were able to escape that ugly incidence that faithful day, now I know a great guy called @therealpaul. I do not know much about the American standards but what about educating people about how and when guns should be used, I feel that is a better idea(I stand corrected though).
I'm happy to be here with you as well! Here in the USA, like anywhere, guns are like tools, and I sometimes wonder if part of the reason guns are made to look bad is because 3D printing technologies are blooming, and will certainly threaten a lot of assorted industries when perfected in the next years. Next, we will likely hear how 3D printing should be discouraged because guns can be made with the technology, while in actuality the 3D printer will probably soon eliminate a lot of other industries that will no longer be needed to ship things or build things. In the USA, guns are used by the population to slow down most government-sanctioned genocide, but I wonder if large industries are using the fear of guns to slow down the upcoming 3D printer's universal acceptance.
Public schools are no more than government indoctrination camps now.
Yup.
Everyone can talk about the school shootings but your voice must be counted, IMO. You are not talking from belly button, you are talking as a survivor. Someone must do something about it and your suggestion is one of the solution. My suggestion is "home schooling with internet access." I know most of us working during school times and how can we control the children... But may be send children to the private school for the primary and after the primary they can do it themselves at home... Hugs from Spain.
There will be a time soon when a lot of parents will find ways to do their work from home, and with the availability of online courses, the centralized schoolhouse will probably become obsolete before too long. We had a local, private homeschool group here that formed organically in the community-- it happens!
Dude you are a beautiful and enlightened soul! Perfect!
Spot on assessment. I home schooled my son after the 5th grade due to all of the social conditioning that was being emphasized over actually learning useful ideas and knowledge. By the time he was 17, I had him get certified at the local college in computers, one he received 3 weeks after his 18th birthday. No student loan debt for him, and he has worked his way up the ladder, knocking on close to 50k a year now.
You find this need for divisiveness not just in schools, but as you pointed out in our sports and worst of all, the media. Despite them saying our strength is in our diversity, they go the extra mile to make sure the diversity will always be at odds with itself. Keeps the sheep to busy to notice where the farmers (bankers and their allies) are steering us on the farm.
Meanwhile the wars continue among nations that the majority of the people in each nation wish was not the case. Helps weed out the strong stock from the herds as the war machine marches on funded (with interest of course) by fake money created from thin air.
I'm happy to hear that you pulled your child from the camps, grade 5 was likely a perfect time to do it too, so that they could experience the schoolroom, and then real life, and see the difference for themselves.
Tis true; if we were to believe the media, we would think that there were entire nations of 'enemies', when just a few minutes on the internet at places like this (Steemit) can show the propaganda for what it is. The media is doomed, and they know it. Google and Twitter are getting all kinds of attention by pulling down tweets and videos that might help humanity see through the obfuscation and deceit. They are getting publicly desperate, it won't be long now.