One day recently, my history class was having a discussion on school
shootings, and on the violence behind them. We debated guns, the second
amendment, and finally got around to the biggest problem in the equation:
the killers themselves.

"School is too impersonal," one of my classmates said. "We're put in boxes,
shuffled around--teachers see thirty kids a class, a hundred and fifty kids
a day. You feel like you're not getting any personal attention. That could
have something to do with it."

"You don't know what these kids had as a home life," someone else
suggested. "They could have family problems that school is just aggrivating."

"We need smaller classes," the general consensus was. "Kids need more
personal attention. We need to know each other. We need a sense of
community, so everyone knows everyone else. That way we break up the
cliques." There was a lot of head nodding and general happy sentiment.

One word: Bullshit.

Let me relate to you a story that I learned as I grew up, in the middle of
this cradle of inhumanity we call the Silicon Valley.

There was once a little girl that was the child of two happy parents that
lived together in a monagamous married relationship. Her father worked all
day at a computer company, but always took time at the end of the day to
make sure his daughter was happy. Her mother worked at home, enjoying
motherhood as a break in her own working career, and took very good care of
her little girl. The family was never in danger of economic instability,
there was always good food on the table, and the little girl went to her
preschool and made a few friends.

The little girl soon grew out of preschool, and her father did what
entreprenuring parents in the Silicon Valley were prone to do in this stage
of their children's development: he packed a sleeping bag and camped out on
the doorstep of the office to sign his child up for kindergarten at a very
special school.

This school was a little haven of humanity in the middle of the cold, hard,
computer-and-corporation-focused world. The school was named after a woman
on board the space shuttle Challenger, and was designed as child-centered
education. The children in this K-6 school were encouraged to call their
teachers by their first names, and were involved in exercises that
encouraged creativity instead of book-learning. All the teachers were
talented individuals that loved their jobs and their charges, and
encouraged the children to be their best.

One of the innovations of this school was the absence of detailed
punishments for minor infractions. Instead, the children themselves would
draw up a list of consequences for breaking classroom agreements that they
all signed to. Major infractions would be settled by the children
themselves, with a neutral party acting as mediator.

Perhaps the adults that came up with this system congradulated themselves
with teaching children responsibility at so young an age. Perhaps they felt
that teaching important conflict-resolution skills at so young an age would
help the children in further life pursuits.

Whatever the feeling was behind the innovations, the little girl hated it
there.

She quickly found that her intellect, or her application of it, distanced
her from her classmates. She was routinely asked to participate in group
exercises with people that teased her, mocked her, and ignored her
suggestions. When she worked on projects by herself, and came up with
results that surpassed those of her classmates, she was the subject of
cruel laughter and physical pranks. When she attempted to hide from her
classmates, they found her anyway, for the campus was small in order to
foster a sense of community.

When the child attempted to use the problem-solving routines so favored by
the adults, she met with derision and broken promises. When she attempted
to meet the bullies on their own turf, they poked fun at her and rode
circles around her, outnumbering her and giving her no chance. When she
attempted to hide behind the adults, her protection had to move away
eventually, leaving her with nowhere to go.

The girl made friends, eventually--with the other 'rejects' of the
in-crowd, who couldn't protect her when they were forcibly split up for
group projects. She was bullied, mocked, an object of loathing from both
sexes and all ages.

Exaggeration? Perhaps. Some of the teasing was probably harmless expulsion
of childhood energy. But try explaining that to a Fourth-grader who's just
been told for the millionth time 'if you ignore them they'll stop.' Try
telling that to a fifth-grader who's been reduced to tears by the latest
cruel joke she's been the butt of. Try telling that to a sixth-grader who
was so frustrated, so *furious* by the time her term at school was up, that
when one of her classmates called her 'fat' she rounded on the girl and
charged, ready to rip her to pieces *with bare hands if necessary.*

This was in a school with an incredible amount of personal attention paid
to each student. A school where parents were brought in, and were actively
involved in their children's education. A school where kids were encouraged
to be all they could be. Small class sizes. A community.

This is the situation that drove a bright, caring student to tears. A
situation that drove a child with a good home, a stable family with two
loving parents, to attack another student with the most personal of
weapons: fists.

This child didn't care about 'breaking up cliques.' She didn't *want* to
know her fellow students. Most of the time, she just wanted to be left alone.

This is not to say that small class sizes and personal attention from
teachers are bad things. But there is a difference between encouraging
creativity and promoting anarchy. There is a difference between enforcing
discipline and staunching free spirits. The administration and teachers at
Christa McAuliffe Elementary school didn't quite understand the distinction.

The reasons that I didn't turn out like any of the kids that snapped and
started killing their classmates are varied--the teachers that encouraged
me despite the reactions of my peers, my parents, and the few true friends
that I kept through the years; not to mention my good grades and the fact
that I couldn't find a gun if I wanted one--but they are not because of the
nurturing, happy, communual, small-class-sized school that I went to. I
have the sick feeling that if I had to spend a few more years in that
environment, I would have taken a knife to something. Perhaps my own
wrists; though at that time I didn't know enough about arteries and veins
to cut my wrists 'correctly.'

What saved me was moving to a different, more structured school--where
again, throwing myself into my studies saved me from having to deal with
classmates. By the time I got to Monta Vista High, I had actually acquired
a small group of friends. And Monta Vista is everything McAuliffe is not--a
huge campus, many classes, whirling around like a leaf in a tempest. I
loved it the first time I could walk down corridors and not *worry* what
everyone else thought. Everyone else was as focused on learning as I was. I
suppose it's the stress that saved me. What everyone else hates about the
campus, I love.

It's a funny world, I suppose...