"Men can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough." G. K. Chesterton.I have been thinking about this for a long time now. All right; here goes. I am going to go ahead and say it, even though I suspect that I am going to make a few new enemies. The "school shootings problem" is not about gun laws; it is not about tighter security; it is not about making mental health care available. It is not about any of these things. And the more that I read people screaming about problems that are "out there" the less convincing they are in what they are saying. People always scream about "out there" problems when the do not want to accept responsibility. The problem is not "out there". The problem is the schools themselves, and you do not heal a disease by protecting it. My grandmother used to say "if your recipe tastes like dirt, you don't make it the same way the next time" (only she did not use the word "dirt").
The "problem" that has led to students bringing guns to school and killing other students and staff is caused by the culture of the schools. Only when that culture is changed will the shootings stop. What, you may ask, is "that culture"? It is the culture of nihilistic abandonment. Nihilism teaches that there are no absolutes, there are no objective moral standards, and there is no point in anything. The result of this perspective being taught (whether intentionally or unintentionally) in public schools for the last 50 years (or more) can be nothing other than violent and immoral behavior. This leads, almost unavoidably, to children showing less and less concern for the well being of others. Once you teach them to hate God (which is what you are doing when you try to teach subjects from an atheist perspective [school subjects without God are, by nature, atheist subjects]), then the necessary consequence is that they will hate mankind.
When you tell each student, "you can be whatever you want to be" you set them up for failure and the resulting depression that goes with the realization of reality. When you tell each student that God is not a significant subject for knowledge, you destroy all moral objectives and stab at the heart of any faith that they may have had. When you tell each student that personal pleasure and individual fulfillment is all that matters, you create spiritual evil in their hearts (often, mistakenly, referred to as "mental health issues"). I attended public schools from elementary through my first two years of college, and I was (even back then) taught nihilism. It has only gotten worse today. People talk about bringing prayer back to schools, but prayer will not matter if you are also teaching children that God does not matter.
As the quote from Chesterton that I cited above shows, modern American society is blind to this problem because it is too obvious; it is staring everyone in the face. When there was a surge in postal workers being violent (and "going postal") the US postal service saw a need to change how they treated their employees; and many other corporations followed suit. Yet, today, when children are "going postal" the solution is not to fix the schools (oh no, don't touch the schools, it cannot be their fault!), the solution is always "out there". This is just a further denial of responsibility, because they do not want to give up nihilism. This is what nihilism has done to our children (and many of the teachers who were taught by it as well), but most refuse to admit it. Better security and tighter gun laws are not going to solve anything because they have nothing to do with the actual disease (and kids will just find another method to be violent).
I am crushed at seeing the violence. I sobbed in tears on Ash Wednesday as I watched events unfold in Florida. I thought many times "children should not be in a place where that can so easily happen". I laud those who want to "do something" about it, but most of what people are talking about doing is like giving a Motrin to a cancer patient; it only delays the inevitable, and it will not stop the real problem. I pray that America will see what the real problem is, and stop putting so much effort into swatting a fly while there is an angry bear in the house.
