Shooting in Cleveland...

[SensualCealy]

Anyone hear the news this morning?
C

 

[cantdog]

I drove through Cleveland along the lake shore once or twice. Some nice big swanky houses. I guess you'll have to be more specific about your reference, though.

 

[Weird Harold]

I guess you'll have to be more specific about your reference, though.

It wasn't hard to find:

from: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1571704/20071011/id_0.jhtml
Oct 11 2007 3:25 PM EDT

Cleveland School Shooter Fit Sadly Predictable Profile: Bullied Loner From Troubled Home, Violent MySpace posts, frequent threats, bullying, mental health issues plagued Asa Coon.
By Gil Kaufman



The obvious warning signs were all there: a troubled, violent young man who had been teased by peers and vowed revenge, who fit the stereotypical image of a "goth" loner and who warned some peers that he would shoot up his school.

Asa Coon, 14, the young man who went on a shooting spree at Cleveland's SuccessTech Academy on Wednesday morning fit the profile we've come to know from previous deadly school shootings. Schoolmates told CNN that after Coon was beaten up on Monday for saying "F--- God" during an argument with another student, he threatened, "I got something for y'all" (see "14-Year-Old Gunman Shoots Four, Commits Suicide At Cleveland High School").
...

 

[R. Richard]

If you dig a little deeper, you will find that several fellow students went to the Principal of the school to ask for protection against Asa Coon. The students knew he was violent and dangerous. The Principal phumpered and then did nothing, perhaps because Coon was kicked out of school. The rest you know.

The residents of the Cleveland area school district pay good money for a teacher who is allowed to dig into the personal lives of students, via theme assignments, and then assign one of 13 grades based upon some supposed godlike judgment. Apparently said teacher couldn't detect that one of her charges was about to start killing his classmates. Something is dreadfully wrong in that Cleveland area school district. Probably in your local school district as well. JMNTHO.

 

[keeblercrumb]

If you dig a little deeper, you will find that several fellow students went to the Principal of the school to ask for protection against Asa Coon. The students knew he was violent and dangerous. The Principal phumpered and then did nothing, perhaps because Coon was kicked out of school. The rest you know.

The residents of the Cleveland area school district pay good money for a teacher who is allowed to dig into the personal lives of students, via theme assignments, and then assign one of 13 grades based upon some supposed godlike judgment. Apparently said teacher couldn't detect that one of her charges was about to start killing his classmates. Something is dreadfully wrong in that Cleveland area school district. Probably in your local school district as well. JMNTHO.

I fully understand and appreciate the tragedy of these "columbine" things, but I do not think it is reasonable to expect a school district to be some kind of mental health and violence prevention service. I really don't think it is fair to criticize a teacher for not somehow knowing "one of her charges" was going to start shooting. They are there to teach. Blame parents, the culture, the availability of guns in our society... but trying to lay this on a teacher is bit of a reach.

Your characterization of the Principal is equally unfair. The kid had been suspended precisely because his behavior had been determined to be harmful ("fighting") to his classmates. I think the principal did exactly what he was supposed to do and all he could be rationally be expected to do.

We are also victims of the great information age. These events are still statically miniscule. But because the media is "on the lookout" for Columbine like stories, we are ALL subjected to the breathless reporting until it feels like it is happening all the time and everywhere. It isn't. At least not yet.

My late 90 y/o mother-in-law spent most of the last 20 years or so living in fear of all the violence and mass killings and crazed maniacs that were always being described on her local newscasts. What she could not appreciate it was that the ONLY reason she was seeing it was because of the technology which allowed EVERY incident anywhere in the whole bloody country to be instantly available to all the TV outlets complete will live feeds from the scene. Never mind HER little town had not had a shooting in some 50 years....she felt like it was all around her. By the way, she died a natural death this year at 92 years old.

But please.... let's not blame the schools or the teachers. They have enough on their plate just getting Johnny to read.

 

[SensualCealy]

Keeblercrumb, I work in the school system and pretty much agree with everything you said!

I was chatting on MSN when my girlfriend said there was a shooting, by the time I got the tv on the 'news' was over, figured it was faster to ask on-line than to wait until the noon news.

I hate the fact that guns are so excessable to kids in the US and probably many more places. Im sure its getting easier and easier to get them here in Canada too compared to years ago.

It horrifies me that life has become so disposible to the last two generations. Seems it's easier to just kill the ones bothering you instead of dealing with the issues, in this day and age I would think assessing someone would be even easier. But if you have 400-1000 students in a highschool you are likely to have at least 5% dealing with suspensions, or other attendance related issues how could you possibly stay on top of EVERYONE...what about the fact that its usually the least likely one to display the rage behaviour that will actually act upon it!

I wish the students that are bullying or harrassing these students would be sat down and have it drilled into them, that because of their 'crimb' this is the outcome! What about punishment for these bulliers, how about charging them as accessories to the crimb committed. If they hadn't bullied in the first place, the act of murder likely wouldn't have taken place.

Okay, rant is over,
C

 

[Weird Harold]

...Your characterization of the Principal is equally unfair. ...

KC, it might help to read the article:

...
All of the shootings took place on the fourth floor of the building, where McGrath said police had responded to 15 incidents since October 2006, most of which were assaults.

The head of the school's parent-teacher organization, Charles Blackwell, told CNN that the parents' group had repeatedly asked for more security at SuccessTech for the past several years, but had been told the school was too small and not the source of enough problems to warrant increased patrols. Blackwell said the parents also petitioned for metal detectors and were told the academy didn't need them because of its size — it houses only 250 students. ...

Student Rasheem Smith told CBS' "Early Show" that students had tried to warn the school's principal about threats from Coon, but that she said she was too busy to meet with them to discuss the issue.

The characterization of the principal as uncaring to the point of negligence seems warrantd in this case -- there was obviously very little emphasis put on discipline or safety at her school and she was "too busy" to listen to students trying to warn her about Coon.

 

[R. Richard]

I fully understand and appreciate the tragedy of these "columbine" things, but I do not think it is reasonable to expect a school district to be some kind of mental health and violence prevention service. I really don't think it is fair to criticize a teacher for not somehow knowing "one of her charges" was going to start shooting. They are there to teach. Blame parents, the culture, the availability of guns in our society... but trying to lay this on a teacher is bit of a reach.

I went to school and was told specifically that my high school English teacher could read the themes I was forced to write. peer deeply into my soul and give me one of 13 grades, based solely upon her analysis of 'my feelings as expressed in my writing.' Mind you not what I had learned or the way I had written my theme, but upon her analysis of 'my feelings as expressed in my writing.'

Based upon my own experience, I don't feel that my conclusion is a reach at all. You don't think it is reasonable to expect a school district to be some kind of mental health and violence prevention service. I can only tell you that, upon my graduation from high school, I was told that I would be shot if I ever again entered the campus. I strongly suspect that the school [and police] threat was and attempt to be a violence prevention service. I also suspect that my high school failed as a mental health service, mainly because almost of the faculty I came into contact with were violently insane. ["Well, I agree that what she said was out of line, but I don''t think she really meant what she said.]

 

[keeblercrumb]

I went to school and was told specifically that my high school English teacher could read the themes I was forced to write. peer deeply into my soul and give me one of 13 grades, based solely upon her analysis of 'my feelings as expressed in my writing.' Mind you not what I had learned or the way I had written my theme, but upon her analysis of 'my feelings as expressed in my writing.'

Based upon my own experience, I don't feel that my conclusion is a reach at all. You don't think it is reasonable to expect a school district to be some kind of mental health and violence prevention service. I can only tell you that, upon my graduation from high school, I was told that I would be shot if I ever again entered the campus. I strongly suspect that the school [and police] threat was and attempt to be a violence prevention service. I also suspect that my high school failed as a mental health service, mainly because almost of the faculty I came into contact with were violently insane. ["Well, I agree that what she said was out of line, but I don''t think she really meant what she said.]

I suspect your English teacher was much more interested in your learning to write (which has to do with expressing your feelings in a coherent written form) than in what your feelings were, per se.

Their threat.... (I am not sure I want to know anymore about this) would not have prevented you from being the shooter in question were you so inclined... (you're not, are you? Never mind... I said I didn't want to know and I don't ). Anyway.... There is not much any school can do other than remove a potentiality violent person from the school which is exactly what happened in the case above!

And that was kind of my point. Trying to hold the shool and teacher accountable for this kind of thing is just not fair, effective or appropriate.

You didn't torture small animals when you were a child or anything did you? There I go again.. .Sorry... I really don't want to know.


-KC