Voices From The Hellmouth Revisited: Part Three 18
The Cost of Being Different
Since Columbine, the cost of being different has gone up. Thousands of powerful e-mail messages have chronicled an educational system that glorifies the traditional and the normal, one that brutalizes and alienates people who are or who are perceived as different under various names-geeks, freaks, nerds, Goths and oddballs. One of the powerful messages coming out of Colorado is that so many of these "different" kids say that they find school boring, oppressive and utterly hostile, feelings echoed by educational survivors, many of whom are now parents. The hysteria over Littleton has only made things worse. It's time that geeks defined and lobbied for some new rights. From their own messages, here are some places to start.Joan, a teacher in a public high school for nearly three decades. "While deeply saddened by the tragedy in Littleton," she wrote. "I am appalled at the resulting backlash our students are forced to suffer" in the wake of the Littleton massacre.
The last thing we need in the 20th Century, she wrote is another witch hunt.
But that's what we're getting. Joan described what hundreds of other teachers, administrators and students have been reporting all week - an assault on speech, dress, behavior or values that the media, politicians and some educators deem uncomfortably different-geek, nerd, Goth or the usual labels.
Results from a Gallup poll released directly after Littleton, indicated 82 per cent of Americans surveyed said the Internet was as least partly to blame for the Colorado killings. And schools across the country were banning trench coats, backpacks, black clothing, white make-up, Goth music, computer gaming shirts and symbols. They installed hotlines and "concern" boxes for anonymous "tips" about the behavior of non-mainstream students. Kids who talked openly about anger and alienation, or who confessed thoughts of revenge or fantasies of violence against people who'd been tormenting and excluding them, were hauled off to counselors.
Thus, the students already at risk, those who are already suffering, have become suspects, linked in various thoughtless ways to mass murder. Consequently, they have become more alienated than before.
The number of incidents involving disaffected kids and schools is growing. In Canada, a 14-year-old boy shot two students at a high school in Alberta, killing one. In Brooklyn, five boys were charged with conspiracy after allegedly compiling a list of people to be killed in an attack planned for their school's commencement on June 26. In Oak Lawn, Illinois, a 15-year-old boy was charged with assault and disorderly conduct after an ax, knives, a rifle, shotguns, and 150 rounds of ammunition were found in his home. In California, one student was arrested for threatening to burn down a middle school, and another for threatening to blow up the high school. In Chicago, a 15-year-old was caught with a .22 caliber gun taped to his ankle. Pennsylvania officials reported at least 52 bomb scares and other threats at schools in 22 counties. In Washington, more than 12,000 high school students were evacuated after a caller said that he had placed a bomb in one of the city's 13 public schools. In Longwood, Florida, a 13-year-old student was arrested after allegedly threatening to place a bomb at the school and kill the eighth graders who had tormented him. A note on a map he had supposedly drawn included the phrase "revenge will be sweet."
"I just came right now from the counselor's office," one student e-mailed me. "I scored a thousand. I had on a long coat, was wearing black and loudly told the jerk sitting next to me that I'd do my best to kill him if he ever called me a "trench coat freak" again. I am now officially on probation. He is not."
Among the many other consequences of the Columbine High School tragedy is this: the cost of being different just went up.
Take the Goths, one of the distinct subcultures singled out by the press and linked to the Littleton bloodbath. Goths have been e-mailing me for months now.
One of the most individualistic, interesting, and yes, gloomy subcultures, Goth is a style- of music, dress, state of mind. In general, Goths wear black, hang out on the Net, experiment with androgynous styles, are sometimes drawn to piercing, tattoos and white makeup, and love Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy and the Cure. Among their cherished authors are Sartre, Burroughs, Shelley and Poe. Fascinated with death (a taboo in the media and certainly in schools, along with sex and open discussion of religion), Goths see it as a part of life.
In general, though, Goths do not hurt people. They brood; they emote; but the idea that they are murderous is a cultural libel.
One of the educational system's pervasive responses to Littleton was to lecture oddballs and geeks about the importance of not slaughtering others. One thing geeks and nerds hardly need is patronizing, offensive lessons about the importance of not committing massacres. They're probably one of the least likely cultures in American life to commit homicide; their weapons of choice are electronic flames, not machine guns.
Among the thousands of e-mail messages I received this week (4,000 between Friday and Wednesday is my best guess), not one advocated violence or supported assault, murder or revenge.
Although many expressed sympathy for the killers as well as the victims in Littleton (unlike, say Time magazine, which accompanied cover photos of the killers with the headline "The Monsters Next Door"), no one threatened violence, supported it, or approved of it.
But the stories of physical, verbal, emotional and administrative abuse that came pouring in were stunning, a scandal for an educational system that makes much noise about wholesomeness and safety, but has turned a blind eye for years to the persecution of individualistic and vulnerable students.
The Voices from the Hellmouth series on Slashdot this week demonstrated the power of interactivity and connectivity. Kids passed it around to one another, to parents, friends, teachers and guidance counselors.
"My seventeen year-old son handed me a print-out of your Littleton article," wrote one parent. "No one seems to think that peer abuse is real or damaging. I would like to see any adult report for work and be taunted, humiliated, harassed, and degraded every single day without going stark raving mad. Human beings are not wired for abuse."
One of the clear messages from all of the e-mail was that it's time for geeks and nerds and the assorted "others" of the world to assert themselves, to begin defining and asserting their long overdue rights, perhaps with the help of the communicative possibilities of the Net. And to begin the work of restructuring American schools - barely changed in generations despite the ongoing Information Revolution - and their frequently warped procedures, infrastructure and value systems.
At the very top of the agenda: Freedom from abuse, humiliation and cruelty. Geeks, nerds, and oddballs have the right to attend school in safety. Teachers and administrators have an obligation to provide dignity for everybody - not just the popular and the conventional. They need to make this an urgent educational concern, in the same way they've taken on racism and other forms of bigotry.
Geeks who are harassed and humiliated should report the assaults, and perhaps using the possibilities of the Internet, take their complaints farther if they are ignored or further victimized. Online, they can receive support, advice, even counseling if necessary. Judging from many of my e-mail messages, this has already begun to happen.
Each generation has the right to determine its own culture. Culture isn't just symphony orchestras, movies about dead British royalty and hardcover books. For some, culture is now also gaming, Websites, chat and messaging systems, TV shows, music and movies.
No generation has the right to dictate to another what its culture ought to be, or to degrade its choices as stupid and offensive. Yet geek and nerd culture is continuously denounced as isolating, addictive and, now, even murderous.
Games like Tribe, Unreal, Quake, even The Legend of Zelda, and yes, Doom, can be astoundingly creative, challenging and imaginative. They are often demanding, played in communal and interactive ways. Some people may be uncomfortable with some of their imagery.
But youth culture has frequently been offensive to adults - that's often the point - and culture has always evolved. Adults seem to have no memories of their own early lives. Early rock and roll was likened to medieval plaques by the clueless journalists and nervous educators of the time. Now, next to some extreme forms of hip-hop, Chuck Berry seems as dangerous as Beethoven.
Adolescence is a surreal world: Kids who don football helmets and practice banging into one another for hours each week are deemed healthy and wholesome, even heroic. Geeks are branded strange and antisocial for building and participating in one of the world's truly revolutionary new cultures - the Internet and the World Wide Web. Or for being isolated and lacking school spirit. Or for listening to industrial music or wearing old clothes. But perhaps geek kids are isolated partly because schools don't provide them with any means of connecting.
Educators need to radically expand their notions of what culture is, and to reconsider the messages of disdain they continuously send to some of their potentially most creative students.
Inhabitants of a new world, with a new culture, geeks often find that the old symbols don't work for them - pep rallies, proms, assemblies, etc. In fact, scholars like Janet Murray of MIT ("Hamlet On The Holodeck") are beginning to explore the ways in which interactivity and representational writing and thinking are changing the very neural systems of the young.
Instead of banning doom and Quake, school should be forming Doom and Quake clubs, presided over by teachers who actually know something about the online world (my e-mail indicates that there's one frustrated geek on the faculty in most schools). Any school with a football team ought to have a computer gaming, web design or programming team as well. Geeks ought to see their interests represented in educational settings, to not simply feel pushed to the margins of everyone else's. When these new interests and values are recognized and institutionalized, geek kids may have more status, and feel less like aliens in their own schools.
Schools need to provide choices. Educators love to talk about empowerment, but few seem to grasp what it means. Geek kids are not, in general, docile and obedient; their subculture is argumentative and outspoken. Online, each person makes his or her own rules, goes where he or she wants to go. Increasingly, it's a difficult transition between free-wheeling cyberspace and the oppressive, rule-bound Old Fartism that dominates American education.
"School sucks," e-mailed Jane. "It's run like a police state, and it's boring and clueless."
Kids raised in interactive environments - with zappers, Nintendos, computers, sophisticated games - complain that they sometimes struggle in environments where adults stand for hours droning at them about passive things. This doesn't mean they are dumb, they're just different. Their digital world is much more vital, colorful and engaging than their educational one.
Geeks are used to choice, a landmark cultural and political issue for them. It's the responsibility of schools to create more challenging and interactive environments for its students - a benefit for all younger people who need to learn how to analyze, how to question, how to reach decisions, not just how to take notes and then check the right boxes on the midterm.
And then there's freedom. Why does the First Amendment end at the school door, when many kids, especially geeks, have spent much of their lives in the freest part of American culture -- the Internet? Online, people can speak about anything: dump on God, talk about sex, flame pundits, express themselves politically and rebelliously. In school, no one can.
Geeks, perhaps, who are more accustomed to free expression than their non-weird peers, increasingly and disturbingly refer to schools as "fascistic" environments in which they are censored and oppressed. All kids can't have absolute freedom all the time, but many kids, especially older ones raised in the Digital Age, need more than they're getting. Without it, they will become increasingly alienated.
A gaming website like PlanetQuake gets more than 70,000 visitors a day; Planet Halflife gets about 30,000. GameSpy, which helps gamers connect to local games, draws between 60,000 and 80,000. Estimates of online gamers in the United States alone run as high as 15 to 20 million people. The half-baked notion that this activity sparks kids to grab lethal weapons and murder their peers sends a particular kind of message to the millions of kids gaming on and off-line -- that the people responsible for educating and protecting them -- politicians, therapists, journalists, educators - have no idea what they are talking about, and are posturing in the most ignorant and self-serving ways. It's hard to imagine a more alienating lesson for the young than that.
Access to popular culture and to the Internet isn't a privilege. It's a right. For many kids, the Net isn't alienation, but it's alternative; it's their intellectual, social, cultural and political wellspring. They need it to learn, to feel safe and connected, and to function economically, socially and politically in the next century. Obviously, no rights come without responsibilities -- and those rights should be spelled out both in schools and in families. But access to the Net and to other facets of one's culture ought not be a toy that parents and teachers are willing to dispense to "good" and "normal" boys and girls. For many teens, it's their lifeblood, and it shouldn't be restricted, withdrawn or used manipulatively except under the most serious circumstances.
It already seems clear from the stories coming out of Colorado that the two young killers were severely disturbed, victims of mental illness about which we know, to date, very little. The media road show -- increasingly our leading transmitter of national hysterias -- that quickly engulfs stories like these demands answers, and has an endless supply of experts happy to go on TV to supply them.
But Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, along with the completely innocent people that they slaughtered, are also victims deserving of compassion. Their illnesses may or may not have been affected by access to violent imagery and/or lethal weaponry. We may never be able to answer the why's their act provoked. Human minds, for all we're learning about them, sometimes remain mysterious, human acts inexplicable.
Reading all these messages from the Hellmouth this week, I've been overwhelmed by the outpouring of suffering generated by the experience of going to school, and by the brutal price people have paid and are paying for being different. Few people commit violence in schools, but way too many have fantasized about it.
These messages were, in different ways, all saying the same thing. A humane society truly concerned about its children would worry less about oddballs, computer games and clothing, and more about creating the kind of schools that kids would never dream of blowing up.
you know (Score:1)
I'm glad to see this, at least.
My school was so bad (Score:1)
Re:Gun's, Kid's and School (Score:1)
Perhaps shooting people was more accepted back then....OR the fact that there was a war on at the time (1939-1945) = less people (read: guys / alpha dog wannabe's) in school, everyone was in "togetherness" mode and focused one a major tragedy & to "bring our boys home". After that, the country was probably trying to rebound by the depopulation.
Of course, I wasn't born till 1975 soooo I can't really remember anything before that :)
(and it is just my factless opinion) and history class was a blurZZZZZzzzzzz.....
Somehow I don't think it is just the "jocks" that are to blame. We have a bit of mean a$$hole in all of us.
--Clay
counseling . . . (Score:1)
Free Speech Contradiction? (Score:1)
Reports Katz:
"I just came right now from the counselor's office," one student e-mailed me. "I scored a thousand. I had on a long coat, was wearing black and loudly told the jerk sitting next to me that I'd do my best to kill him if he ever called me a "trench coat freak" again. I am now officially on probation. He is not."
Followed by:
And then there's freedom. Why does the First Amendment end at the school door, when many kids, especially geeks, have spent much of their lives in the freest part of American culture -- the Internet? Online, people can speak about anything: dump on God, talk about sex, flame pundits, express themselves politically and rebelliously. In school, no one can.
I particularly like the part about flaming pundits; but that's not my point. My point is that what it looks like Katz is saying here is that it's okay for a 'trench coat freak' to voice a threat, but not jocks - or their 'non-weird peers'.
Katz goes on:
Geeks, perhaps, who are more accustomed to free expression than their non-weird peers, increasingly and disturbingly refer to schools as "fascistic" environments in which they are censored and oppressed. All kids can't have absolute freedom all the time, but many kids, especially older ones raised in the Digital Age, need more than they're getting. Without it, they will become increasingly alienated.
Now that part I agree with. One hundred percent, even though it comes remarkably close to demonstrating Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies.
I've lived in the World Described (Score:1)
I was part of a valid program, supported and sponsored by the faculty, which allowed me, and others, to harness and expand my abilities and curiosities in a "geeky" field. There was a place to focus my energy, a problem that always needed to be solved, and topics that always had to be researched. I wasn't bored in school anymore, my interests were being catered to and encouraged. I had found my Utopia where I could learn what I truly wanted to know, and the people around me didn't brand me as a freak.
My peers saw that what I knew about and spent my time on was just as valid as playing football or running for Student Council. The "popular" kids didn't care I skipped spirit assemblies to fix a teacher's computer problems, no one minded me missing all the football games and not attending the dances. They recognized I had other interests, and since they could see the results of my work, they understood.
The Contrapositive (Score:1)
Nor do I think the controversy surrounding it is merely perceived or even about the (in?)appropriate use of
I think the real issue is that decisions such as these that are deciding factors in one's life path are always very personal and very powerful. Had this piece been about something equally as 'religous' but less personal (say the benefits/drawbacks of open source development) the outcry would have been just as loud, but not against the publication of the piece, but rather for or against the viewpoint(s) it took.
I can only speculate that this sort of reaction occurs because people are deathly afraid of being told that they might have made such an important decision 'incorrectly'. I don't think that's even possible, but how can one not wonder?
I offer the following anecdote both as an argument for the proposition that there is choice in this issue, and as evidence of the power of deeply personal issues such as this.
In my not so humble opinion, I am an intelligent individual, and would (had I earned the oppurunity) have been able to hold my own at any of the top flight universities. At some point in my life (probably about seventh grade) I made a semi-conscious decision that social comfort was of importance to me, and that I was willing to sacrifice all out pursuit of my intellectual/academic desires in exchange for it.
Seeing both sides of this 'decision' I had many friends over the coming years that were in many ways similar to the the kids in this feature the way they are described (i.e. they sacrificed social comfort to obtain other objectives). One of them was particularly bright and we found a lot of common ground between us even though we never 'hung out' socially. He went on to study at MIT, and we continued to correspond via email.
From our conversations I knew that he harbored some regret at not being part of the 'in crowd'. At one point I posed to him the notion that my regrets at not achieving more academically as a result of making sacrifices to maintain social comfort were the parallel contrapositive to his achieving more at the cost of social comfort. Although I feel there is much truth in this notion, it offended him so badly that we have not spoken since.
Re:counseling . . . (Score:1)
And a lot of school counselors are, frankly incompetent. Not all, not most, but many. But I think the real blame is being placed on the people who deserve it: the administrators who sent kids to counseling they didn't need, telling the counselor "This kid has violent tendencies. Get rid of them."
Gun's, Kid's and School (Score:2)
I ask you how many storys to you remember from any time prior to 1950 where anyone walked into a school and started shooting. I don't remember any. Why is there this quadry? At that time kid's brought guns to school, and where tought two things, to use the guns safely and responsabily, and disipline, yet there where no shootings with armed kids walking arround school. Now we have zero tolarance rules that allow things like a 10 year old being expeled from school because she had a 10 inch chain connectin her walet to her tweaty bird key chain. Kid's afraid to come to school. Guns are universaly considered "bad".
What changed? The schools, the kids, society?
I don't know, but I do know that gun's are not the problem, not are kids. The problem is a system that does not require accountability, responsability, or even reasonability (now there is a rare concept).
What do you think?
Post a response (please no flaims about how guns are evil).
Re:backpacks? (Score:1)
backpacks? (Score:1)
(And is anyone else wondering why `studious students' isn't a redundancy??)
Re:counseling . . . (Score:2)
Not only differently, but negatively, since clinical treatment is seen as a sign that there is something significantly wrong with an individual, and seriously lessens the individual's perceived value.
Children and teens take every opportunity to exploit the difference of others to attack others and to protect their own fragile self-image. When you take individuals who are already perceived as different, when difference is a negative, and you send these people to counselling, you do irreperable harm.
Now, not only is the person seen as different, but that difference has been noticed by an authority figure, and the authority figure has given weight to the idea that the person is somehow bad for being who they are.
Social workers mean well, but their work can often backfire in a society which doesn't embrace their efforts.
Doug
rock'n'roll is like medieval plaques? (Score:1)
Seriously, the standard of spelling and grammar in this article is slightly better than the norm - ie. terrible - and this is going to be a published book?
One more criticism: does anyone else feel that Jon is getting a big ego-rush (still!) from this whole thing? "The Voices from the Hellmouth series... demonstrated the power of interactivity and connectivity". Well done Jon, you enlightened the population all by yourself. I'm definitely in favour of the overall message in these articles, it's just his tone sometimes that I find a bit nauseating.
--
Re:gramm'ar and speeling (Score:1)
b@
Bathail Klenath
p.s. Who appointed _you_ the Grammar Brat? That's _my_ job!
dare to be different (Score:1)
Re:I've lived in the World Described (Score:1)
- Life is what you make of it.
another VFTH and a proposal (Score:1)
I went to Junior and Senior high school in the early 80's and I can testify that it was in many ways a hellish experience. At the schools I went to it wasn't the jocks against the geeks, it was the big and/or agressive against the small/weak/passive. All of which I was. In the seventh grade (the worst) I got into 13 fights in 3 schools. The level of physical and mental threats that I experienced definately scarred me.
The teachers and admins were completely ineffectual at keeping the predatory kids off the little guys like me. I was originally a gentle, sensitive kid but just to survive I learned how to be more aggressive, even vicious (I once bit through a bully's eyelid and I once beaned some punk in the head with a rock and knocked him out). Only when I showed that I was willing to make someone bleed, would the bullying even lessen.
That is a TERRIBLE lesson for a child to learn. Even now that I'm in my mid-thirties I HATE the knowledge that I can willfully, strategically hurt someone. Only through discovering computers and art did I avoid the violent path that took so many kids to jail, gangs or worse. Even so, the rage and anger are still echoing within me.
I wrote this to throw my horror story into the mix and to also encourage you to PUBLISH AND DISTRIBUTE that book. Parents need to see it, teachers, counselors and admins need to see it. If you don't want to go the standard publishing route then compile the damn thing into a PDF and let everyone who cares print it out at home/work/Kinkos, bind it and send a copy to those they think need to see it.
Hell, I'll personally commit to 100 copies and will droplift [droplift.org] them to libraries, schools and the local community center.
The meatgrinder that is public city schools has to stop eating our children.
Exactly.... (Score:1)
Smitty