You've Got to be Carefully Taught

You've got to be taught, To hate and fear, You've got to be taught, From year to Year, It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear, You've got to be carefully taught, You've got to be taught, To be Afraid, Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin, Is a different shade, You've got to be carefully taught, You've got to be taught, Before it's too late, Before you are 6 or 7 or 8, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught http://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/southpacific/youvegottobecarefullytaught.htm
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Of all the irritating lyrics I heard as a kid, this one tops the list. Even worse than "The Sound of Music" Preachy, goody-two-shoes, and self satisfied. Arrgh.

Yet those words are the most powerful commentary I know on what happened at Virginia Tech. On all sides, there is concern. Concern. Concern for the shooter who felt hated and obviously wanted bloody revenge. Concern for the students who were killed. Concern for the psych docs who said he posed no threat. Concern for the school and for the teachers for accepting that a kid who stalked and had dark writings posed no threat. Concern for the students who didn't file formal complaints earlier against him. Concern for the police who thought the killer was the wrong person initially. Concerned for those who acted to protect others and were gunned down.


But most of all Concern for all the students who wanted to act but who were programmed by the Public School System into passivity. For those students who didn't report the bully morphing into shooter because they feared the consequences of speaking up for themselves. Make no mistake. In today's schools, the reporter of violence often is pressured to not bring suit, to not complain, to believe the bully is just a boy or girl gone bad and the student who complains will be responsible for having the bully kicked out of school. Or worse, the bully and the victim receive separate and equal punishments. How do I know this? Because those pressures are exactly what happened when my two girls were victimized by bullies at their school. And I don't think I am alone in the experience that bullies walk while victims just talk because that's all they feel safe doing.


Bullies don't get punished. Not enough. No apologies are required. No true compensation for the fear they caused. What do they get? A lunchtime detention here. A day's suspension there. And the Bullies learn the valuable lesson that there are no consequences to their actions. I suspect that this kind of passivity training happens all over the country and all over the world. After all, Virginia Tech has students from around the world.


The fact is that most of those students at Virginia Tech froze because of their conditioning. I just know it in my bones. So yes, school violence is terrible. Bullying is terrible. It is often impossible to know who did what to whom and as administrators you need to appear to be fair. After all you can't have student on student attacks. But perhaps you can be too carefully taught. Just look at the final results of the lesson.