It's not the availability of guns. It's not a failing of mental health services. It's not the gratuitous media attention paid to shooters.
The real reason why the United States has such a high rate of school shootings is much harder to accept, because it's not something we can change by passing a law. To accept the truth means to accept part of the blame for the problem, and to personally shoulder some responsibility for fixing it--whether we are gun owners or we support gun control, whether we have kids in school or not.
The real reason why school shootings have proliferated over the past couple of decades in the U.S. is painfully but simply this:
Our education system creates environments that make children want to die.
This truth is perhaps most evident in the climbing rate of suicides and suicide attempts among young people. Suicide rates are even rising among elementary school aged children. Depression rates among teenagers has been on the rise for years, and children as young as 5 are being prescribed antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs. These statistics demonstrate the sickness of our society.
In addition, the drug overdose death rate among teens climbed 19% between 2014 and 2015, the last period for which data are available. Most of these teens were casualties of the United States opioid epidemic, which I see as another symptom of a sick society that is particularly obvious in our public schools, because that is where the illness begins.
While most children who find the unhealthy environment of school too much to bear will exhibit suicidal behaviors or turn to drugs like opioids to escape from their brutal reality, a few demonstrate their death wish by orchestrating massacres. School shootings can be seen as extreme suicides. Almost all school shooters have either killed themselves after committing their atrocities, or been shot by cops on the scene. Not only does the youth perpetrator want to die, but their pain and turmoil manifests as anger and hatred, and they want to take others out with them.
Society is composed of people, and the wellness or sickness of a society depends upon the aggregate wellness or sickness of its individual members. If the majority of individuals spend the formative years of their lives forced into psychologically unhealthy environments, this creates a lifelong tendency toward psychological sickness which radiates throughout society, being passed on from one generation to the next. The negative effects of conventional education show up in the workplace, on social media, in churches, and in families.
What makes school so bad?
Why is it that modern schools inspire this fervent death wish in so many children? One popular theory is that bullying is the culprit. Much media attention has been paid to suicide rates among teenagers (without ever connecting the suicide statistics to the school shooting statistics), and researchers have seized upon bullying as a common factor shared by many of these cases. Indeed, bullying is rampant in schools across the country, but it is not the primary cause of the death wish. It is yet another symptom of the true problem.
In our society, minors are treated as an unfree subclass.
Both at school and at home, the majority of children have little to no autonomy. People under the age of eighteen are severely restricted in their day-to-day lives. They cannot decide for themselves where to go to school or what to study. They are legislatively prohibited from earning money. The majority of their activities are predetermined and scheduled for them by parents, teachers, and school administrators. During the school day the situation is even more dire, as they are not free to make even the most basic decisions for themselves that adults take for granted, such as: what to wear, who to surround themselves with, and even when to use the bathroom. The rights we expect as adults--freedom of speech, freedom of association, and privacy--are not afforded to schoolchildren. Their behaviors are controlled down to the most basic bodily movements: don't fidget, stay in line, ask permission to get up from your seat. Naturally, many of them rebel, and are punished, or worse, put on psychiatric drugs to make things easier for the adults at the helm of their lives.
School is prison.
I've said it before and I'll continue to shout it from the rooftops as long as I have breath in my lungs.
If, as adults, we were subjected to the daily torment that students must endure in American schools, it would not take long before the death wish took hold of us, before we started to become depressed, antisocial, perhaps even psychotic. And these children are forced into the terrorizing school environment nearly every day for twelve years of their lives. Is it any wonder that many of them become bullies in an attempt to exert some measure of control over their lives? Or that some turn to drugs to escape that reality? Or that others develop a desire to die, and perhaps even to take their tormentors out with them?
Modern schools are designed to break the spirit and produce conformity. Humans are naturally resistant to such efforts, and will rebel in whatever way they can. With suicides and opioid overdoses and school shootings, we are reaping what we've sown.
The reason it is so difficult to acknowledge this core truth is because it implicates all of us as aiders and abetters.
We, the adults who were assimilated as children into such environments of terror and who "turned out okay". We, as parents who send our kids off to prison each day because "what else am I supposed to do with them while I'm at work?" We, as taxpayers who support these public institutions that reduce innocent children to automatons, and then to statistics.
So how do we reduce school shootings?
Passing stricter gun control legislation is not going to cut it. Mental healthcare reform might help, if the focus is shifted away from medicating and toward supporting the holistic development of persons. But the real solution, the solution that will address the root cause instead of slapping a bandaid over a bullet wound, is to fundamentally change the way we treat children, both at home and in educational environments.
In order to survive to adulthood with their psyches intact, children must have at least one adult in their lives who can provide loving support and guidance. If you know a child who does not have a person like that in their lives, be that person.
In order to flourish, children must be given autonomy to make their own decisions and pursue their own interests. If you have a child in school, consider alternatives like homeschooling, unschooling, or alternative schools that do not so much resemble factory farms.
If you are a taxpayer, you must begin to see school shootings as an extreme but natural consequence of forcing impressionable humans into involuntary systems of assimilation. The money stolen from you through taxes literally funds school shootings. You must opt out in whatever ways possible.
Finally, if you are reading this as a teenager who has been forced into the public school system, know that your mental stability is worth protecting. Your happiness is important. Your freedom is non-negotiable. Persuade your parents or guardians that it is in your best interest to leave school. Show them this article. Share with them the resources listed at the bottom of this page. There are multiple alternatives to educational prison. If your parent does not have time to homeschool you, you can direct your own learning experience through unschooling or online schooling. Do not allow your spirit to be crushed. You are much more valuable than a piece of paper that certifies that you've met the educational requirements of the government. In most states, students can withdraw from school on their own recognizance at age 16. If your parents will not hear you, DROP OUT and never look back.
Resources:
John Taylor Gatto: The Purpose of Schooling (YouTube video)
Teenage Liberation Handbook
Dayna Martin, speaker and writer on Radical Unschooling
