Word to the Wise

[MsGuy]

All you grammarians and school marms need to watch your back. Someone may be looking for you.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57408608/cops-oakland-attack-suspect-upset-about-teasing/

[KMEM]

Although this may indeed be a horrible example of folks running amok, it is also an example of the freedoms that we offer in the US. Where else could such as this happen? I am not by any means condoning this kind of activity but by "restricting" such or "eliminating" such by governemnt "control" we shall indeed by "in trouble" for our freedoms.

 

I hope there is a middle ground here somewhere.

 

Best regards,

KMEM

[Samai139]

I'd be interested in knowing if the "teasers" in the run up to this horrendous shooting were Koreans or Korean-Americans or of some other ethnic background. When I watched television coverage of this yesterday, one of the instructors that was interviewed was clearly a caucasian American. Why am I curious? South Koreans have a reputation for putting tremendous pressure on their students--sending young people to evening classes etc. It has gone so far that many cities have established curfews to shut down the evening prep schools.

KMEM----not sure I understand your post. What "freedoms" are you referring to? The right to have/own/carry a gun? The freedom to have an education? Freedom to practice the religion of your choice? And to answer your question about where else it could happen? Well, I seem to remember a couple of incidents in Europe fairly recently where there have been mass shootings---several of young people and some in schools, particularly in the UK.

I'm waiting for those who are anti-bullying to jump on this case as a prime example of what happens when bullying occurs.

Finally to address MsGuy's concern: Teachers, and parents for that matter, have for untold generations been the "bad guys" when it came to correcting the mistakes of their students/children. Any teacher or parent who fails to set standards for their pupils or children has done more harm than the temporary loss of self-esteem that ensues when that person is corrected. Many ask what is wrong with American education. Perhaps part of the wrong stems from the fear that many teachers have in setting appropriate standards and requiring that their students meet them.

What happened in Oakland is tragic and should be seen as a tragedy not as an object lesson in anything.

[+ Charlie]

No doubt the "teasing" about his English language skills may have aggravated the shooter's craziness, but this was a 43 year old man with a history of problem behavior, not a bullied adolescent or a Korean schoolkid. Apparently, his original objective was to shoot the administrator who had expelled him, and when he found that she wasn't there, he took out his rage on whoever was available. Most of those who were attacked did not have typical Caucasian names, and some were described as nationals from other Asian countries.

 

I have known very few teachers of English to foreigners who ever belittled their students for grammatical errors. In fact, TOEFL/TESL teachers are usually idealists who are extremely sympathetic toward English-learners. Typically, I have had to admonish such teachers for not being demanding enough about their students' language facility. Fellow students, particularly young ones, are more likely to be the teasers.

[KMEM]

Well, there you have it, Sam, 3 posts and, at least, 3 different opinions of what might have transpired and why. If there are other posts, no doubt there will be even more opinions.

All posts had interest to me and mine was simply to state the US "still" has some rights and freedoms even though many have been usurped, albeit this was a horrible example thereof. Can we legislate a "cure" for this? Certainly, by removing even more freedoms.

 

Best regards,

KMEM

[ted]

Samai - check your facts please. The last "school shooting" in the UK was in 1996. For a worldwide list go here http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html

The UK(England, Scotland, Wales, not Northern Ireland) passed some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the world at least partly as a response to this incident in 1997.

 

There have been recent incidents in Toulouse(France) and a couple in Finland.

[+ glutes]

Herr Kaptain, how about mental health access?

 

"This is America, where you can find a gun easier than you can find mental health counseling." Oakland Mayor Jean Quan

[Samai139]

Ted--thanks for the link to the shooting in the UK---when I said "fairly recently" I hadn't realised it had been 16 years. I guess to me, as a senior, that is fairly recently, but I'll accept the rebuke and the correction. I was trying to point out to KMEM that other countries, which respect "freedoms" have also had mass shootings of students, although it seems that here in the USA there have been more and at different levels---high schools, universities.

 

KMEM--agree that until we have more facts on the shooter and the administrator he apparently was targetting and what went on at the college and in his life prior to this tragedy, we won't have the whold picture--if we ever will.

[+ Charlie]

These kinds of incidents almost always happen at either large public colleges or small, low-ranked private ones. At places like Virginia Tech, admissions offices are often required by federal or state law to ignore a student's mental health problems in admission decisions, and with the budget crunch of recent years, counseling services are often the first to be cut. At private schools, economic pressure often means that they have to take anyone who is willing to pay the tuition. Although Oikos calls itself a university, it is actually a for-profit vocational school with only three curricula (Biblical studies, music, and licensed practical nursing--i.e., the people in hospitals and nursing homes who do the grunt work of changing bedpans, bathing patients, etc.); its only accreditation is from the California Dept. of Consumer Affairs, not from any academic accrediting body. Since it is run by Korean-American Christian fundamentalists (its philosophical statement claims that the Bible is literally true in everything, such as the Adam and Eve story), it probably sees part of its mission as helping students like the shooter, who have virtually no other educational options. The fact that an LVN program for mostly young Asian women is not a good fit for a middle-aged man was not a consideration when they admitted him.

 

As long as postsecondary schools are forced by regulations or economics to take inappropriate students, incidents like this one will occur.

[KMEM]

Charlie-

 

What you say is very interesting but not nearly enough information to satisfy the many questions that your post "suggests". Who really knows what "mental health" is anyway? If one goes through the day without harming another, pays his or her bills on time and finds someone to love, what else is there? I realize that "harming another" can have an unlimited amount of variations. Being able to "cope" on some level or another might be good enough for many in this world or so I suppose.

 

Best regards,

KMEM

[+ Charlie]

You can eliminate "pays his bills on time": this guy had been evicted from a couple of places for failure to pay his rent, and was sued by a bank for failure to pay credit card debts. The killer at Va. Tech had a documented history of mental problems before and after his admission. Both of them had exhibited behaviors at their schools that had occasioned worried comments from faculty and other students.

 

I understand that one should not discriminate against students based on vague notions of mental health, and part of the American tradition is the belief that everyone deserves another chance, but we have to expect that at times we will have to pay a heavy price for those liberal ideals. I had a student who heard voices and often talked back to them; I learned she had been institutionalized more than once in the past, but she had to be admitted because she had done nothing previously to justify refusing her. She was finally expelled after she ripped a door off a classroom and threw it at a teacher who she claimed was the devil. I also had former convicts in my classes who I could clearly see were dangerous, either because they were crazy (one of them came to class wearing brass knuckles--there was no specific policy against them--and would stare hard at other students while constantly fingering them; he could not be removed until he assaulted another student) or because they were openly cynical about their reason for being there, which was because their parole officers demanded it. Another student, who had been released from prison after serving a term for manslaughter, was removed only after he was arrested for murdering the occupant of a home he was burglarizing. Yet another young woman, who had a history of psychiatric treatment for depression, told me after the course was over that she had several times sat outside my house all night in her car, with a loaded gun. The other students in all of those classes would probably have got more out of them if we weren't all preoccupied with those students who probably shouldn't have been there.

[KMEM]

Brass knucks don't sound like a vague notion of anything. Ideals always have a price, don't they? The wife of a friend of mine taught in a similar location some years ago. She was and is a sweet and truly interested in others person which I would like to think most of her students recognized but her car was "keyed" and the windows broken out on several occasions. Her husband was not happy about all this and finally got her out of there.

 

In addition to the many and several problems you list in the above post, I wonder how many folks are really at risk to themselves and others who have been "released" because their meds are "working". That seems only a viable situation under "controlled" conditions but in today's society we have neither the spaces, medicos or dollars, never mind the will, to adequately deal with this problem or so it seems to me.

 

Best regards,

KMEM