Another perspective on Littleton

[Michael Shell]

Friends,

A "computer geek" friend of mine sent me the link to the following long
article from SlashDot, an e-zine for geeks.  I think it is very important
that these young voices be heard.

After my initial grief over the Littleton killings themselves, my own
response to the follow-up stories about the subculture of Columbine High
School was to feel again my own adolescent resentment and rage toward all
the high school "jocks and preps" who, 35 years ago, teased and abused me,
because of my own nerdy outsider character.

I am greatly disturbed that our culture is now up in arms over the
"outsiders," instead of over the brutally hierarchical, social
clique-dominated school subculture in which we raise our children.  It is
the classic human response: blame the ones who are different, not the
culture which is sick.

Sorry for tending to rant here.  Between this horror and our continued wars
against Iraq and Serbia and others, my "1984 paranoia" is being triggered
in a lot of ways.

Any helpful thoughts from other Quakers?

In the Light,
Michael.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><>
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/25/1438249&mode=thread&threshold=0>

Voices From The Hellmouth

Posted by Jon Katz on Monday April 26, @12:26PM EDT 
from the Geek-Profiling dept.

In the days after the Littleton, Colorado massacre, the country went on a
panicked hunt the oddballs in High School, a profoundly ignorant and
unthinking response to a tragedy that left geeks, nerds, non-conformists
and the alienated in an even worse situation than before. Stories all over
the country embarked on witchunts that amounted to little more than Geek
Profiling. All weekend, after Friday's column here, these voiceless kids --
invisible in media and on TV talk shows and powerless in their own schools
-- have been e-mailing me with stories of what has happened to them in the
past few days. Here are some of those stories in their own words, with
gratitude and admiration for their courage in sending them. The big story
out of Littleton isn't about violence on the Internet, or whether or not
video games are turning out kids into killers. It's about the fact that for
some of the best, brightest and most interesting kids, high school is a
nightmare of exclusion, cruelty, warped values and anger. 

The big story never seemed to quite make it to the front pages or the TV
talk shows. It wasn't whether the Net is a place for hate-mongers and
bomb-makers, or whether video games are turning your kids into killers. It
was the spotlight the Littleton, Colorado killings has put on the fact that
for so many individualistic, intelligent, and vulnerable kids, high school
is a Hellmouth of exclusion, cruelty, loneliness, inverted values and rage.