when them is us
We shuddered again yesterday at the news of yet another school shooting somewhere.
Except this one wasn’t over there, this one was here. In St. Louis. Not in a “public” school. But in an elite Christian academy in West County.
Thankfully there was only one casualty, the shooter himself, and he will presumably have a full recovery. But the veil of invincibility has torn.
Violence in society is nothing new. The weapons change with our technological advancements. Just as we are able to communicate with others more quickly, we are also able to destroy them more easily. And economics plays a role. As trinkets have become cheaper in the past few decades, so too the weapons of war. We scan the heavens, the airwaves, and the internet for what makes our children so different in this generation of school violence, but I suspect there is nothing new. We’ve simply raised the stakes with the ready availability of weapons.
One solution of course is to try to remove weapons. A prohibition, gun control.
Although I’m not opposed to such measures, I suspect the more effect route is a more proactive one. We need to offer to ourselves and our children a moral education that keeps up with our technological one. Our technological learning has far outpaced the idea of a moral code book and our moral education needs to equip our youth to face violence in themselves and others. A moral education which embraces complex realities and faces ambiguity. A moral education which addresses both personal and communal responsibility. A moral education which equips us for conflict mediation rather than domination.
Children will be children, but we’ve created a world with advancing dangers. It is incumbant upon us as parents, religious leaders, and educators to reconsider the moral and ethical grounding that we offer to our children.
