Small Strokes Big Oaks

Today, as Americans spend the day commemorating 9/11, I want to turn our attention as educators to another great American tragedy that, I would argue, has changed the teaching profession more than 9/11 ever could.  Sure, the tragedy of 9/11 disrupted our psyches, took us off of our American pedestal, even launched us into a war.  But it is no secret that the world is not a safe place – that terrorists exist and that tragedies like this can happen at any time.  The tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, however, disrupted us all on a much more rudimentary level: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold took away our sense of safety in schools.

Columbine and 9/11 sort of framed my high school experience: Columbine was the spring of my freshman year of high school, and 9/11 was the fall of my senior year of high school.  Both of these events forced my typically self-centered, high school worldview outside of myself, but Columbine was the one that really upset my sense of safety.  Growing up in the Midwest, New York seemed far away, but school – now that was a place I went every day.  And just the thought that someone might bring guns into school and start shooting was something that I just couldn’t get over.

When I got to undergrad and into my education courses, I was bombarded with articles and books about “Teaching in a Post-9/11 World.”  I was always sort of shocked, however, that we almost never mentioned how to teach in a post-Columbine world.  Sure, kids have always felt like outcasts, especially in small-town schools, but this issue had now been brought to the forefront of American consciousness; dealing with bullying, name-calling, and students who consistently feel like outsiders – not to mention students who may be prone to violent tendencies – became so much more important after that day.  But 9/11 seemed to wipe that out of our consciousness.  Maybe this is because our brains can only hold so much tragedy at once.  Maybe, and probably more likely, we as Americans have a tendency to like to cast people not actually from America as the antagonists in our dramas.  It is unfathomable on so many levels for us to accept that there are terrorists disrupting us just as much from the inside.

Safa Samiezade’-Yazd, a writer and a friend of mine, has grown up Muslim in America, and also went to Columbine’s sister high school.  One of her friends was killed in the shooting at Colombine, and, as such, her personal memories of 9/11 and Columbine are often intermixed.  In an e-mail to me this week, quoted here with her permission, she wrote:

I just want the 9/11 weekend to be over. I just want people to get over whatever they’re holding against Arabs. It doesn’t do the 9/11 victims any good. Why doesn’t this country hold the same [stuff] against skinny bald white guys like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Harris? Or people who commit hate crimes in the name of Christ? How come it’s so easy to see the difference between white Southerners, Christians, and the Ku Klux Klan, but not the difference between Middle Easterners, Muslims, and terrorists? I’m not trying to sound bitter, but if people are going to hold it against one type of terrorist, they better be prepared to hold it against all of them… Columbine, Chatfield (my high school), and Dakota Ridge are all within five miles of each other. Before the shootings, they were the top schools in the county. Now they’re the top drug traffic schools. I went to Columbine’s sister school, my friend Kyle was the first one killed in the library, and four of my friends were injured. I remember the bomb threats, the FBI lockdowns, the newsreporters, the lack of privacy for grieving because cameras were everywhere.

It is especially important, as teachers in American schools, that we recognize 9/11 as one of the great tragedies of our generation that changed America forever.  It is also important – and I would argue more important – that we recognize the tragedy at Columbine as one of the equally great tragedies of our generation that changed America and also forever changed what it meant to go to school in America.  For Americans, school is a great right.  We tout over and over that, in America, everyone has access to public schooling.  It’s one of the things that makes America great.  But what about students for whom public school is not a viable option?  What about those students at Columbine now, who have to go to school amidst the stigma of tragedy?  What about students in East St. Louis, for example, who don’t even have working plumbing let alone teachers who are equipped with the ability to deal with the problems they face every day?  What about classrooms like the one described here, that have been filled with substitutes because certified teachers cannot be found to fill the positions even though thousands of teachers across the nation are out of work because of budget cuts?

Sure, you could argue that these schools have always been around, and school violence is nothing new, even before Columbine.  You could even argue that these issues have nothing to do with Columbine.  I would argue, however, that these issues are very much related to Columbine.  Now, students go to school and face at least two full lockdown drills a year, where the doors must be closed and locked, the blinds pulled, and the students need to get away from the windows and under the desks.  To me, the types of violence do not matter – whether it’s gang violence, a bank robbery in the area, or a shooter inside the school, students and teachers are still faced with it every day.  At the very least, Columbine brought these issues to the forefront, and these issues were quickly forgotten and replaced by other tragedies and other “bad guys.”  And I just cannot fathom why 9/11 seems more important for schools – and Americans – to discuss than Columbine, as was suggested by my undergraduate education.  At the very least, it seems they should be of equal importance.  Maybe this is because, after Columbine, the majority of Americans didn’t ever have to walk into a school again, but after people were killed in their offices and while flying in airplanes on 9/11, their lives were disrupted because it could have been them.

Well, thinking about Columbine, I think that this could have been me, and it is something that could happen in schools again – and has.  I’m not saying that Columbine is a more important tragedy than 9/11.  Not at all.  I’m just saying that it is equally important.  Terrorism is terrorism, whether the terrorist takes the form of radicals flying planes into buildings or teenagers bringing guns into school.  We should not blame all teenagers for what Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold did, nor should be blame all Muslims for what the terrorists on 9/11 did.  Likewise, we should not put all of our focus on the “bad guys” outside of America that disrupt our American way of life.  There are issues of terrorism within American schools that have changed the way we live, work, teach, and learn just as much, and it is important to address those issues as well.

So, today, honor the lives lost and the people – police, firefighters, the men and women serving our country – willing to give their lives to protect us.  But also remember that there are teachers and students who have also lost their lives in terrible tragedy, and when that anniversary comes around, or, even better, before that please don’t be afraid to talk to your students about school violence and a very different kind of tragedy that changed the way schools in our nation function.