Area parents, educators search for answers

By Jaime Walker
Senior News Editor

When Wes Beck heard the news that another San Diego high school student was accused of opening fire on his classmates last week, he said he couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread. As the assistant principal of discipline at Stephenville High School, Beck makes his living by helping high school students cope with the pressures of being an adolescent. But he spends sleepless nights worrying about how he might handle a shooting at his school.

“This kind of thing scares me to death because I know these kinds of incidents can happen anywhere,” he said. “With each one that happens, it becomes more and more apparent that (school violence) is not just something that happens in the cities, in the suburbs or in California — it reaches us everywhere. It has an impact everywhere.”

Ryan Brown/SKIFF STAFF

Two weeks after the shooting, Charles “Andy” Williams, 15, stands accused of killing two people and wounding 13 others at Santana High School in Santee, Calif., and 18-year-old Jason Hoffman is accused of wounding five people at his high school, just six miles down the road in El Cajon, Calif. Both incidents come almost two years after teen-agers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris opened fire on their classmates and teachers, killing 15 people including themselves at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

And the attacks have left people across Texas and the nation searching for ways to stop the violence.

“I don’t have the answers,” Beck said. “If I knew what to do about all of this, I would be traveling the lecture circuit. But the truth of the matter is that this (problem) is just too big to solve, too complex to understand and too scary to even want to really tackle the way we need to as a nation.”

Haunting memories

McKinney is a long way from Littleton, Colo., but when Suzanne Hartnell prepares her three children, ages 6, 10 and 12, for school in the mornings, it’s sometimes hard not think about the similarities the suburbs share.

“I guess sometimes I can be a bit neurotic and overprotective of my kids,” she said with a sigh. “But things just aren’t the way they used to be. I feel safer if I know where they are, what they are doing, who they are going out with.

“Think about it. If some crazy (person) can take a gun into a church (like) Wedgwood, and kids all over are bringing guns to school, what’s to say that kind of thing can’t happen here? It’s scary — first Columbine and now California. It’s sad, and as a parent, it scares me.”

Treva Hall of Waco shares Hartnell’s concern. As a mother of a high school senior and a college freshman, Hall said she struggles to find a balance between her instinct to protect her 18-year-old daughter, Kendra, and her desire to let her grow up.

“There are some nights I want to keep Kendra in the house and not let her out, but that is just not the real world,” she said. “I understand that her school is safe, but (society) ignores what’s been going on. I sure can’t.”

The media coverage of school violence is impossible to ignore, but the incidents reported on the news are misleading the public about the nature of the problem, said sociology instructor Keith Whitworth.

“National tragedies like the Columbine High School shooting raised the public consciousness about school violence,” he said. “But it is important to remember that data indicates that violence in Texas schools, in relation to student population, is not on the rise at all.”

Whitworth said according to research, parents and teachers have a higher perception about the prevalence of violence in schools.
“Media attention to these incidents might be feeding the fears of teachers and parents,” he said. “That same coverage is impacting students as well, but when your teachers, your parents and adults on (television) are afraid, it can add to student concern, too.”

Whitworth said the shooting at Columbine, when combined with the other attacks nationwide, shouldn’t necessarily indicate that violence is on the rise, but rather they should make the public more aware of the changing societal factors which are driving America’s children to resolve to using guns to solve their problems.

“Most of these attacks had warning signs,” he said. “The issue is complicated, and there is no simple answer. Although it might sound trite, until we return to the idea that our communities raise our children and begin to rebuild the family system, the downhill spiral will continue.”

Finding a solution

Hartnell works as a computer technician at Faubion Elementary School where her children attend. She said each day she comes home reminded how important it is to spend time with her family.

“I would never want to be a kid again,” she said. “I see how hard it is for some of them, and I thank God that I get to spend time with my kids. Those moments are precious and critical.

“There are so many kids who aren’t getting the attention they need. Parents need to take responsibility. All of us should be talking to teachers, helping with homework and participating in the lives of our children.”

Hall said if more parents taught their kids not to tease others and to show respect to those around them, she thinks kids would have the skills and understanding they need to handle conflicts more positively.

“It amazes me how many kids don’t know right from wrong,” she said. “It’s a parent’s job to teach children common sense, conscience and compassion. Families are decaying. As a parent I understand how busy life can get, but that’s no excuse for letting kids raise themselves.”

Whitworth said following the rash of violent school shootings, teachers and school administrators began to look for innovative ways to address the issue.

“There is a tremendous amount of research out there about the subject of violence in schools, and that should be a comfort to parents and teachers,” he said. “Schools are developing prevention programs, starting parent support groups, conducting workshops about how to identify potential victims and victimizers and taking lots of steps in the right direction.”

No guarantees

Beck said one of the biggest challenges he faces when he comes to work each day is dealing with the students who have grown up without having to deal with the consequences of their actions.

“We have a lot of kids who either have raised themselves or have their parents take care of everything for them,” he said. “Parents want me to make upstanding citizens of their kids, but that’s hard to do when they don’t teach them that every thing they do, good, bad or with a gun, has consequences.”

For Beck, the idea of having one of his students bring a gun to school is frightening. But he doesn’t think living in fear is going to help his students see the value of the education they receive at Stephenville High.

“Sure something could happen, and I worry about it,” he said. “But my real job is not to worry about those kind of maybes. It is to help my students, the ones who will be going on to college and the ones who will go on to be plumbers and electricians that school is valuable and so are they.”

There is no guarantee that the shootings in San Diego mark the end of the nation’s long, bitter and tragic pattern of school violence. But for parents like Hall and Hartnell and administrators like Beck, there is always hope that the violence can be stopped before it strikes too close to home.

“No one is immune,” Hall said. “We are all in this together. We won’t stop the hurt or solve the crisis until we come together as a nation. This is about America. It’s about our kids.”

Jaime Walker
j.l.walker@student.tcu.edu