Guns Are The Problem

Is that sign saying no guns, or no prohibition on guns?

The usual suspects are once again calling for stricter gun control if not outright bans on private ownership of guns, rhetoric justified by the most recent school shooting. Wherever you land on the gun debate, I submit this knee-jerk response, and the uproar it causes, distracts from an effective examination of what is going on in our society. How is it that in the past forty-or so years, a time-frame that has seen an increase in gun control laws, there can be an increase in school shootings?

Most over a certain age, particularly those who grew up in small-town or rural areas, well remember student’s vehicles with guns in racks as a common sight at school. Schools had rifle, sport, and sharp shooting clubs and competitions. In other words guns at school, particularly during hunting season, were so common the only notice taken was when someone got a new one and showed it off to buddies in the parking lot. And there was practically no such thing as a student shooting classmates and teachers. So, if the ubiquitousness of guns has decreased, why have these incidents increased?

It has been about forty years, in most school districts, since teachers were allowed to exercise sufficient authority to control student behavior. Perhaps there is a correlation? Still, the question remains, what changed, and what has driven this change? As someone who went to college to become a teacher more than four decades ago, and later returned to college for more degrees in psychology, I’m embarrassed I didn’t make this connection before. Follow along, and tell me if you don’t agree.

There is a teen movie that I particularly loathe from the early 2000’s that most teachers, those in social services and media wags love as a treasure trove of morals for young audiences. The platitudes they heap, one would think it must be a cinematic masterpiece, or some age-old, time-honored fable given a fresh retelling for modern times. Its title has even become a catch phrase in recent years. I’m talking about “Mean Girls”. If you don’t have daughters or granddaughters, you probably have never seen the movie but are familiar with the title as a descriptive phrase.

“Mean girls” conjures images of social cliques, bullying, and vapid, snobby teenagers, and those who act like teenagers. The movies’ moral is that the proper way to address bullying is helping the bullies understand how wrong their behavior is by recognizing the bullies too, are victims of a sort, even if only of their own behavior. In other words, mean girls aren’t bad, they just behave badly and if we understand and support them, they’ll stop behaving badly.

According to media wags, and a frightening percentage of society, this film is replete with positive messages about not judging others, being true to yourself, not thinking anyone is better than another and not gossiping and bullying. In the end, the awful consequence is those who engage in these behaviors end up feeling bad about themselves. And this is the most important part, the modern fable most central to the plot to understand and celebrate – we can never let people, kids in particular, feel bad about themselves.

To add insult to the injury of this toxic message, the former bullies are promptly forgiven with no continuing negative consequences for anyone, either bully or target. In fact, the formerly bullied welcome with open arms their tormentors. Failure to exonerate the bullies is the real sin, even for those who do not display, or have the capacity, for genuine remorse. That lack is characterized as vapidity and is proffered as an excuse for their previous behavior as well as their inability to recognize their culpability. They are too shallow, clueless, dumb, spoiled, to really understand so it’s okay, and they are presented as cutely, almost endearingly naïve.

The movie hammers this message home with a scene in which all the girls in the grade level are gathered and engage in a “Trust Exercise”. Each girl, and even teachers and administrators, take a turn confessing and then apologizing for having said or done something unkind to others. They then turn and allow themselves to fall backward from an elevated platform, to be caught and lovingly embraced by the rest of the girls as the apology is accepted and all is forgiven. Cue the collective sigh.

This film is no “Breakfast Club”. These characters don’t organically self-reflect and mature after exposure to those from other high school social strata. The underlying message of this movie is the belief that if we only just understand the hurt we cause others, we will change, be better, and all will be right with the world. And this is the reason I despise this movie. Rather than a positive message for kids and adults alike, if I could stomach recommending watching it, I’d say do so for an example of how individual accountability, responsibility and consequences are now seen as bad words in our national lexicon.

The other part that infuriates me about this movie is how it once again makes me feel it necessary to apologize for my chosen field. This movie derives its simplistic and inherently wrong predicate from a psychological school of thought, Humanism. Granted, it is a bastardization and incomplete application of a theory that has a valid utility, within and primarily if not exclusively limited however, to the realm of the therapeutic setting.

According to its founder Carl Rogers, Humanism is a therapeutic stance in which the therapist adopts “unconditional positive regard” and ”accurate empathetic understanding” to recognize the world view and experience of each individual. I, and nearly every therapist out there, acknowledge and agree with this orientation, in the therapeutic encounter. Let me repeat the last. In the therapeutic encounter.

Rogers, however, expands the theory to include an understanding of all human behavior, particularly maladaptive behavior. Humanist Psychology holds the predicate that all human beings desire to improve. Rogers believes that given the “right supports and opportunities”, every person will work to realize this desire for improvement. This lofty, simplistic idea fails to take into consideration human nature. Because of this fatal flaw, this is where I and others part ways with Rogers.

Adoption and misapplication of this psychological theory that all people desire to improve is the root cause of the failures in both our criminal justice and education systems. To be fair, it is more the fault of the selective and incomplete application of the theory than of the idea itself. A key part of Rogers’ theory that is forgotten, or ignored, are the concepts of responsibility, accountability and consequences as part of his “right supports and opportunities”. These are the crucial components therapists use to engender improvement in the lived experience of clients.

For the past twenty or so years, schools across the country have adopted policies predicated on this Humanist Psychology sans those key components of accountability, responsibility and actual consequences. Instead, they revert to the belief that the real consequences are the internal recognition of the bully that their behavior is not “nice”. Cute posters adorn classroom and hallway walls extolling the virtues of being kind. The message to not be a bully because it is not nice and hurts others’ feelings is everywhere. Kids are told if you have been bullied, or if you have witnessed it happening to another, tell a teacher or administrator and everything will be okay.

Cue the Trust Exercises, Peace Circles, Peer Supports and poster-drawing contests. In practice, what happens is, “kid, you’ve been bullied? Well, it doesn’t really matter, you’ll get over it, they don’t really mean to hurt you, now go back to class and try to fit in”. “And bully? What is making you do such unkind things? How can we support you to be better? Because of course, we know you want to be better. So, now that we’ve explained to you how you have hurt someone,  go and be nice”. The End.

Rather than end bullying, these policies in practice reward the bully. Always, bullying is an expression of power. We are, in every way possible, showing the bully and their target the bully has the power. Worse, these “trust exercises” often require the target to bare their soul and explain how the bully’s actions have impacted them, helping the bully recognize where to strike most effectively. But, we’re not finished victimizing the target and rewarding the bully.

The coup de grace is delivered in the part of these messages that is most stressed and usually not directly stated in the moment out of fear of giving ideas, the response to bullying can never be violence. So kid, you feel helpless and while gee, of course it’s not really your fault for being bullied, but the bully is not really to blame either. The loud and clear message here is, there is nothing that can or will be done about it, and there is nothing you can do either.

To really drive home this message home, schools have “Mutual Combatants” policies. It doesn’t matter the provocation, kids are told, if you respond even verbally, you too are punished. Most bullies are careful to ensure their actions are out of sight of teachers and administrators, so their targets’ response is what is caught and reacted to by those adults. Then, the kid who has been bullied is the one in trouble. And because their response is rage-fueled, they are labeled the problem.

Once upon a time, anyone over a certain age will attest, bullying was handled very differently. A classic example is the scene from “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie pounds the snot and blood out of his bully in a snowy alley. Ralphie got in trouble for the shocking words he used, but not for standing up for himself. In other words, Ralphie took his bully’s power away.

It used to be universally understood and accepted that a bully is at heart a coward who will stop only when they lose their power. This lesson was usually delivered physically and forcefully, either by the target victim or another on their behalf, causing the bully to suffer consequences sufficient to ensure the permanence of the bully’s education on the matter.

Given this Humanist orientation of education and school discipline, teachers and administrators, even if they are inclined to address the issue, have limited to non-existent resources or recourse. Kids, by-and-large, cannot be kicked out of school. In several of the districts in which I worked kids can’t even be removed from a classroom.

Granted, schools and administrators can’t encourage beating up bullies. The answer is also not to be found in “trying to understand them” and thereby allowing them to retain and even enhance their power over their targets. This is where the advice from previous generations, “kids need to toughen up”, comes in, and there is some truth in that. We used to say, “not everything is about your feelings and sometimes, you actually have to tolerate other’s not being nice”. But this overly simplistic response fails to recognize the differences in kids’ worlds today.

Bullying isn’t just at school, on the playground, or on the bus where these inherently damaging policies allow bullying to flourish unpunished. Kids today live their lives electronically; the bullying follows them on social media. And in real life. A kid who is being bullied at school can’t escape by going to a sports activity not associated with the school, either. Someone there will know someone at their school. Even if they’re not further bullied, the awareness that everyone in this supposedly separate place knows of their ongoing humiliation and shame reinforces their desperation. It is understandable then how this bullied kid can believe their tormentor is all powerful and they will never get out from under this pain.

This is how we end up with 11-year-olds committing suicide. And 14-year-olds shooting up schools. Then, we blame the parents, TV, video games, and movies. And of course, guns. So, blame everyone and everything except the underlying beliefs and their applied policies in which these horrific events were sown and grown.

This is the true mental health crisis. Schools and society create these mental health crises, then virtue signal with a campaign to decry bullying as they wring their hands and clutch their pearls. School administrators console themselves by rededicating efforts at stopping bullying, by reminding children to “be kind”. Of course, they also double down on the imperative that we need to understand why kids do the bullying, all while continuously failing to hold the tormentors accountable.

It gets worse. The bully, or bullies, are now victims because they too are presumed to be traumatized by the suicide of their target or the death of classmates and teachers. They have learned their lesson. Yes, yes they did, but perhaps not the one that is presumed. They learned they have the literal power of life and death.

The whole school, community and world will rush to exonerate their actions and place all the blame on their target. In light of these consequences, of course not intended and therefore not of their making, they must be supported through the aftermath of the collective trauma. Ignore the fact they instigated the whole chain of events. Daring to even have this conversation is catcalled as heartless. After all, the bully just didn’t understand, they too are hurting, and it’s not their fault their target “went crazy”.

Besides, the problem is the guns.

Category: Guns, Schools