I have been writing for unit and region PTA newsletters for about 20 years. I have written about school shootings 4 times. Every time, I let optimism get in the way of realism and hope it is the last. I am obliged in a PTA newsletter to not sound off for or against an issue that is not the policy of the PTA. After all, it’s not my newsletter. I am writing now as just me: a mother, a wife, a physician, but also a volunteer advocate for children through PTA and school boards. When you compare the US to other developed countries, we nurture less and punish more. Anger is the coping mechanism of many of us. We have many neighbors who are living on the verge of disaster: underemployed, not making the rent payment, no health insurance, unsafe. It’s a miracle that so few ticking bombs explode. When one of us suffers the secret scourge of mental illness, no one knows about it until we are quoted saying “He always kept to himself. We didn’t really know him.” Sometimes we get to intervene, but it is usually to incarcerate rather than treat. It’s a common tale in America that a psychotic young man can’t get taken off the street for therapy without committing violence. Once the violence has occurred, assuming the perp has survived, it’s jail forever and no real treatment happens behind bars. And of course it’s too late for his victims. The other issue is access to lethal weapons. It seems to be easier to buy a gun in America than to adopt a kitten. Guns in the hands of criminal, depressed, angry, or crazy Americans kill 10,000 souls a year, including suicide and homicide. Modern amazing guns make school shootings horrible. You don’t have to be a marksman to hit your prey when your gun discharges dozens of bullets in a few seconds. And the heroic among us get mowed down before they can tackle the shooter. You can throw a desk at a knife-wielding villain but that technique is not much use against an AK47. The easy accessibility of guns is deadly. In 2007 I wrote this in The Beacon, the Western Region PTA newsletter after the Virginia Tech killings:

In 1977 my friend D shot herself in her lovely, confused head. She was just about 30 and we didn’t know she was sick until we cleaned up her stuff and found her strange writings. D bought a little pistol at an ordinary gun shop in Vermont. No one asked her if she was crazy or sad. She bought a box of bullets and used one. What if she had been unable to get a gun? The people who loved her did not get a chance to talk her down from a ledge. We didn’t get to stand vigil by her ICU bed while she drooled away 4 days of overdose coma. We just got to clean up her apartment, trying to not look for bits of her brain on the wall behind her bed. The Constitution says we can bear arms. A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. I don’t know how this applies in our time. I am sure the authors of the 2nd amendment never imagined our children’s current epidemic of death and injury by firearms, estimated to have 10 times the impact of the polio epidemic. This statistic arises not as much from the dramatic killings of school kids at school as from the one-at-a-time genocide that happens in our city neighborhoods. The founding fathers figured we would have to fight the people whose land we took and perhaps England again. They never imagined American depression, alienation, drug crimes, gang wars, drive-by shootings, or semiautomatic weapons. Assault weapons, tiny guns that fit in your Prada: are their owners the well regulated militia? I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if poor Mrs. Cho’s sad, murderous son had had to re-load after delivering 2 cartridges of buck shot. Surely he would have been tackled by his classmates and lots of the 32 dead souls would still be among us.

I don’t know how to advocate for gun control. I don’t want hunters to stop shooting the deer that destroy my apple orchard. I do think access must be restricted and licensing strictly enforced. I do think there is no justification for assault weapons to be available to the public. (Why would my neighbors need to commit an assault???) I am in despair when I think of how many millions of weapons are already out there. The only good that will come from the current massacre of 5-year olds will be some sort of action on gun control. Law makers seem willing to discuss it and advocacy groups such as the PTA that have shied away from this controversial issue are speaking up. It is too much to hope for that treatment of mental health will improve. I do not see how that can happen until all Americans have health insurance and mental health treatment is included in such a program. PTA needs to be a strong voice advocating for mental health and gun control. These are children’s issues.

The Beacon: my editorial 2011.12

Editor: Bullies

I wasn’t going to write about bullying. I am up to here with this subject. Give me something else to think about, please. But….it’s still there.

Two junior high BFFs, brainy teacher’s pets at the top of the class, both freckled, both science and music geeks. My daughter, now in her 20s, tells me that she was bullied by the blond soccer star and I never knew it real time. Her BFF was bullied too but we knew about it because she complained and was miserable. There were no suicides. The annoyance never got physical and did not continue into 10th grade. No one shot anyone.

Bullying is common. Bullying is natural. Bullies are famous. When you are weak, sometimes hurting someone else makes you feel strong. We know that bullies are not happy campers. They may be beaten, harassed, or neglected at home. They may have no supportive relationships. They may be full of self hatred. They may be unloved. Some people choose misery. Cutters, bullies. Are they looking for confirmation of existence? I inflict pain therefore I am?

Google “Character Ed Word of the Month” and wait 0.34 seconds. You get 425,000,000 hits. If our children write a story or sing a song about the Word of the Month, can they learn Fairness, Honesty, or Kindness if the adults around them do not model those qualities? If a child gets cruel treatment at home or at school for being some adult’s idea of annoying, it’s not easy to become an upstanding citizen. My mother smoked and Dad told me you were allowed to go 5 miles/hour over the speed limit when we caught him speeding. I know for sure 3 of the 4 kids in my family smoked at some time. It just doesn’t work to tell kids to do as I say with a cigarette in your mouth and we cannot be surprised to find we’ve raised a bully if we are bullies ourselves.

Sometimes the worst part of bullying is the sure knowledge that adults see it and can’t be bothered to do anything about it. Any anti-bullying program must include training for the adults around our children. All the adults in a school building need to be involved. The fashionable jargon is the concept of a building culture. A school building is a society and its culture includes norms of behavior and attitude that affect all members. It is hard but not impossible to make school a safe and nurturing place both for bullies and for their victims.

New York State has mandated that all public schools put in place programs that address diversity tolerance. PTA members need to be involved in the development of these programs and are ideally positioned to weigh in on the need to involve teachers and parents as well as kids.

Be the advocates for the children in your world. Be the PTA.

Anne Ehrlich
Editor, The Beacon
WRPTA Treasurer