April 25, 2007

For some reason I found myself compelled to rewatch "Dark Matter" from Season 2 today. It features a couple of high school kids who gun down several of their classmates. Sounds all too familiar, doesn't it? The case wakes up memories of painful teasing and worse for brainiacs Charlie, Larry and Amita. (Although how anyone can imagine Amita being anything but wildly popular is beyond me.) At the risk of being misunderstood, I've got a an open question:

When are we going to start asking ourselves what kind of monsters we are raising these days? And I'm not talking about the sad, sick, lonely kids who finally come to the conclusion that only violence will end their pain. I'm talking about the cruel popular kids who walk around looking like angels while they are breaking hearts and laughing about it. Do they deserve to be killed? Of course not. But should adults be taking a little more ownership of the culture that exists in high school, given the pattern that we've been seeing since Columbine?

If we had a zero tolerance policy on cruelty in our schools, we might have fewere incidences of violence. Just a thought. I wonder what Charlie would say ...