musings on red lake

I know its not often that I put up any serious thoughts on my blog, but, like many people, I've been following the coverage of the Red Lake school shootings earlier this week. Today, in particular, I was listening to a radio segment on NPR about how schools can help identify potential shooters, and prevent these massacres from breaking out. By far and away, the consensus by the "experts" were that there should be much more outreach for children - not only the troubled ones who might potentially commit such acts, but also their peers that might report it before it happens.

I'm not disagreeing with these so-called experts, but the thing that struck me the most was the expectation of everyone for the school faculty to be able to either reach out or counsel these children. How do they expect guidance counselors, teachers, school psychologists, and the like, to be able to do that, when they are not offering the compensation that would attract the best and brightest? Now, you all know that I'm hardly a bleeding-heard liberal, but one thing that has always been appalling to me is the low, low salaries of teachers in the US. I know, because once upon a time, I wanted to be a history professor. But ultimately, the hard life and the compensation turned me towards industry, and I know post-docs who are having the same internal struggles right now.

The low compensation of teachers is not only about money and standard of living - its a clear sign of how much we do not value our educators out there. Being a teacher is incredibly rewarding, but with the number of childhood traumas and social issues out there - divorce is on the rise, broken families are the norm, adolescent depression and violence - its also a very tough call. My classmates from Penn, who took teaching jobs in NYC at $36,000/year, all got burnt out and went to non-profits - non-profits! who hardly pay more! The only schools that can afford to pay teachers a smidge more are private schools and and elite, rich surburbias a la Wisteria Lane. And, for the most part, those families have enough money for counseling, or, at the very least, health care.

In Asian countries, teachers are highly respected. And I don't mean just professors with a PhD from Stanford, I mean elementary school teachers. We do not call them by their names in Chinese; in Japan, they add "-san" to the end of their name, as a sign of respect. This is indicative of the very different values of the two cultures. I don't know how much they get paid in Asia, but their social status more than compensates.

At-risk youth have always been my particular hot button - not only do we sponsor several charities that service these youth (Covenant House, Lincoln Child Center), but some of you know my teenage stepsister is an at-risk youth herself. I'm not saying that she's right or justified in doing ANY of the things that she has done, but I can tell you from personal experience that they way they deal with troublemakers who clearly have mental and emotional issues is to punish, punish, punish. Mary sees a psychiatrist AND a social worker, and they are barely getting through. Not only is adolescent psychology a difficult and complicated field, but in many parts of the country, the people who actually hold these jobs are dissatisfied authority freaks who use their position to crush down the children they supposedly serve, rather than having the time, patience or insight to help them. When a psychologist says, "There's no cure, [your sister] is a hopeless case," that's just not right. Isn't it their job to have faith in the young? To not give up?

So... with the low salary of educators, and the defeatist attitude of adolescent psychology specialists, I ask you, how can you ask these people to reach out to prevent massive violence borne of emotional destruction when they can barely care enough to help kids graduate from high school? Until we value our educators more, until we have more insight into the psychology of children, and until we can recruit more passionate people, I would say that the hope of prevention comes only from fear of other attacks, rather than any good intentions.