10 Years after Columbine: What’s Been Learned, What Should Be Taught?

An affluent suburb … 3:30 in the afternoon … 64 degrees and cloudy …

It did seem stranger than fiction in some sick way. Two teenagers, heavily armed, walked into a crowded high school and killed thirteen people before killing themselves. Of course, what Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did to Columbine High School exactly one decade ago was not fiction and the truth behind it is more complex than the plot to any way Hollywood could have portrayed it.

That this happened ten years ago seems hard to believe, and the anniversary itself has received attention in the media (USA Today has done some quality in-depth reporting); however, I don’t expect more out of major media outlets on Monday beyond interviews with survivors, commentary from “experts” on bullying, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly blaming it all on “liberals,” and narcissistic recollections of people who remember what they were doing that day.

What may not be asked, to be quite frank, is if we have learned anything, and the legacy of these shootings seems to be that we haven't or might never will.

In the aftermath of Columbine, because it was mistakenly believed that Harris and Klebold were bullied students who’d had enough, many schools strengthened bully awareness and zero-tolerance policies. The strengthening of such rules was purely reactionary, and while some schools probably have averted potential shootings because of their rules, the media has been littered with stories of students being suspended for pointing finger guns at one another or a student threatening another student in self-defense.

That’s kind of where the discussion seems to end, just as it does in our culture with tragedies like this. They always have the same news cycle: event, shock, cry, blame, and we eventually wind up sadly looking back years later to wonder what has changed.

And what has, I wonder?  Have we learned anything aside from watch your back in school because standing up for yourself gets you suspended and that discipline needs to be “one size fits all”? Is this not the legacy of Columbine?

Looking back, it just seems that while we as a culture clearly remember what happened, we haven’t really done anything, something noted by Salon’s David Sirota:

As Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's posthumous infamy turns 10 on April 20, I wish I were surprised that Columbine-like shootings are still happening, or even that our national discussion about violence hasn't yet matured past gun control and video games.

Perhaps it never will. The average high school senior was about seven or eight years old in 1999, and as history shows, the farther we get away from an event like this, the more and more distilled it becomes, passing almost into “legend” in a way that looking at it on a general, simple level allows the more surreal events of the day to be believed as “real” (although, I can’t imagine that the Columbine High School shootings are covered on any curriculum anywhere).

I feel like a broken record when I say that in order to teach tragedy we need to look at it objectively; you know, beyond whether or not a videogame caused this or if being nicer to someone can prevent it. It’s not just examining the events, but even how it is covered and presented to us in the media—from the first-day reporting to exploitation.

We are slowly moving toward what’s depicted in “Shoot,” the never-published version of DC Comics’ John Constantine: Hellblazer #141. In the aftermath of a school shooting, Penny, a woman studying such killings is looking at tapes of several incidents. She eventually is visited by the book’s main character and at the end, they have this exchange:

Constantine: You’re not looking at what’s on these tapes … look at this.

Penny: I see a kid that’s going to kill another kid for no goddamn reason.

Constantine: No, look. He’s drawn the gun and none of the children are running away. I see kids in a schoolyard in some dead-end hole of a town in some asshole county in some crumbling state with no education and no hope and no future and they’re waiting. They’re just standing there. Born into a life that’s already slid out of view. Looking forward to turning out just like their mommies and daddies. Life already lived for them. Life in a world mommy and daddy couldn’t be arsed to build properly. A world that makes no fucking sense. A world where kids actually go to special classes to learn to recognize real emotions and body language because they were raised by the television. They’re kids, for Christ’s sake. This is the best response they can manage to the insane fucking world they’re in. They stand there and wait for the bullet. Look at that piece of tape again. Really study it. Look at the kid’s mouth. He’s not running. He’s not screaming. He’s about to have his face shot off and he’s saying something quietly. Look at his face, look.

Kid on video: Shoot.

I wish I were more hopeful, but sadly, I'd be surprised if it were any different because we still refuse to ask the most uncomfortable questions.

Tom Panarese is currently in his fourth year as an English and journalism teacher and yearbook adviser in Virginia. Prior to a career in education, Tom worked in marketing as a proposal writer for a a variety of companies in technology, telecommunications, and law. Tom's essays have been published in print and on Education Week. He blogs at the often gut-busting The Uninspired Teacher.