School Sucks, Kill Yourself!

This article illustrates EXACTLY what I mean about the school system, with respect to this incident.

First, everyone is going to create significance around events that occurred in the past, purely because they want to make a connection to the present. It's the classic, "we knew he was going to be President way back..." phenomenon. So all these stories about the loner, weirdo, potential psycho-killer that are circulating are merely the projection of current knowledge onto past experiences.

But, more importantly, if you read through this article, the only palpable consistency is that everyone is trying to cover their own asses by saying "well, I thought...but nobody did anything about it".

So not only was Cho completely ignored by his community, to the extent that no one had enough personal contact with him to insure that he was psychologically and emotionally stable, but he has now been completely ostracized and demonized by his actions. And I'm not saying that this isn't a rational response, but it is DEFINITELY not a compassionate response.

Let's put ourselves into this kid's position for a minute. He's an immigrant. The son of immigrants. He's Korean and his parents run the local dry cleaner. His older sister is an overachiever. He's got bad skin and wears glasses. He grew up in Centreville, VA.

Now, let's characterize this from his perspective:

He's an outsider, from a family of outsiders. He goes to school in a mixed neighborhood, but his parents run the dry cleaner, so he will never be accepted by the rich kids, and the other poor kids are going to steer clear to avoid the stigma of hanging out with the dry cleaners' kid.
He's smart, but not as smart or attractive as his sister, who's always worked her ass off, got into Princeton, and has been the reason for his parents' utter dissatisfaction with him since the day he was born.
He ends up in college at Virginia Tech, which spans a wide range of income levels and backgrounds, but the social system is like any other suburban US college - most of the students are white, grew up in middle class suburbia, and socialize through a combination of tribal-clique warfare and the lubricant of intoxication. A lot of them are in college because that's the expectation. They don't work hard, they don't really care, and their parents are footing the bill, whether they can afford to or not.

I digress. Even if we can share his perspective, we will never know what it was that inspired his reaction to the circumstances of his life. But we could have done more to try to integrate him into mainstream society.

The US education system has two primary goals: socialization and control. Whether the Progressives put a different spin on it at the beginnig, or not, the public education system has always been about incorporating the poor and the immigrants (often the same) into the mainstream, industrial economy of the country. Inspired though it may have been by the horrifying living conditions of these groups at the time (early 1900s), the real motive that we can reasonably project is a desire to rid the streets of dirty, annoying, starving children begging and harassing the rich folks. And let's not forget the Puritan emphasis on gratitude.

In its control mechanism, the institutions of education have performed rather well. The social stigma attached to attending school until a certain age gets more ingrained through each subsequent generation. The marketplace demands a set of skills (or at least the proof thereof) that can only be attained through successful completion of the program. The relevance of the programmed skills is inconsistent (especially now) with the demands of the marketplace, but the proof of cooperation is almost a prerequisite for acquiring work.

The only people required to attend the US public school system are those that can not afford another option, or who do not come from a tight-knit community of people in similar circumstances. The school institutions are places where the underage (read: under elligible working age) individuals can be monitored while their parents peform various forms of labor for the society. It has been documented repeatedly that these people often get the jobs that no one else wants, so their value to the community is unacknowledged publicly.

The socialization aspect of the school system has been extremely successful in some respects, and a total failure in others.

Ironically, part of the socialization function is there to weed out those that do not buy into the value and behavior systems that the contemporary US culture espouses. Cho was one of those cases.

If we believe in the ideals of Democracy, we have to develop a system of socialization that incorporates and values the dissenting opinion without creating demons of those that act on those opinions.

There is always a way to reach someone, even through anger and disillusionment and depression, because there is always a way to understand someone else's perspective, even if you disagree with it.

No one in this institution of higher learning had a clue how to do that.

And this brings me to the secondary point: What the fuck is Virginia Tech doing by cancelling classes for the week?!

There's this thing that we all do, it's call LIVING. There's this thing that happens to people that are Living. It's call Life. Life consists of pleasant and unpleasant experiences, but every day the sun shines, you open your eyes, and you take your first waking breath.

If you don't know how to do that on the day after someone you know dies, what do you expect to happen? And, if an educational institution can't provide its students with the skills to handle this thing called Life, what, exactly, is it teaching?