Shooting Our Children with Ignorance and Irresponsibility
Education, Emotional Health and Our Responsibility to Young People
After a year of soul-searching, suicide workshops, adding extra counselors for students, and of course the millions of dollars spent on new college security systems, many of us who teach on colleges across the country are still wondering: Can we really protect our students from the epidemic in gun violence that not only besets college campuses but our society in general? Or, should we do what we are essentially trained to do: respond to social needs, examine the causes and issues, and give our students the skills and practical knowledge to recognize the crucial role health plays in every aspect of their future?
With yet another horrendous act of violence on our campus, here in my own state of Illinois, when are we going to wake up and realize that the health of the body and mind is not only critical to a student’s ability to learn but to our society’s ability to function as well.
Off the top of my head, here is a tally of some of the subjects students wrote about in my creative writing classes last semester: suicide attempts (6 different students); sexual abuse (4); domestic abuse (3); rape (3); alcohol and drug addiction (too many to remember); self-mutilation (3); panic or anxiety disorder (6); anorexia (4); gun violence (3). I wish I could say that these pieces of writing were fiction, but I teach what is commonly referred to these days as creative nonfiction.
Students in my classes are wrestling with emotional, psychological and physical problems that are affecting not only their health but their ability to learn and contribute to society. Putting aside the troubling reality that many students have limited access to comprehensive health care, why is it that those who consider themselves in the vanguard of social change and progressive thought (university officials and professors) are not actively finding ways to help our students? Why aren’t we using this crisis as a means to educate students and teachers alike in the conditions that are producing such emotional ill health? How many more shootings do we need?
For the last ten years in all of my classes I have made it a central assignment to give students an opportunity to read, research, reflect and write about their relationships with their own bodies as well as the many social conditions that affect the health of young people. As a part of this assignment, I incorporate body/mind awareness techniques such as meditation, breath and yoga poses. (I’m a trained yoga teacher and have taught workshops for people with HIV as well as health care workers in many different countries.) I’m not a therapist nor sociologist, but I’m stunned by the essays I read every term. The essays are full of anger, confusion, isolation, misinformation, fear, and pain. They break my heart. But the real horror that I feel each time I learn of yet another shooting on campus is the collective attitude of educational institutions, government and business leaders who believe that they bear little responsibility for the epidemic raging in the bodies and minds of our young people. We speak about “change”; we are entertained by movies about the health industry; we write academic essays about injustices; we pride ourselves on the newest advances in technology. And yet, we continue to sell goods, foods, and services as well as seats in college classrooms believig someone else will take up the cause, pay the bills, do the work it will take to protect and teach our children. But each time these shootings occur the gunman reflects not only an individual’s loss of sanity and conscience but a society that has lost its sense of what holds it together: civic responsibility and social compassion. The only collective action we seem able to share in these events is that of our rage and sadness.
Over the past 20 years neuroscience has given us more and more evidence of just how dependent brain function is on the health of not only the body but on the family and the community as well, which, in itself, is nothing we didn’t already know. But the evidence is overwhelming. Yet, we continue to ignore the obvious, dragging our feet on health care, making money off of people’s fear and ignorance, and worst of all spending billions of tax dollars for schools and universities that remain teaching as if we were living in the 1950s. Why is it that educators boast of classrooms where students can access knowledge from any corner of the globe but yet ignore their responsibility to inspire students to discover the wisdom stored within their own bodies?
After a year of soul-searching, suicide workshops, adding extra counselors for students, and of course the millions of dollars spent on new college security systems, many of us who teach on colleges across the country are still wondering: Can we really protect our students from the epidemic in gun violence that not only besets college campuses but our society in general? Or, should we do what we are essentially trained to do: respond to social needs, examine the causes and issues, and give our students the skills and practical knowledge to recognize the crucial role health plays in every aspect of their future?
With yet another horrendous act of violence on our campus, here in my own state of Illinois, when are we going to wake up and realize that the health of the body and mind is not only critical to a student’s ability to learn but to our society’s ability to function as well.
Off the top of my head, here is a tally of some of the subjects students wrote about in my creative writing classes last semester: suicide attempts (6 different students); sexual abuse (4); domestic abuse (3); rape (3); alcohol and drug addiction (too many to remember); self-mutilation (3); panic or anxiety disorder (6); anorexia (4); gun violence (3). I wish I could say that these pieces of writing were fiction, but I teach what is commonly referred to these days as creative nonfiction.
Students in my classes are wrestling with emotional, psychological and physical problems that are affecting not only their health but their ability to learn and contribute to society. Putting aside the troubling reality that many students have limited access to comprehensive health care, why is it that those who consider themselves in the vanguard of social change and progressive thought (university officials and professors) are not actively finding ways to help our students? Why aren’t we using this crisis as a means to educate students and teachers alike in the conditions that are producing such emotional ill health? How many more shootings do we need?
For the last ten years in all of my classes I have made it a central assignment to give students an opportunity to read, research, reflect and write about their relationships with their own bodies as well as the many social conditions that affect the health of young people. As a part of this assignment, I incorporate body/mind awareness techniques such as meditation, breath and yoga poses. (I’m a trained yoga teacher and have taught workshops for people with HIV as well as health care workers in many different countries.) I’m not a therapist nor sociologist, but I’m stunned by the essays I read every term. The essays are full of anger, confusion, isolation, misinformation, fear, and pain. They break my heart. But the real horror that I feel each time I learn of yet another shooting on campus is the collective attitude of educational institutions, government and business leaders who believe that they bear little responsibility for the epidemic raging in the bodies and minds of our young people. We speak about “change”; we are entertained by movies about the health industry; we write academic essays about injustices; we pride ourselves on the newest advances in technology. And yet, we continue to sell goods, foods, and services as well as seats in college classrooms believig someone else will take up the cause, pay the bills, do the work it will take to protect and teach our children. But each time these shootings occur the gunman reflects not only an individual’s loss of sanity and conscience but a society that has lost its sense of what holds it together: civic responsibility and social compassion. The only collective action we seem able to share in these events is that of our rage and sadness.
Over the past 20 years neuroscience has given us more and more evidence of just how dependent brain function is on the health of not only the body but on the family and the community as well, which, in itself, is nothing we didn’t already know. But the evidence is overwhelming. Yet, we continue to ignore the obvious, dragging our feet on health care, making money off of people’s fear and ignorance, and worst of all spending billions of tax dollars for schools and universities that remain teaching as if we were living in the 1950s. Why is it that educators boast of classrooms where students can access knowledge from any corner of the globe but yet ignore their responsibility to inspire students to discover the wisdom stored within their own bodies?
posted by Unknown at 1:43 PM
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