Mass Murders in Schools

[William Kelly]

Charles Carl Roberts IV - Attacks Students at School

While I am now a professional journalist and historian, I was trained to be a secondary education teacher at the University of Dayton, Ohio School of Education.

After my freshman year, I toured Europe and visited A.S. Neil (A Radical Approach to Child Rearing) at Summerhill school in England.

Back at Dayton, I attempted to transfer to the school of Arts & Sciences but the Dean of the School of Education took me under his wing and became my private mentor. I was elected to the Academic Senate among the first group of students permitted to assist in developing school policy, and immediately motioned to take academic credit away from ROTC- Reserve Officer Training Class - (It was during Vietnam). At the same time I took a class in Military History from the top ROTC professor. After graduation I taught History and Civics part time at high schools in Ohio and New Jersey before drifting into journalism.

I have always maintained the ideas of Educational Refrom espoused by Neil, open classrooms, the world as a school, and developing student's interests, etc.

So it is very hard to comprehend the extreme violence that we now see being perpetuated on students and teachers at USA schools - beginning with Columbine years ago, and three incidents this week, where students and teachers are shot by other students or deraged intruders.

This of course, will only lead to more security at schools, metal detectors and security guards at doors, cops in the halls, etc., when I believe that schools should be open to all citizens of the community - especially the libraries and classrooms. In USA, schools are paid for by property taxes, yet those who pay for the schools only use them if they have children of school age, when schools should be open to all.

While most mass murderers either kill themselves or are killed in the incident, the first mass murderer in the USA, Howard Unruh - September, 1949 - was an army veteran who took out his irritation with neighbors by killing 13 of them in one spree, then surrendering. He is still alive, in New Jersey psch prison, and has been studied extensively, but the results of those tests are considered private, patient's rights. So we have little to learn from him until he dies.

Bill Kelly

bkjfk3@yahoo.com

Edited October 8, 2006 by William Kelly