More Information on School Shooting in Campbell County
Thanks to all the commenters on this blog for their insightful comments on the Campbell County School Shooting. One commenter indicated that he attended Campbell County High School where the shooting took place and offers the following description of the school. This is an interesting report although I do not personally know the commenter:
I find this quote from a former student very interesting as it is consistent with my research on kids who are violent at school. In my research, I found that of the kids who said they had engaged in violence, 23% of them said that school "felt like jail to them." What do prisoners in jail do when they feel treated unfairly? They tend to riot.
Thanks to another commenter for pointing out a story in the Knoxville News-Sentinel with more information on the suspect, Kenneth Bartley.
Update: It's interesting that China is having problems with school violence also--via Peenie Wallace.
I was a student at Campbell County Comprehensive High School. The school was a de facto prison. In fact, if you were to make the journey to LaFollette, Tennessee and drive past the school, you would be hard pressed to determine, without reading the sign, whether the campus was that of a prison or that of a school. It is complete with barbed wire fence, guard shack and police officer.
Based on my experiences, I would suggest that the administration focus more on engaging the children in their task, learning and preparing for the future, and less on dominating their charges.
I find this quote from a former student very interesting as it is consistent with my research on kids who are violent at school. In my research, I found that of the kids who said they had engaged in violence, 23% of them said that school "felt like jail to them." What do prisoners in jail do when they feel treated unfairly? They tend to riot.
Thanks to another commenter for pointing out a story in the Knoxville News-Sentinel with more information on the suspect, Kenneth Bartley.
Update: It's interesting that China is having problems with school violence also--via Peenie Wallace.
posted by Helen at 2:56 PM
24 Comments:
I agree that schools shouldn't feel like jail. But this is a far more general problem, and a somewhat different problem, than kids bringing weapons to school.
I think that it's important to stick to the facts of the case. Bartley brought the gun to school either on a dare, or as illicit show-and-tell, or something else like that. That's not rioting. He was called to the principal's office because other students tattled on him. That's not roiting either. Finally when the assistant principals lunged at him to take his gun, he shot them. That could be called rioting, but it is a response to something much more specific than that the school feels like a prison.
Now I don't doubt that the shooting victims here are crude and strict school officials. I have no reason to believe that they are truly heroes. But on the other hand, surely if they have been shot, they deserve a break. If nothing else, in this discussion the schools have been getting it from both sides. Either the school is a politically correct happy farm whose employees aren't any real discipline, or the the school is a nasty prison that lays the discipline too thick. The school can't win in a discussion like this, even if every school employee were Einstein crossed with Lincoln and worked under perfect rules.
As long as school is compulsory, there are going to be kids who think that it's prison. Every fifth teenager in America thinks that school is prison. What makes this case really stand out is the deadly weapon. I think that it's a good question whether Bartley Sr. even did the first thing to keep his son from taking the gun to school. Unfortunately the police have already announced that they have no interest in that question — maybe they are NRA types who think that it's the worst question in the world — even though they want life without parole for his son.
I have to question if it is proper or ethical to name a particular teacher at the school, and then post critical accusations about him. Was there any verification of the claims made about the teacher? Was the teahcher contacted? Were other students contacted? Was there any need to post the teacher's name?
intentionaly do what? tis just a joke.
In March of last year, I watched in horror as the events in Loudon County unfolded. A man, a husband, a father to be, deputy sheriff Jason Scott was gunned down by Michael Harvey. The prevailing thought I had was, There but for the grace of God, and lithium ...
Again, when I heard the news from Campbell County, the reports about the boy, the young man, who had taken a life with his own hands, I could not help but see many similarities in the behaviors between the shooter and my own son.
My son has bipolar disorder plus an alphabet soup of co-morbid disorders ... ODD, OCD, PTSD. He came home today after spending 3+ weeks in a court ordered evaluation at a mental hospital (Peninsula, for you Knoxville area locals). He had a total belligerant manic rage in front of deputies, and even insisted that he be arrested. Whether it was a cry for help, or a bid at self-destruction, I do not know. But fortunately, we are back on the path to stability, and hopefully, a productive life for him.
I see the same things in all three boys ... backed into a corner, with no way out, instead of taking a sensible path of surrender or simply stopping the behavior, they lash out instead, seemingly mindless of the consequences that will befall them by escalating the situation. Perhaps the only thing that kept my son off the front page of the Knoxville News-Sentinel is the lack of access to firearms. Maybe he could have stopped himself before it reached that point, perhaps I could have seen the signs well enough in advance. Or maybe not. Maybe we just got lucky, got a judge savvy to mental health issues instead of one that just wants to throw these kids away, and he got his last chance.
Living in this bizarro world of Bipolarville as I do, tuning into the skewed and screwed up thought processes of the bipolar brain my son has, where crazy is "normal" and "normal" is some alien planet many light years away ... I hear the details of Ken Bartley's life and his rampage, and I understand. God help me, I understand.
I see the seeds of what sometimes turns into Michael Harvey and Ken Bartley in other kids too. Some turn it inward, and simply self-destruct. Some seek out relief and solace in drugs and alcohol. The lucky ones, if the word luck can be used in this context, they face a lifetime of medication, therapy, being different and struggle. But there are those few, like Michael and Ken, in whom the seeds grow into something so dark, so evil, so deadly, most of us cannot even fathom the motivations that bring them to that point.
Helen ... I SO admire you and the work you do. It is because of professionals like you who do try to understand these kids, so that we have a fighting chance at finding those seeds in others before they grow into something this horrible.
I cry tonight ... for Jason Scott and Ken Bruce, their loved ones, for Gary Seale and Jim Pierce and everyone else these boys have hurt. I cry also for Michael, for Kenny and for my son and thousands of other youths everywhere who are in pain, who's lives and futures hang in the balance ... and for the system that is systematically failing every one of us. ALL of us suffer for this failing.
Allicent. Good observation.
IMO, there is a problem with control.
If we can't control a situation, we feel anxious.
If we can control a factor in a situation, that's good. Unless it's irrelevant.
What we can control we like to believe is decisive.
What we can't control is not important.
The point is that we assign decisivenessto that which we can control in order to think we have control.
So, in school shootings we think of bullies. Because we think we can control bullying, even though, as at Paducah and with Kip Kinkel, and with Columbine, no bullying has been demonstrated. But we grab onto it so we can feel less helpless.
A number of us try to make the Israelis do the conceding in the Middle East because we can control the Israelis, or think we can.
We can't control those insane Palestinians, so we don't see them as important. That which we can control becomes decisive.
So you will see in talking about school shooting.
LissaKay: I don't mean to minimize your family situation, which is not my business anyway, but I can say that masochistic, accusatory tantrums are more common than you might think. These are the tantrums where the kid demands every punishment that he can think of, and then accuses you of having it all in store for him anyway. As unpleasant as these scenes are, they are "normal" immature behavior. Most kids do grow out of it. On the other hand, if your son has a ten-fold dose of the tantrum streak, then maybe treatment is important. (Although I'd be suspicious of an alphabet-soup diagnosis — you would think that one acronym is enough.)
A related point is that most kids in this world are simply not possessed by deadly evil. A deadly weapon makes all the difference in interpretation, even if the kid himself is exactly the same. If he is unarmed, a tantrum is just a tantrum. If he's armed and throwing a tantrum, then people will say that he's gone to the Devil, because they're really scared.
The only people that I have seen who really seem possessed are either homeless or have clearly organic mental conditions, like autism or schizophrenia. Everyone else is, at worst, at the bad end of the normal range.
Allicent,
The analogy to schools as prison is a sort of metaphor for what is in the mind of some kids who think of violence at school. They feel trapped, see no way out--school is actually important to them--hence the higher functioning kids who go on shooting sprees. If the school atmosphere becomes oppressive to them, they feel the rules are hypocritical, and they have emotional problems--the mixture can be a bad one. In my research--hatred of school did correlate with violence. I do think we need to look into the school atmosphere as a possible contributer to violence but not the only one of course. Much goes into the making of a school killer--the person himself, his thoughts, his emotional makeup, etc. The intelligence I see in some of these kids leads them to find what they need to get the desired results. I have seen kids concoct bombs, use knives, steal guns, crack safes. etc. The question to me becomes, how do we intervene way before this pattern escalates into violence?
The real standout in this case is not the school atmosphere, but the home atmosphere. The profile report explained that Ken Jr. also smoked pot and obtained Oxycontin, and that he was rumored to be in reform school for some months, but "no one seems able to say for sure where he went". At the same time, his parents were divorced and he was also in trouble with the law for assaulting his mother.
So the question in this case is whether Ken Jr. had to do any real work to hide his mischief from his dad, or whether his dad was simply too busy with his convenience store. I don't know the real facts in this particular case, but what has been said so far resembles the classic indifferent home environment. That kind of home environment does explain a lot of juvenile crime. It's the home environment that was powerfully portrayed as John Conner's foster home in Terminator II. One of my son's friends last year lived that way, too, and it was just very sad. Except that neither John Conner's foster parents nor my son's friend's mother left guns lying around the house.
In my view, the proper role of psychiatrists is to treat people who actually have something wrong in the head, and not just a bad home. If the real problem is the home environment, then the therapist is an expensive rented parent who also dispenses drugs. Now maybe the best that the system can do for these kids is to provide paid extra parents. But if so, I think that these rented parents should dispense fewer drugs and also avoid alphabet-soup diagnoses.
Greg,
Perhaps Terminator II is not the best place to get an accurate portrayal of juvenile crime. Sure, a poor home life might contribute to juvenile crime--but in school shooters cases, there is much going on that is different than an ordinary criminal. Many of them have never been in trouble with the law prior to the offense, or if they have, it is minor. Parents are not always to blame in these cases, much as people would like to do so. Try reading The Nurture Assumption which is book about how peers and others play more of a role in a child's life than parents. There are kids who have a poor home environment because of their poor behavior at home. I have seen numerous parents who are good people be at a loss of how to cope with their kid's moodiness, anger and sheer oppositional behavior. Until you have lived with a kid who has threated to kill you and meant it, it is difficult to believe what these kids are capable of--with and without a gun.
I am no stranger to oppositional behavior and I completely understand that the parents might not be to blame. Sometimes the parents are completely dedicated but they have been dealt a very bad hand, either that one of their children has a really serious mental illness, or that they themselves are disabled or struggling to make ends meet. Kip Kinkel's parents, for example, had a problem that was far beyoned their control, namely that Kip had and has paranoid schizophrenia.
But at the same time, I don't think that you should talk past the home situation as if it's just a side issue. If the parenting is dysfunctional, that can multiply a behavior problem by ten. One of my son's friends is a clear example of that. He could be, or could have been, a nice enough boy. He could be the kid who is usually mature and caring and only sometimes wild, who sometimes gets a C in school when he should have gotten an A. Instead he stays up past midnight every night and got an F in three classes. He is convinced that the school is against him. I don't know that he does drugs, but he is clearly at risk for it. Why is it this terrible? For one reason, his dad died, his mom is in a wheelchair, and they have no car. His mom can't travel with him, she can only get upset when bad news is delivered.
At a personal level, I am inclined to withhold judgment of the parents of any troubled child, if I do not know the details of their lives. Maybe they have done all that they can. I do not really know what Ken Bartley Sr. did or did not do for his son. But the descriptions leave the door open to the dysfunctional home, the home where the parents can't or won't take the simplest precautions. I don't think that we should minimize that problem.
Concerning peer infuence: Actually it is a fair point that peers also have a big influence on kids. But do peers matter more than parents? That strikes me as putting the cart before the horse. You as a parent ought to be able to name two out of three of your kid's best friends. And to give at least some semblance of advice about the quality of those friends.
Also, in the annals of bad parenting — again, I realize that there exist good parents who are just overwhelmed — I also wanted to mention parents who think that meds are the only effective way to improve behavior. A friend of mine did some tutoring for a family of this type (according to my friend's account). The daughter that he tutored did not get along with her psychiatrist father, which led to medication. Dealing with the daughter became confusing, because they cycled through so many meds that they lost track of her baseline personality.
Even though this family was committed to meds, they were rather less committed to rules. In particular, they seemed suspicious of my friend for wanting their daughter to do her homework. Eventually he quit over this.
This to the person that say that Campbell County High School looked like a prison. It does not. I attended that I school I graduated from that school. It was the most memorable times of my life. That school was home to me. I spent more time there even after school doing activites than at my house. I talked to my teachers more than I do my own parents and a lot of those teachers, help you they treat you like family so the person who wrote it could shut up because we don't need people like him talking for use when all they know how to do is lie.
I do not attend Campbell County high School, or even live in Lafollette, but alot of my family does and evrey year I spend the summer in the small town. I dont know if you could classify it as a close knit town or not, the only things that are holding it together are social security checks, drugs, and a corrupt poliece force. It is no wonder Kenneth resorted to violence in a town where ten year olds are popping LL's and smoking weed, and in the school you are constricted and fed with lies about the world around you. The 'unofficial' storey going around town is that Ken was a good kid who, like every other teenager in that town, did drugs from time to time. He didn't go to school with the intentions of killing one and seriously injuring two, he was going to trade the gun for pills, but Mr. Seals, the principal, taunted him. After they called him into the office they asked him if he had a gun, and he said yeah and pulled it out, the clip wasn't even in it. Mr. seales laughed and said, "I bet thats not even real" and Ken said, "let me show you" and loaded the clip right infront of them and started firing. The town is going to hell as it is and this incident really isn't going to change a thing. Something has to be done before more then just one dies in a hail of gunfire.
Your story is way off. That is not what happened. Because the facts have not been released to the public, it does not surprise me that this is the unofficial story going around. Do you really think the kid had time to load the gun, put the clip in, right in front of three administrators? That might have been a good time to get the gun, wouldn't you think? Instead of waiting until the bullets were loaded and the clip was in? And parents are to blame in most cases. Parental neglect (ranging from lack of appropriate supervision/guidance/and structure to a complete lack of regard for a child's welfare) and/or parental abuse(verbal, physical, sexual)is the number one reason children commit crimes. And you will find that the people who dispute this, are the "poor" parents themselves.
I have one more thing to add to my above comment. Mental illness is another reason that children commit crimes. Not to mention that mental illnesses are often triggered by abuse and neglect (feeling unwanted and unloved can lead to self-esteem issues, increased risk taking, rage, lack of concern for others and self, anger management problems, depression, drug abuse, feelings of worthlessness, suicide, and deep issues of abandonment).
But your one comment that "Kenneth was a good kid", is correct. He is a wonderful child. However, his drug use was far more than the average teenager. I must also add that I absolutely loved this quote from an anonymous writer about three posts above this one, "I dont know if you could classify it as a close knit town or not, the only things that are holding it together are social security checks, drugs, and a corrupt police force. It is no wonder Kenneth resorted to violence in a town where ten year olds are popping LL's and smoking weed, and in the school you are constricted and fed with lies about the world around you." Great quote and very true. However, I believe eight year old children are now popping LL's in Campbell County. I believe the locals call this child "L-head", if I am not mistaken. His father sells LL's out of his lovely rotting home and gives them to his eight year old son for fun. This is the same wonderful town where I once heard a man say, "See that car over there. That's an undercover cop. He's been watching that house on the hill for a while now. The guy who lives there sells meth to everyone. He knows the cop is watching his house. Everyone knows the cop is watching his house. He still sells to everyone and their brother. He doesn't care."
The gun was already loaded with the clip in when Kenneth left for school that day.
I can't speak to the environment in which Kenneth was raised after his parents divorce, except to say that I am old friend of Kenneth's de facto "step-mother". I do know that she was raised well. She came from a very "functional", and emotionally engaged family. As a college friend of hers for three years, I was always envious of the family in which she grew up.
If even a little bit of her upbringing rubbed off on Kenneth, then I can't really understand how this happened.
Sincerely,
A Wooster friend from Ohio
This comment has been removed by the author.
I went to Campbell County High School. It does not feel like a prison. Having a fence around the school is no big deal. I think its acctually a good thing. The guard shack is there to keep kids from skipping school.
Also, I have known Kenneth since the 4th grade. His parents should take alot of the blame, because they were not so great. I wonder if anyone here realizes that Kenneth's father was also arrested for illegal gambeling machines in his convinent store? The fact of the matter is that Kenneth had problems. He was previously removed from the school system for violence. It is Dr. Judy Blevins who allowed him back into the school system upon his mothers (a friend of Dr. Blevins) request. He wasnt ready to be back in school, he still needed help, but his mother and grandmother didnt want there familys name to be discraced. Everything could have been prevented if Kenneths family would have let him recive the profesional help he needed, instead of thinking how it will "look bad".
希望大家都會非常非常幸福~
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