This essay will issue the troubles of the beginning of 2018, as there have been more than 23 school shootings that have either harmed or killed an innocent. There are multiple but not clear reasons why shooters do this: social media attention, revenge, past experiences and maybe even our society as a whole. Is it our fault? If a person was bullied traumatically, would that justify one open fire as an attempt to scare or kill their bully? Should we just jail the person for life, or would it have been our fault for not helping the child, and, prevent that kid from ever shooting up the school in the first place? The most importance of this essay is to discuss if this is our own society's fault for letting conflict build up, and solving it too late.

From the beginning of 2018, to where we are now and we omit the surplus of school shootings we've had - which is more than 23 - where somebody was severely physically harmed or tragically killed from open fire. The Nation is reeling about this as media's 24/7 abundance of eyes and news are on television especially articles addressing the fear. What could actually compel somebody to do something so drastic? After all, humans have flesh and flesh is flesh; they are your fellow brethren. Although any sort of case in any building is tragic, in education halls especially elementary are the most horrific. Here, we run into a crisis of debate in a hasty attempt to solve the problems: Should we enforce gun control? Should we arm our teachers with firearms? Is it our

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fault for not helping these outcasts that want us to feel their pain? There are very seldom good ideas as to anything that would facilitate stopping these shootings. No, it's not our fault if we do something that could cause somebody to want to shoot a school as revenge, but it's our fault if we let kids bully each other in vengeance.

1. Origins of Bullying

The reason why bullying is easy to do is because many people are in a single building. People have been raised in different places, with different experiences and different lives, and this realization is called sonder, the realization of everybody having complex lives as yours with problems as well. The average students in a middle public school is approximately 600 students, according to National Centers for Education Statistics (5). Anybody knows this is a high chance to meet friends and enemies. Yet, it is vital to not forget the children have problems too; some get abused at home, some have relatives sick and others that deal with said problems by making themselves feel superior. The first solution seems to be stopping these bullies which is the most logical as psychological impact can damage one's mental health.

1.1 Results of Bullying

In most cases, bullies have a motive - to make others feel worse, and give themselves dopamine. By being excited by something like eating ice-cream, the brain enjoys the sweet succulence of taste and releases dopamine giving you an euphoric-like feeling. Hence, you get addicted to it. This is the reward-system, a process where doing something - like the aforementioned ice-cream - makes your brain release happiness into you in the form of a reward. Thus, this is in a way like drugs, where those addicted feel the need to keep going. Reward is a

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pleasure and a slight euphoric feeling is worth the harm to other kids for bullies. Yet, they're compelled to do it because they cope, suffer and all. They can't help their addiction as its their getaway from toxicity. This is a vital problem for humanity, and the first step begins with us.

2. School Problems

If, and only if it's our problem as a society for not brainstorming ways to solve the school shooting problem, think of the way schools and everybody around us teach us. If you ask your teachers what is the Most Important Thing In Life, they'd say your report card; if you ask your gym teachers what is Most Important, they'd say exercise. The only person that says your mental and physical health are the most important are the nurses. Nobody says health, mind, happiness and dreams. Society tells us not to give in to the power of peer pressure but nobody tells anybody to never peer pressure anybody and that loophole is a fact. If we can't treat our schools like educating-systems but as a junk-prison, there'll be more stressed people in the world - just like there is today. The future of student's lives and result for the rest of their lives - or at the least next 20 years - and many would want the best for their child.

Accusing a school for bad grades results in the subject (child, student) being careless while doing the opposite results as so. To American Psychological Association, we know school violence will stay no matter what in the form of repeated negative-inducing behavior. "Many took the 'children will be children' attitude toward the problem. However, school violence cases - including the Columbine school shooting tragedy - highlight the serious and sometime deadly consequences of bullying behavior" (2). Violence will exist unless we change this aforementioned attitude toward bullying and start taking threats seriously for the child's future.

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Think about rebels in school. They don't want to do anywork and refuse to have an education simply thinking that their current education is Just Right. If we force everybody to go to school, sure, they are not going to like it but then there'll be bullying as the aforementioned negative-inducing repeated thoughts. See, to see the problem realistically, we need to reminisce of what school is supposed to be: "An organization that provides instruction"(1). The way the middle-school system works is that everybody is assigned to a homeroom classroom and then have different 'periods' throughout their days. First period: science; second period: biology; and so on with a variety for different students. The flaw here is shielding kids from being able to do what they want because we fear what could happen if we don't protect our children from dangerous things but the kids themselves need to know that they're trusted with independence. Our world is becoming more of a dystopian ruins that fails. A solution to preventing bullying which is the second solution to preventing school shootings is better schools, better people and a better environment: it would be better for kids to choose not to go to school.

2.1 Better Schools

If you think about it, school is many ways like prison: The intelligence of a student depends on how well they follow directions, similar to an animal's intelligence; people are going to retaliate if they aren't happy enough with the droopy atmosphere and just rotting their lives away. While growing up, many children feel like they're not really living; wake up, go to school, pay attention like a mindless robot, do work, obey commands, go home, and do work. That is certainly not an education but it's what it's in a nutshell. We need to restart. We should let kids choose their ideal classes so they do not feel controlled and inferior. We need to let people choose with their own

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volition and give them an example of what they're learning about. YouTube videos educate people so many things like the deepest part of the ocean that we know of so far that is deeper than MT. Everest, "By comparison, Mount Everest stands at 29,026 feet (8,848 m) above sea level, meaning the deepest part of the Mariana Trench is 7,044 feet (2,147 m) deeper than Everest is tall," (23-25). We don't teach kids that because we teach them stuff that they don't want to know. What could work is the need to bait in kids, like teaching them the coolest information they'd want to know in their life so that they become inspired and want to learn more. Those certain classrooms teach what the kids would want to know and if needed, the parents could help too. Most schools teach redundant information like teaching us the pythagorean theorem instead of knowing how to do taxes. Educating is a problem today since we do it for many years from childhood to adulthood. The average of time of school we have is 7 hours where we have to wake up at around 8 o'clock stressing about school. Also, the time when we wake up is too early for our brains to be alert; 10 o'clock is the time where the brain is fully awakened to learn but 8 o'clock is a good enough time to wake up as stated,

When it comes to the importance of sleep, it's all about the biology, say pediatric experts. And in a report released Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics supports pushing back start times for older kids, particularly teens, because it's better for their mental and physical health. "The evidence is clearly mounting both in terms of understanding the repercussions that chronic sleep loss has on the health, safety and performance of adolescents, and there is also really solid compelling data supporting the fact that delaying school start times is a very important intervention

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that can mitigate some of the impact of sleep loss," says Dr. Judith Owens, director of sleep medicine at Children's National Medical Center and lead author of the report (1-11).

If we spend an average of 230,000 hours of our life sleeping, then that dictates that school is like a prison; not free until our time is up - and out time in life is over. Instead, we need to ration our time when teaching kids what to learn. On certain days like Mondays, we give kids their most favorite subject to learn about for 5-7 hours at their choosing. Stress is an important factor because telling kids that report cards are more important than their mental-health is disencouraging. There is no reason to put that much stress on an individual and fast-forward a few years later to see them working as an accountant wasting their life away barely contributing to society. If kids don't want to learn, but are forced to, think about how'd it affect them drastically. As extreme violence impedes a student's progress of education, attitude and atmosphere of the school around them, clearly it's the staff and school's fault at hand. Yet, it could also be the cause of the education as suggest. Sage Journals' 'The Effect of High School Shootings on Schools and Student Performance' provides proof of dangerous effects.

Deadly school shootings have a potentially large effect on students and schools. These incidents can affect students' decision about whether to stay at their school, affect their cognitive skills, and influence their behavior at school,(1-4)

acknowledges that if schools want students to behave, they'd need a good environment where they're happy.

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Most school shooters have a supreme motive such as Elliot Rodgers who, may have suffered from narcissism. Clearly, he most likely suffered from a superiority complex which results in Elliot Rodgers thinking himself better than him all. Worst of all, his reason for shooting was because he wanted the world to 'pay the price for the crime of living a better life than me.' Eric Harris however, had a less of a reason to kill people when he infiltrated with his friend into Columbine High School and killed 13 people.

Harris saw himself as an enlightened person because he saw the irrelevance of life. "People will say things like, 'Oh, it was so tragic,' " he predicted. "You think that's a bad thing? Just because your mommy and daddy told you blood and violence is bad, you think it's a f-ing law of nature?" He saw his massacre as an act of natural selection. "Everyone should be put to a test," he wrote, "see who can survive in an environment using only smarts and military skills." Those who didn't question conventional values, he felt, were "unfit for anything at all. Especially life" (2). So, what causes these people to shoot schools? A damaged psychological mind. No counseling, something traumatic, maybe. Some may be born killers with no reason to kill, but most have had something happen in their lives, like being abused, or had been bullied and never got any help. If that happens, we can't just point fingers; we need to work backwards as to what caused these troubles in this person's life.

They need help, but we don't offer it. Why? It's because we see them as outcasts that don't belong in this society, that we don't acknowledge that this person must've been born from humans, just like us. When we, as civil creatures speak to one another, in English, we expect them to speak English back. We expect people to be raised by humans, live normal lives as humans, and to go

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through the same training of capable speech that takes years to master that leads to their life at that point. Every reason we see someone get hurt, we know the feeling too well. If you never saw shadows in your life, shadow illusions would definitely not work on you no matter how intellectually intelligent you are. So, we need to help these people, no prison them. Don't let them in for them to rot, take them out because they've seen the world betray them too many times.

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Table of Contents

American Psychological Association - School Shootings

School Shootings And Student Mental Health - What Lies At The Tip Of The Iceberg

William Dikel, M.D.

List Verse

Mark Oliver

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