Response 3

Many students of Virginia Technological University will remember April 16th forever as a day of bloodshed and fear. On that fateful day, thirty-three bright futures and minds ceased to exist in what will be remembered as one of the worst massacre in American History.

I think this attack teaches us an important lesson about violence. Looking at Cho’s writing, we can see that violence was present within his mind and may well have been a factor in this shooting. If we delve deeper, we can see that Cho’s mind was a bubble of anger and hatred waiting to explode. And explode it did.

Anger and violence among the young in our society is more common today and our schools and institutions of higher learning are not spared from this trend. What are the reasons behind this alarming development? I think the excessive portrayal of violence on television programmes and even computer games is a major contributing factor. These shows and games tend to glamorize violence, where the heroes will often defeat the ‘bad guys’ in sensational fashion and never ever seem to get hurt or in trouble with the law. The mass media seem to make light of violence and do not portray the consequences of violence – the loss of loved ones on family members, the injuries sustained and the arduous treatment needed to regain one’s health and even the permanent disabilities that result from injuries.

This trend of anger and violence amongst the young is a problem in Singapore as well, as seen in the recent cases of school bullying reported in the media. A good example is the recent report in the Straits Times about a female student who was stripped and beaten up in the school toilet by a group of classmates. I think it is time for our schools to take the problem of anger and violence amongst students more seriously before it gets out of control.

How can this problem be addressed? Is this just a case of a few bad sheep in our schools or a wider problem resulting from our fast-paced achievement driven society. While I cannot be completely certain, I suspect it is the latter. Many students today come from families where both parents spend long hours at work. This has resulted in parents spending less time imparting good values to their children. Instead, the wrong values are learned from the computer and television. Students today are driven to learn more and compete aggressively with each other. They tend to be more individualistic, aggressive and less tolerant of others. Some may exhibit a lot of anger from this stress.

I think schools should take a greater role in identifying ‘at risk’ students and provide counseling and mentoring from teachers as well as lessons on stress and anger management. I am not sure if this will work but I think this will be a useful start to recognizing and addressing this problem. Hopefully we can prevent another similar tragedy from occurring.