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Brent Jesiek
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Salah Obeid
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2007-06-10
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By Salah Obeid
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jun 8, 2007, 00:27
There isn't room enough on the calendar to honor every American hero, but Aug. 16, the birthday of one such hero, is a day teachers and others who cherish education should make a point of celebrating.
No one knows what drove Liviu Librescu, four months short of his 77th birthday, to martyr himself to the cause of education. But that is what Librescu, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and mechanical engineering professor, did when he blocked a gunman from entering his Virginia Tech University classroom on April 16 -- earning him five bullets, one of them to the head -- so that most of his students could escape through the windows.
Because he was slain in a public learning institution, public schools are where he should be celebrated. And because Librescu (the root of whose name, "libre," is Latin for "free") came to America searching for freedom, those who teach subjects like U.S. history and government should make honoring him a lesson on where his adopted country truly stands on freedom.
By the time they enter college, many students in this country can't think critically about history and politics, having rarely been encouraged in school to think creatively outside of art and music class. Yet wolfing down hot dogs and soaking up sun on a field trip to celebrate Librescu Day could amount to more than just indigestion and sunburn, if the day were also an occasion for students to reflect on how their country, a magnet for immigrants seeking freedom, too often deprives people in other countries of the very freedoms Americans enjoy.
Throughout its history, the United States has -- in places like Latin America, Haiti, the Philippines and elsewhere -- picked fights at the drop of a dime whenever dollars were to be made, a fact that is largely ignored in classrooms around the country. The result is that, as the country gets bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, many students don't know any better than to think thousands of their fellow citizens, most only slightly older than them, are killing and being killed in those countries in the name of spreading freedom.
But freedom can mean many things. Librescu, born on Aug. 16, 1930, on the outskirts of Bucharest, was barely nine when World War II broke out and could only watch as his government, also in the name of freedom, helped the Nazis annihilate hundreds of thousands of Romania's Jewish citizens. Luckily he survived, became an accomplished scientist and, in 1986, after living several years in Israel, left for Virginia on a sabbatical and never looked back. Little did he know that years later a frustrated, mentally-ill college student would alone succeed where the focused efforts of the entire Nazi Party had failed.
Still, Librescu's death will have been partly in vain if teachers ignore the dedication symbolized by a colleague's choosing to die so that his students might live to see another classroom. Ignorance that isn't necessarily willful but rather the result of intimidation.
How else to explain that so many U.S. history and government teachers go out of their way to avoid discussing the context in which President Bush, in his second inaugural address, for example, used words like "freedom" and "liberty" some dozen odd times? Or in which Vice President Dick Cheney, during remarks to Westminster College in Missouri a few years ago, paraphrased Winston Churchill's assessment of the struggle against Soviet communism, in order to paint a picture of the chaos in U.S.-occupied Iraq as a contest between "those who served an aggressive, power-hungry ideology and those who believed in human liberty, freedom of conscience and the dignity of every life"?
Words like "liberty" and expressions like "freedom of conscience" are easily said; the challenge is living up to the ideals they represent. But often politicians aren't so challenged to begin with, and worse, sometimes rely on such words, as George Orwell wrote, "in a consciously dishonest way."
Dignity of life, after all, means little coming from someone like Cheney, whose central pursuit over the past few years has been to enrich his friends at Enron and Halliburton over the dead bodies of an estimated million or so Iraqi civilians -- people who might have lived in fear under Saddam Hussein, but who at least could've expected to live with far more certainty than can Iraqis today.
Propaganda and censorship is something that, growing up in communist Romania, Librescu knew all too well. The same can be said of another Jewish hero to whom he is often compared.
On Aug. 5, 1942, German soldiers stormed an orphanage for Jewish children in Warsaw, instructing the man who ran it, Janusz Korczak, that he was free to go, but that his 200 or so orphans and several staff members were slated for extermination. Unlike Librescu, Korczak couldn't save his charges from death. Instead, he followed them to the gas chamber, his final gesture to children who'd had so little and died so young.
A renowned children's author and pediatrician, Korczak was also a teacher, and instructed hundreds at his Dom Sierot (Polish for "house for orphans") with little regard for convention. Those who survived the war recount being allowed to form a "kind of a republic for children, with its own small parliament, court and newspaper," according to an entry on <a href="http://wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia.org</a>. By contrast, a half-century later, American public schools appear intent on turning students into automatons.
And even that they're getting wrong.
Students in the United States, in subjects like math and science, which require learning mostly by mind-numbing rote, lag behind their counterparts in miserably poor countries like Bangladesh, Burundi, El Salvador and Nepal. Generally, though, American students also read less for pleasure, visit fewer museums and attend schools with mediocre teachers, all easily gleaned from comparing how flippant and addicted to pop culture many young Americans are next to kids in less fortunate parts of the world.
Maybe that is because, as one credit card company likes to say, there are some things money can't buy. China, where teachers get paid a pittance by a government that looks with scorn at individual rights and free speech, generally has a more well-read, independent-minded, smarter population than ours. Which is what outright censorship does: breed rebellion.
Censorship, though, shouldn't be allowed any wiggle room in a country billing itself as the "land of the free." Yet the United States has become fertile ground for it, an indication of which is that mainstream media, not satisfied with just obscuring the "who," "what" and "where" in its news coverage, goes to great lengths to avoid the "why" altogether. It may be just as well, then, that many kids come home from school in the afternoon only to get super glued to MTV, video games or websites like <a href="http://myspace.com/">Myspace.com</a>, since much of what's in the news would sooner confuse than educate them.
Were that not sad enough, the education that does manage to seep into the minds of these would-be torchbearers of democracy is watered down to the point of irrelevancy. Not because teachers are stupid, evil or lazy but because most are simply too afraid to rock the boat.
Many teachers understand they swim in murky water. Water that has swallowed teachers like Deb Mayer at Clear Creek Elementary in Monroe County, Indiana, near Bloomington (home, ironically, to liberal arts-dominated Indiana University). Mayer was fired in 2003 after she dared discuss the subject of peace movements during a general class discussion about the build-up to the war in Iraq.
Similarly, a school in Wilton, Conn., recently banned a play about the conflict in that country.
"In Wilton, most kids only care about Britney Spears shaving her head or Tyra Banks gaining weight," 16-year-old Devon Fontaine, a cast member, told The New York Times. "What we wanted was to show kids what was going on overseas."
The school administration's reply: "You can't always get what you want."
Censorship is well documented in schools throughout the country. Schools like Columbine High School in Colorado, where Alfred Wilder was fired in 1996 for showing Bernardo Bertolucci's film, "1900," which explores fascism, to a senior class studying logic and debate. That instance of censorship may even have cost 13 students and a teacher their lives.
A video depicting students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold rehearsing for the massacre they'd go on to carry out at the school three years later wasn't allowed to be shown on school grounds because of the controversy surrounding the Bertolucci film.
"If the video had indeed been shown," Al Hidell wrote in "The New Conspiracy Reader," "perhaps somebody would have realized the serious threat it represented, which may have prevented the tragedy from occurring."
Rarely, of course, is censorship so dramatic in its outcome that it becomes a matter of life and death. But there is such a thing as a slow death. Appalled by the stifling of his film, Bertolucci wrote that it was no less than a prelude to totalitarianism when classrooms become a place "in which the voice of established authority denounced criticism or debate, and used the high school classroom to silence other voices."
Voices that hold that "children are the future. Teach them well and let them lead the way."
Before letting cocaine lead the way for her instead, Whitney Huston knew what she was singing about. The minute students are fit to broach subjects like history, government and political affairs is the minute they should be challenged to imagine their future roles as informed, voting citizens. Citizens like Librescu, who wore many hats but probably would have been happy to be remembered as one more in a long line of educators who eschewed empty slogans, who knew that leaving no child behind meant arming students with curiosity, compassion and courage.
Courage, though, shouldn't mean that 3,500 young Americans, and counting, have to take their final breath in a country that never meant the United States any harm. Courage should mean educating the nation's youth so that they can spot a charlatan when they see one, even if he worms his way up to the presidency itself. Those who will inherit this nation need that kind of courage from those who've been here a while, so that they too can develop the courage to die if need be.
But to die in the spirit of someone like Librescu, who took one bullet after another yet refused to let go, so that others might live and learn.
And be free.
Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
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Bev Conover, Editor and Publisher, Online Journal
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Librescu Day
censorship
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education
freedom
history
librescu
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Heather Munro Prescott
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Heather Munro Prescott
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2007-06-06
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4-30-07
<b>Mental Health is Everyone's Business: Historical Reflections on the Virginia Tech Shootings
By Heather Munro Prescott</b>
<i>Ms. Prescott is Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University. Her book, Student Bodies: The Influence of Student Health Services on American Society and Medicine will be published by University of Michigan Press in Fall 2007.</i>
<i>A man's college days, collectively, are usually his happiest. Most of mine were not happy. </i>--Clifford Whittingham Beers, <i>A Mind That Found Itself </i>(1908)
Clifford Whittingham Beers's words came to mind as I followed the news coverage of Cho Seung-Hui's shooting rampage at Virginia Tech last week. I empathized with the victims and their families and for the community; it was a tragic and terrible loss of life. As the days wore on, I began to have another reaction to the events. Since I am a historian and a client of mental health services, the heated discussions about what to do with "deranged" students like Cho that appeared in various mainstream media seemed all too reminiscent of earlier incidents of discrimination against mentally ill individuals. One especially troubling article by crime novelist and psychologist <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009977">Jonathan Kellerman in the Wall Street Journal</a>, placed the blame for the shootings on the anti-psychiatry and deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He argued for stricter laws for involuntarily committing students exhibiting disturbing thoughts or behavior, declaring it was better to "err on the side of public safety rather than protect individual liberty at all costs." This cavalier attitude, combined with the sensationalistic footage of the "madman" on NBC, seemed to me a step backward in a century-long battle to safeguard the civil rights and enhance the public's understanding of mentally ill individuals.
<i>A Mind That Found Itself</i> represented a landmark in this struggle. Likened to <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i> in its vivid description of the horrors of asylum life, the book launched a nationwide movement to reform institutions for the mentally ill. Beers, along with other Progressive Era reformers such as Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop, went on to form the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (NCMH). This organization aimed to take psychiatry beyond the asylum walls and use the discipline to address problems in homes, workplaces, schools, and other institutions. Like other public health organizations at this time, the NCMH aimed their preventive efforts at youth in schools and colleges, believing intervention was most effective during adolescence when the personality was most malleable.
Supporting the work of the NCMH were studies of psychiatric problems among soldiers during the Great War. According to Dr. Stewart Paton, a lecturer in neurobiology at Princeton University and a former member of the American Expeditionary Forces Medical Corps, "Peace no less than War produces 'shell shock.' " By the late 1920s, Princeton and at least twenty other private and public colleges and universities had added mental hygiene to their health services on at least a part-time basis.
Establishing counseling services on the college level was not easy, however. Despite the efforts of Beers and the NCMH, mental illnesses, even minor ones, still carried an overwhelming social stigma. Indeed, it was during the 1920s that many states passed laws calling for the involuntary sterilization of "mental defectives." Another formidable obstacle was opposition from faculty members, who believed that mental hygiene services were simply coddling students who could not meet academic standards. Yet diligence by college mental health experts, as well as a high incidence of psychiatric problems in the military during the Second World War, provided additional justification for counseling programs for the nation's young people. The 1947 report issued by President Truman's Commission on Higher Education lent further support, arguing that these institutions should not only train the intellect, but also foster emotional growth and social adjustment. Dana Farnsworth, Director of Harvard University Health Services, argued in 1954 that mental health was not only the responsibility of health care professionals, but was everybody's business. This included students themselves, whom he believed should play a role in planning and organizing health services.
Farnsworth's call for a student-centered health service would have unintended consequences in the ensuing decade, as students demanded freedom from "institutionalized paternalism," which permitted campus health centers to release confidential patient information to other campus officials, parents, and prospective employers. At this time, homosexuality was still considered a mental illness, and grounds for dismissal from many colleges as well as exclusion from the U.S. military and civil service.
Some campus psychiatrists, including Farnsworth, blamed student uprisings on permissive parenting that caused a growing gap between intellectual and emotional maturity in late adolescence. Robert Coles, a research psychiatrist from the Harvard University Health Service, and Joseph Brenner, a physician from the M.I.T. health service, who served as medical staff for the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964, challenged this viewpoint. They found that the student volunteers were far from "immature" or "psychopathic." Rather, most student volunteers displayed extraordinary bravery in the face of constant danger, serving as exemplars for mental health professionals on how to advance human dignity and freedom. This activism by students and sympathetic professionals contributed to the passage of the Family Educational and Privacy Act of 1974, which was intended to protect students' rights to privacy.
The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 provided further protections for mentally ill students. Earlier this year, Virginia became the first state in the nation to pass legislation prohibiting colleges and universities from expelling or punishing students "solely for attempting to commit suicide, or seeking mental-health treatment for suicidal thoughts or behaviors." Last week's tragedy has caused many to consider revoking this law. If accomplished, this measure would be a major setback in the history of mental health services on college campuses. Not only is it impossible to predict which emotionally disturbed students will commit violent acts, the threat of sanction would deter mentally ill students from seeking treatment. It also overlooks larger structural problems, including cutbacks to student counseling services, lack of insurance coverage, and most importantly, persistent cultural myths about mental illness that prevent troubled individuals from obtaining the help they need. The time has come to heed Beers's call, cease stigmatizing the mentally ill, and provide full access to the supportive mental health services that all Americans deserve.
<b>Related Links</b>
<a href="http://hnn.us/articles/37806.html">HNN Hot Topics: School Shootings</a>
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Original source: History News Network
<a href="http://hnn.us/articles/38250.html">http://hnn.us/articles/38250.html</a>
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Mental Health is Everyone's Business
disability rights
history
mental health
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Brent Jesiek
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Shreya Mandal
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2007-05-26
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Submitted by <a href="http://www.culturekitchen.com/user/shreya_mandal">Shreya Mandal</a> on 17 April 2007 - 2:34pm.
Yesterday, as I sat in the lobby of the Elizabeth Detention Center waiting to testify at a hearing, I learned about the violent incident that took place in Virginia. A small flat-screen television hangs on a wall in the detention center's lobby. I sat there for almost six hours, each hour getting more and more agitated at the cell phone and video coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. Normally in these situations, I get up and turn the television off. But I was in a situation where I could not get away from the images bombarded at me. CNN shot the ongoing campus scenes throughout the whole day, reiterating over and over again that this was the biggest shooting ever to take place in American history. At first while I listened to the news reporters, I masked my fears, needing to act like I was in control, that everything was okay, and that I was strong enough to stomach the events they televised.
I distracted myself from the flat-screen television and tried to focus on preparing for my testimony. But as the hours went by, officers at the detention center passed by me, shouting out the latest death toll. First 21, then 22, then 29, then 31, then 32, and finally 33. It was impossible to tune out. I felt my mind and my heart drift back to when I was 16 years-old, when I was also on campus during a college shooting rampage. That was almost 15 years ago.
At various times yesterday, CNN provided history and statistical information of previous school shootings like Columbine and The University of Texas massacres. I waited for them to list my alma mater. But one school they didn't list was a small early undergraduate program called Simon's Rock College, tucked away in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This is where a college campus shooting occurred on December 14, 1992, the first shooting to occur in the United States in the 1990s.
Each moment I looked up at the television screen, heard the ringing of gunshots, or saw limp bodies being taken away by police officers, I went further and further back to that cold evening in 1992. A tightness settled into my chest and fear steadily grew in the pit of my stomach.
It was the end of my very first semester of college and winter break was on the horizon. While most others were studying for final exams, I was involved in my usual course of procrastination and found ways not to study. It turned out that procrastinating saved my life that night. Rather than studying for exams, I attended a dance performance that took place on the other side of campus, away from my college dormitory on the main Simon's Rock campus. A friend and I went to the performance together for a little while before we began studying for the next exam. Little did we know about the murder and mayhem that occurred a few yards away from the building.
A couple of hours passed and the friend decided to head back to the dorm so she could go back to studying. Enamored by the performance, I decided that pre-calculus could wait a little more and stayed behind. We said our goodbyes and told each other that we would see each other later. I went back to enjoying the performance. Ten minutes later, the friend returned very agitated and said, "There's something going on out there, I heard gunshots." Within minutes, the performance stopped.
Fifteen years later, the exact sequence of that night's events seem blurry to me. But I remember someone announced that a shooter was going around campus shooting at people, and that the best way to ensure our safety was to stay calm and stay in the building. We did not know who it was. We did not know that it was a student. And most of all, we did not know if we were safe for sure. I remember staying in the building for a few hours with other classmates, wondering if someone was going to come in and shoot at us. Would I ever see my family again? Waiting quietly for answers and relief was a challenge. Listening to everyone's speculation and witnessing panic around me was even more difficult. We had no way of knowing what would happen next.
That night, four people were wounded. Two people were shot dead. One of them was my professor, Nacunan Saez, and the other was a beloved student, Galen Gibson. They were both very bright, creative, and vibrant people that were loved by the entire Simon's Rock College community. But we were all victims that day�all 350 students, faculty members, staff, and college administrators. And because Simon's Rock is such a small tight-knit liberal arts school, the pain of what happened hit us hard. We all went through a terrible and traumatic event that I will never forget. I know that the entire Simon's Rock community is holding a vigil to honor the tragedies that occurred at Virginia Tech and on their own campus so many years ago.
Ironically similar to yesterday's incident, the shooter at Simons' Rock was also a young Asian student. He was born in Taiwan. His name is Wayne Lo. During trial, Lo's psychiatrist testified that he had Schizophrenia, while the prosecution argued that he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The prosecution "won" at trial and Wayne was found guilty of all 17 counts he was charged with. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms to Life without the possibility of parole. I did not know Wayne directly, but had friends who knew him. Even though I had been traumatized by the events back then, I felt that I was not in the position to judge what really happened to him or understand why he committed such a heinous crime. I was only 16. At the time, I also did not feel I was entitled to expressing the deep fear I felt since I had not been shot during the rampage at Simon's Rock. I rarely spoke about the incident that took place, until now.
It seems not much has changed between then and now, except that more and more senseless acts of violence are occurring in our schools across America. The scared young faces of dismayed students, the attempts to make sense of the situation, the desperate need for answers, make the rampant violence and victimization even more palpable. Here we go again. And as time goes on, the violence is getting more and more intense, each ordeal is of greater magnitude.
Another bit of irony rests in my career choice as a mitigation specialist. Often times my job is to assess mitigating factors that explain away crimes like murder. But yesterday's crisis demonstrates that we also need to look and understand the complete cycle of violence, the significant trauma that victims experience, and the insurmountable pain and torment that victims' families feel. To me the nature of violence is never a black and white issue. In my experience, the answers we look for are usually in the gray area. But today my heart is with the victims I knew fifteen years ago, and the 33 killed yesterday at Virginia Tech.
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.culturekitchen.com/shreya_mandal/story/university_homicide_trauma_revisited_0">http://www.culturekitchen.com/shreya_mandal/story/university_homicide_trauma_revisited_0</a>
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University Homicide: Trauma Revisited
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