When I started teaching 14 years ago, I was concerned that I was too close to my students’ ages for them to respect me and take me seriously. I was 26 years old and working in news when I was recruited for my teaching position. I worried that I didn’t have enough experience, despite my master’s degree in higher education. I also didn’t feel done with my career in journalism.
Fast forward more than a decade and my students seem to get younger every year. It’s difficult for me to put their lives in context of my own experiences. For example, I referenced Monica Lewinsky and Dick Cheney in classes last summer and got blank stares. My students had no idea who they are. My students were toddlers when Sept. 11 occurred, and most of them weren’t born when the Murrah building was bombed.
I went from worrying about being too young to profess to concerned that I’m too old to provide relevant examples.
This need for context resulted in my asking students in my media victims class how old they were when Columbine happened.
I was their age now when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attacked their high school in Littleton, Colo., with the goal of killing more people than in the 1995 attack in Oklahoma City. The seniors in my class were 4 years old.
Because of their age, Columbine is something they heard about, but don’t remember happening. They don’t recall the news coverage or iconic images. One girl in my class learned about Columbine at school. The Florida student didn’t learn about the tragedy because it was part of the curriculum. A representative of Rachel Scott, the first student killed in the massacre, visited their school as a guest speaker, requiring educators to provide context. After Rachel’s death, her father founded Rachel’s Challenge, a non-profit focused on making schools safer through the promotion of kindness and respect.
The Columbine discussion occurred in my class because we read and discussed Dave Cullen’s book, Columbine. Three important things became clear while discussing the readings with my students.
First, my students have never experienced a world where school is a safe place. Don’t get me wrong, my students feel safe at school, but they’ve always undergone measures—intruder drills, active shooter training—to protect this safety. Also, with 270 school shootings since Columbine, their feelings of safety may be misplaced. I remember when an occasional fist fight was the most dangerous thing that happened at school. No one was worried about getting shot in class.
Second, in the age of trigger warnings and safe spaces, it still is critically important for students to study things that make them uncomfortable. Whether we like it or not, these happenings are part of our history. They need to be understood accurately and in context. We cannot be informed citizens who guard from repetition of past mistakes if we only know about the positive things. Our world is not a Utopia. We cannot present it as such.
Third, journalists’ role in documenting history is critical. All of my students said they were surprised by things they learned from the book. Most of them heard about Columbine, then googled it. This resulted in them reading incorrect information about the tragedy. For example, they thought bullying and being social outcasts were the catalysts for the event, but they were not. They also thought Cassie Bernall’s story was true, although it was debunked. There is so much information available today, and so much of it is false. It’s the job of journalists to document happenings accurately and correct the record accordingly. This role is perhaps more important than ever in the Internet age.
Reading and discussing Columbine with my students was an excellent learning opportunity for us all. Perhaps being an aging professor isn’t such a bad thing after all. It seems my students and I have a lot to learn from each other.
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