Guns and moons
Thursday, March 12th, 2009 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mothwingYesterday evening I discovered that the full moon was reflected in our skylight in a way that, to my delight, made it look as though we had four moons. I did not manage to take proper pictures of it, but it looked pretty awesome. Ever since I went to the planetarium with my mother for the first time and heard about the amount of natural satellites in our solar system I regretted that we have only one (hey, Saturn has over fifty, Jupiter over sixty, even Mars managed to catch himself two, but out loser planet sticks with one).
Other than that, I am still shocked about the tragedy at the German school in Baden-Württemberg yesterday. Another school shooting, more cookie-cutter articles on it which read exactly like the ones from last time, covers full of crying teenage girls, speculations about shooters, Counter-Strike and porn and still no idea what to do to keep students from running amok in our schools. I doubt that any of the suggestions that have been made - psychologists at schools (didn't help Finland), metal detectors (didn't help the US), even stricter gun control (didn't help us)- is going to help.
What is so baffling that it is nearly funny is what is going on in the comment sections of major German papers - some blame the "injured pride of the German middle class male which does not commit honour crimes like lower class children with a background in migration, but run amok with guns". Another user "blames the miss-matched gender ratio in the German educational system", the "lack of role-models", and yet another user muses that it might be a good idea to force parents to notify the school if they have weapons so that those can have an eye on their kids, yet others want a nation-wide ban of Counter-Strike.
And I? I don't know. I really don't. It is horrible that so many students feel left out at our schools that some of them snap and shoot their teachers and fellow-students, and I think that if something has to change, it ought to be that before our gun laws become even stricter, or we implement a nationwide male quota in the educational system, and school psychologists can't hurt there.
Other than that, I am still shocked about the tragedy at the German school in Baden-Württemberg yesterday. Another school shooting, more cookie-cutter articles on it which read exactly like the ones from last time, covers full of crying teenage girls, speculations about shooters, Counter-Strike and porn and still no idea what to do to keep students from running amok in our schools. I doubt that any of the suggestions that have been made - psychologists at schools (didn't help Finland), metal detectors (didn't help the US), even stricter gun control (didn't help us)- is going to help.
What is so baffling that it is nearly funny is what is going on in the comment sections of major German papers - some blame the "injured pride of the German middle class male which does not commit honour crimes like lower class children with a background in migration, but run amok with guns". Another user "blames the miss-matched gender ratio in the German educational system", the "lack of role-models", and yet another user muses that it might be a good idea to force parents to notify the school if they have weapons so that those can have an eye on their kids, yet others want a nation-wide ban of Counter-Strike.
And I? I don't know. I really don't. It is horrible that so many students feel left out at our schools that some of them snap and shoot their teachers and fellow-students, and I think that if something has to change, it ought to be that before our gun laws become even stricter, or we implement a nationwide male quota in the educational system, and school psychologists can't hurt there.
