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Published in The Orlando Sentinel, Sept. 9, 1998

The promised school guide for identifying potential mass murderers is out, and it's not half bad. But the problem with the written word, no matter how well intended, is the reader -- his relative ability to comprehend, to interpret and, most important in this case, to put the guide to proper use.

The booklet -- ``A Guide to Safe Schools'' -- was promised last year by Education Secretary Richard Riley and Attorney General Janet Reno to address concerns about violence in schools. No one needs to be reminded of the headlines plaguing newspapers about boys opening fire on classmates and teachers.

What went wrong? went the line of questioning. This booklet is an attempt to answer the question and to offer guidelines for prevention.

To the authors' credit -- among them educators, psychologists, attorneys and law enforcement officials -- the guide cautiously approaches the issue of violent-behavior patterns.

Page after page is dedicated to warning teachers and administrators not to jump too quickly, not to immediately interpret Johnny's black-crayoned rendering as an indicator of a violent personality. There's always the possibility that the black crayon was the only one left in the box.

Context, in other words, is everything. Teachers, who are on the front line in identifying ``warning'' signs, the writers warn, should be wary of making grand assumptions without considering an individual child's age, emotional development or what is ``normal'' for today's kids.

``Teachers and administrators are not professionally trained to analyze children's feelings and motives,'' the guide says.

Amen. Which brings us to the part that's never going to be half good, no matter how benevolent our intentions. My instinctive fear is that some recent college graduate -- a young female, say, without male siblings or children and weaned on a strict diet of political correctness -- is going to send Johnny to the school shrink every time he pounds his chest.

The warning guide, though filled with common sense that shouldn't need teaching in the first place, could easily become a weapon against normally aggressive boys in the hands of someone inexperienced in real life.

The authors stressed repeatedly that no single behavior is necessarily indicative of a latent violent personality. Instead, the authors modestly propose that a prolonged, escalating pattern of several behaviors combined could suggest that further investigation is warranted.

Some of those behaviors are: social withdrawal, excessive feelings of isolation and being alone, excessive feelings of rejection, being a victim of violence, feelings of being picked on and persecuted, low school interest and academic performance, expression of violence in writing and drawings, uncontrolled anger, and patterns of hitting and bullying.

One would hope that any one of these would prompt a teacher to call a child's parents, not the school psychologist. What have we been doing all along if not watching for such signs of dysfunction?

What went wrong? went the line of questioning. Right off the bat, I'd have to say a lot has gone wrong if we need the federal government to tell us that paranoid children who hit and bully and perform poorly in school may be having a little trouble.

One hopes teachers will wield their new psychological power gently. Meanwhile, parents would do well to get their own copy of the guide (http://www.air-dc.org/cecp/guide).

Everyone wants his or her children to be safe, but the question for parents is safe from whom?

Kathleen Parker's column is distributed by Tribune Media Services. Her column also appears Sunday in the Sentinel's Insight section. Mail: The Orlando Sentinel, MP-6, P.O. Box 2833, Orlando, Fla. 32802-2833. E-mail: Kparker@Kparker.com

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