A deeper look at the
Littleton Massacre, Part 2

By *Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson

No. 138,   18 - 24 October 1999

Phyllis Schlafly has looked even deeper into the Littleton abyss. She relates¹¹ that "For the past 25 years, the prevailing dogma in public school teaching has been Values Clarification (as in the tremendously influential 1972 book of the same name by Sidney Simon). That means teaching students to reject "the old moral and ethical standards," and instead "make their own choices" and "build their own value system." She opines that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did 'build their own value system,' which allowed them to kill 13 people at Columbine, then take their own lives. She informs us that "Harris and Klebold were not dumb or underprivileged; they came from affluent two-parent families.

Professionals who evaluated them concluded that Harris was 'a very bright young man who is likely to succeed in life,' and that Klebold was 'intelligent enough to make any dream a reality' (New York Times, 23 April 1999)." Schlafly further tells us that Values Clarification teaches that, since there are absolutely no absolutes, students should engage in personal 'decision making' about behavior instead of looking to God, the Ten Commandments, parents, church, or other authority which teaches that behavior should conform to traditional morality.

Eakman¹² puts flesh on the bones of this philosophy by telling us that, "Trench coat Mafia? Heavy eye makeup? Black hats and knee boots? What on earth did we expect when we started allowing kids to come to school permanently decked out in Halloween costumes? When we stopped giving youngsters more to do than primp, preen, strut, intimidate, and spout filthy song lyrics what we reaped was swastikas and vampire cults." Eakman continues to suggest that curricula and activities

that revolve around psychological calisthenics instead of serious learning fuel a morbid preoccupation with self. They don't increase self-esteem or instill self-respect. "It doesn't take a psychiatrist — or, for that matter, a priest — to figure out that youngsters who are allowed to spend the largest part of their days acting out fantasies, who are drilled with 'anti-authoritarianism' theology, who can get easy A's under phony 'standards' are eventually going to unleash an environment of social chaos that in 10 years will transform even a United States of America into a Kosovo, Iraq, or Bosnia." Dr. Laura Schlessinger weighs in with her view of the roots of the disaster. She observes¹³ that "As human beings, mortal and ultimately frail, we survive on delusion.

One such delusion is that some psychologist's check list of so-called 'warning signals' can assure us that we can predict what is ultimately unpredictable. Another such delusion is some psychologist's notion of the single cause for a teenager's murderous activity, which when known, will give us the power to control what is ultimately uncontrollable. The activists protesting media violence, free access to firearms, and the ban on prayer in the schools have taken the opportunity to promote their causes, while naysayers argue that not one of these issues is the reason children become violent."

Dr. Laura claims that "it is not one of these problems that is the culprit; it is all of them in unison. She allows that children are like fish in the water — when the water is polluted, the fish become sick. However, only some of those fish die. If we look at cynicism, nihilism, cheating, vulgarity, negativity, low character, drug use, promiscuity and other behaviors and attitudes, it would appear that many of the fish are the living dead." Dr. Laura then goes for the jugular. "As contradictory as it is to our desire to believe that people are inherently good unless some force makes them different, the truth is that some people simply choose evil. And the more that people, especially impressionable children, are surrounded by evil, the more influenced, tempted, seduced and intrigued by evil they become. In other words, the more familiar evil becomes, the more it seems a legitimate outlet.

It is unarguable that evil has tremendous power, and from that power comes the allure. Evil delivers immediate gratification. Evil provides a sense of power, dominance, importance, control andsecurity. Evil is a strong identity. And in this imperfect world, evil often not only wins, but is also defended, protected and venerated." Dr. Laura relates that she has received a dozen letters from parents, alarmed and directionless, who fear that, in spite of their loving guidance, they have demons for children, and believe their children will likely become violent. They are probably right.

Another commentator goes even farther in his criticism. He asserts that¹⁴ "Columbine is the harvest of the seeds planted by the sophisticated elites [in America]. No country — not even the former Soviet Union — has been so badly betrayed by its governing class as the United States."

Even a liberal commentator for the Washington Post observes¹⁵ that the national mood has darkened in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre. He observes that "Americans are worried that their country is backsliding... [they] are deeply concerned about the moral climate and are searching for ways to restore what they see as lost values... There was a reason the Littleton shootings had such a powerful impact... the community devastated by that violence 'didn't look like their home town; it looked better¹⁶. So it was a profound blow to their aspirations." Another commentator, a professor of humanities at Franklin and Marshall College, tells us that¹⁷ "The dirty little secret of our time is that we miss God."

He observes that The Death of Satan (1995), Andrew Delbanco's estimable study of how evil no longer packs the power it once did, chronicles the decline-and-fall of Satan as a potent emblem of sinfulness. The professor argues the other side of this coin by suggesting that "... missing God is a by-product of a culture that prefers to explain evil away rather than confronting it directly... the dirty little secret, then, is that many intellectuals and writers know better, but are afraid to come clean. After all, to speak about missing God is to risk being lumped with religious fundamentalists on the Far Right. On the other hand, to keep one's silence in the face of everything that coarsens the cultural atmosphere and dramatically lowers the human bar is equally repugnant."

In this vein, the professor observes that our century is awash in the ugly consequences of ideas. "Lawrence, who regarded pornography as doing dirt on life, would be appalled at how degrading and how dehumanizing much of our collective sexual life has become. I can imagine his watching an episode of 'The Jerry Springer Show' and weeping... The alternative I'm groping for can be summed up in a single word: values, a term often shamefully exploited for narrow political purposes. The fact, however, remains that so many secular gods have failed — not only communism, but a whole range of others — that it is time to admit just how much even the most sophisticated among us need His authority. Such a confession will not come easily."

Schlafly delves even deeper into the detailed reasons for the massacre at Columbine High School. She starts again with a discussion of 'values clarification¹⁸. Values Clarification is a book of 79 dilemmas for the teacher to present to the students. The most frequently used classroom dilemma is the 'lifeboat game' (and its numerous variations, such as the fallout shelter). The student is told there are ten people in a sinking lifeboat and four must be thrown out to drown so that the other six may live. The student is vested with the authority to decide who lives and who dies. Shall it be the famous author, or the pregnant woman, or the rabbi, or the Hollywood dancer, or the policeman?" "Any answer is acceptable — whatever each student feels comfortable with is OK, and the students can all choose different drowning targets because there are no right or wrong answers. No wrong answers, that is, except one.

One mother told our Eagle Forum Parents Advisory Center that her child answered the question by saying, 'Jesus brought another boat and nobody had to drown.' That child got an F for giving an unacceptable answer." Schlafly tells us that the world view of Cassie Bernall [a student at Columbine High School], who looked into the barrel of a gun and said¹⁹, "Yes, I believe in God," is not acceptable within the rubric of Values Clarification. She was killed by a fellow student who had built his own value system. As in the 'life-boat game,' Harris and Klebold had already decided that it was their right to decide who would live and who would die." Schlafly further explains²⁰ that "Modern public school teaching exalts 'tolerance' of other people's behavior as the highest virtue, and 'self-esteem' as education's principal objective.

Harris and Klebold made a practice of annoying their teachers by propping their feet on their desks and leaning back in their chairs. In the modern classroom, we are forbidden to be 'judgmental' about the behavior of others when they indulge their impulses instead of controlling them". Schlafly goes even deeper into the academic atmosphere at Columbine High School before the murderous slaughter of innocent students. She describes 'death education' carried out in the school curriculum. "In 1987 Eagle Forum of Colorado produced a two-hour video in which student Tara Becker spoke at length about the relentless focus on death, dying and suicide in her junior class at Columbine High school in Littleton, CO. She and several of her classmates attempted suicide as a result of this depressing curriculum, and it took them many months to recover from the experience" "Tara was subsequently interviewed for an ABC-TV 20/20 program (aired 21 September 1990) where she said, 'I had thought about [suicide] as a possible option for a lot of years, but I never would have gone through with it, never, because I wasn't brave enough.

The things that we learned in the class taught us how to be brave enough to face death.' She added, 'We talked about what we wanted to look like in our caskets.'" "The 20/20 segment showed morbid visuals of student visits to cemeteries, to embalming labs where they were encouraged to touch 'still warm human remains,' and to crematoriums where they were told about picking bones out of the ashes. ABC stated that one out of ten schools teaches death education, that there is no approved curriculum, and that the teachers' training often consists only of a one-day workshop."

In 1988, Atlantic Monthly published an investigative article (Mortal Fears, February 1988, pp. 30) confirming that death and dying courses are given in 'thousands of schools,' often sneaked into health, social studies, literature or home-economics courses without parents' knowledge. Atlantic described how these courses require students to visit cemeteries and funeral homes, write their own epitaphs to be put on tombstones made out of construction paper, write obituaries, wills, or suicide notes, decide how they would prefer to die, and plan their own funerals, body disposal and pallbearers.

Atlantic quoted from professional journals²¹ to demonstrate the widespread support for death education among educators. It quoted The School Counselor as stating in 1997: 'Death education will play as important a part in changing attitudes toward death as sex education played in changing attitudes toward sex information and wider acceptance of various sexual practices.' Atlantic also quoted a National Education Association report entitled 'Education for the 70s' which stated: 'Schools will become clinics whose purpose is to provide individualized, psycho-social treatment for the student, and teachers must become psycho-social therapists.'

Schlafly tells us how all of this coalesced to produce the tragedy at Columbine High School. Littleton, Colorado is an area where public schools for many years have adopted all the trendy 'edufads' such as Outcome Based Education (OBE). [It] is a dumbing-down process that is heavy on the use of attitudinal and subjective materials and tests, rather than ... 'the acquisition of knowledge and skills.'"

"In 1993, at the high school in the district adjacent to Columbine, parents rebelled against this dumbing-down process and, by a two-to-one vote, elected a 'back-to-basics' school board. The teachers union struck back in the following election and retook control. The union was supported by People for the American Way, using the usual negative slurs to accuse those opposed to OBE of being 'fundamentalists' and part of the 'religious right.'

Reference

¹¹Schlafly, Phyllis, What Caused Columbine?, The PhyllisSchlafly Report, Part I, June 1999.

¹²Ibid, Eakman, B.K., Children of the therapeutic society.

¹³Schlessinger, Laura, Social cesspool polluting youth, The Washington Times, 11 May 1999.

¹⁴Roberts, Paul Craig, Reaping a deadly harvest, TheWashington Times, 26 April 1999.

¹⁵Broder, David S., The National Mood Has Darkened, TheWashington Post, 30 June 1999.

¹⁶Belluck, Pam and Wilgoren, Jodi, Caring Parents, No Answers, In Columbine Killers' Pasts, The New York Times, 29 June 1999. This article provides an in-depth look at the family and personal lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and their parents. If these kids could commit such an irrational murderous assault on their peers, then millions of other apparently 'normal' families harbor potential killers. This realization has shot a piercing fear into the hearts of Americans across the land. These families were not worse than many others, they appear to be 'better.'

¹⁷Pinsker, Sanford, Where is God?, The Washington Times, 22 April 1999.

¹⁸Ibid, Schlafly, Phyllis.

¹⁹Labash, Matt, Do You Believe in God? Yes: On the Life and Death of Cassie Bernall, The Weekly Standard, pp. 20, 10 May 1999.

²⁰Ibid, Schlafly, Phyllis.

²¹Ibid

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