Death and Hypocracy

So, today, the end of massive state testing at the secondary level ended with what the kids at my school call "the annual death". In the most catastrophic manner, a student, her entire life gleaming on the horizon, her high school career almost behind her, her future blazing like the sun, was murdered. The strangeness of this event is the fact that this child, 17, was a random victim of a schitzophrenic sex offender. Poor Anna was taking a break during her shift at the Vancouver McDonalds at 8pm, when David Sullivan, after pacing back and forth a few times, reached into her booth and stabbed her with a kitchen knife. She died at the hospital one hour later. The tragic circumstances of a mother who couldn't be reached by telephone, arriving to pick up her daughter from work only to be informed of her child's death, is incomprehensible. The perp was apprehended, and from the pictures of his mug shots, roughed up a bit in the process.

The kids are in pain, of course. This girl was well respected by staff and students alike. The kids don't know what to do with their anger. One of my students bemoaned, "everything I can think of to do to that man (Sullivan) is never enough. I can't think of a suffering that would do her justice." They want to attack the walls of the school. They want to tear it down with their anger. They want to create great works of graffiti art to express their pain and suffering. It's a genuine outporing of pain and confusion. "Of all the people this could happen to, how could it be her?" they ask, bewildered.

One of the harshest facts that I learned today, outside of Anna's cruel murder, was the statement that several students made to me regarding the mortality of their peers. "I was wondering when we were going to have our annual death. It hadn't happened yet this year. I was starting to wonder who it was going to be this time."

This little, surburban town has grown into a greater metropolitan area. It is regularly host to teen suicide and homicide. If our kids are waiting for their peers to be killed, what are they feeling inside? What kind of future do they have to look forward to if they are constantly looking around them and watching each other senselessly drop to the ground? They throw out the questions of "What's the point of living a clean, upstanding life, when you end up dead anyway?" Underneath this question is "How can you guarantee me a future? You can't and you know it. You, dear teacher, are a hypocrite. You are selling snake oil.

They have a point. They have a reason to be angry, unimpressed, and cynical. I wish I could give them more than temporary techniques for focusing their anger. I wish I could show them a future, but I can't. For them, right now is all there is.