LETTERS: CHANGES NEEDED FOR YOUTHS' NEEDS

To the editor:

Events in Littleton, Colo., on the heels of similar happenings across the United States have left our country wringing its collective hands about the fate of its youth. These killings, horrible as they were, are no cause for the absurdly negative generalizations being made about our children. While we certainly have a greater number of serious incidents than in the past, most of today's kids are fun, intelligent, decent people with most of the same concerns that adolescents have always had. I know because, as a teacher, I work with them daily. To denigrate these young people as "nearly lost" is a terrible injustice.

This is not an excuse, however, to ignore the fact that our children attend schools with a small number of students who are increasingly more dangerous. We would be irresponsible to simply congratulate ourselves that things are not as bad as we have been told and do nothing else. Weapon-toting, hate-filled students do not run rampant in our schools, but they are present. One knife is one too many. It is up to us to learn who these students are and why they are allowed to endanger our children.

Much of the public blame has fallen, often unfairly, on school administrators. Of course most of them would like to remove dangerous students from schools, but federal regulations often hamper them. These laws tend to favor clinical diagnoses over student safety. Whatever an individual's physical or mental challenges, the knife he holds is no less sharp. Fears of lawsuits also prevent the removal of dangerous students. Although this may not have played a part in Colorado, it is easy to imagine a situation in which students are allowed to emulate Nazis for fear of infringing upon their constitutional rights. No school official, no matter how grounded his or her decisions are in common sense, can expect to prevail against these conditions.

We are blessed with many wonderful kids from all parts of our community. It would be unconscionable if we were to allow complacency and ignorance to keep us from protecting them. Talk to our local students about what goes on at school. Talk to educators about what prevents them from doing the job they want to do. Learn about laws written with the finest of intentions but which have had the most serious of consequences. If we do not educate ourselves in order to enact change, that change is unlikely to happen. Those changes are necessary if we want our children and their teachers to concentrate on education instead of safety.

DARYL FRIDLEY

Cape Girardeau