Thanks, everybody. It's a hard time to post coherently. I think we are always going to see survival behavior when we make schools a mandatory, non-consensual environment. This is not the teachers fault, nor is it the administrations fault: it is the fault of a society which cannot believe students self-motivate to learn. Mandatory schooling is a form of oppression, and is getting worse, as events like this indicate. I have been over the last few days very disturbed by the way the media is responding to Colorado. First, it is a sad commentary that we can only mourn nationally when middle-class white students are killed; when lower-class black dropouts are killed in much greater numbers and much more regularly, it barely makes local news. Second, all these godawful child-psychology-experts are getting on TV saying that if your son listens to alternative music, he's the next serial killer. We all *know* that's not true, and it's the worst kind of oversimplification, because it blinds us to the causes of the problem. And that, I think, is an insufficiency of parents. I mean caring, responsible adults who have a reasonably full-time interest in a child's welfare. I had four such people, and I'm sure they could have used help. Yes, searcher49, it takes a village. I hate the phrase too (corny 'African' proverb from Madisson avenue that it is), but it is true. Children are neccesarily a group responsibility............Like the vast numbers of other kids who listened to bad music and watched bad movies and played bad games, I got yelled at by adults for my tastes. And I always countered--accurately--with the adolescent version of de gustibus non est disputandum; otherwise none as 'There's nothing wrong with Nirvana, dad, Jeezum.' But there were also a lot of adults in my life with whom I had enough mutual respect that they could ask--or ask me to ask--why I liked a particular movie, what a song meant, where the suspension of disbelief ended. I think it is the lack of those adults that creates child killers................Ummmm, last thing. I edit a zine for unschoolers and prospective unschoolers here in Vermont. Anyone, but specifically Chet, Roger, bbc: I'd be interested in quoting from your posts here, if you didn't mind. (I'm at tr11@sover.net, altho' my mail is down) --EM