>>>>>in the old days, teens did not have time to get bored easily working in their parents fields
>>>>
>>>>Don't know about your family. No one in mine has worked fields for many generations (at least 4, possibly many more than that), and neither did our teens exorcise their boredom by harming random people.
>>>>
>>>>Tamar
>>>>
>>>
>>>I agree that boredom is a very lousy excuse for random violence. I am sure right now there are tens of thousands of bored kids aimlessly roaming the streets but not thinking of harming someone (let alone killing).
>>
>>This was my point. Most bored kids don't go out looking for someone to hurt. What was going on with these three that they made that choice?
>>
>>Tamar
>
>Something tells me that these killers showed the violent and psychopathic side much earlier in life, probably as early as elementary school. Maybe schools should do more psychological evaluations of kids and deal with some earlier in life.

What Mike said. We keep asking schools to do more and more with less and less.

Also, fwiw, I think you'll find that a lot of people would object to routine psych evals of kids in school. I haven't given this much thought, but my initial take is that, just like vision or hearing, it's appropriate for schools to do a high-level screening and then suggest to parents that they follow up with an expert.

Tamar