>>>>>>>>>>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.
>>>>
>>>>"less & less"? According to the OECD as of 2009 (last year data available) the US spends more per student than any other country in the world. Education spending at the state and local level has 30% in real dollars since 2000.
>>>>http://www.oecd.org/edu/educationataglance2012oecdindicators-chapterbfinancialandhumanresourcesinvestedineducation-indicators.htm
>>>>
>>>>In terms of proportion of national wealth the US only lags Iceland and Korea.
>>>>
>>>>If you're just referring to primary then the Ireland, New Zealand and the Swiss outpace as well but the US remains above average.
>>>>
>>>
>>>I was not comparing our educational spending to that of other countries but to what we spend here in the U.S. until the past 5 years or so. There can't be many school districts that haven't had their budgets slashed.
>>
>>Time will tell. The most recent data I found was from 2009. Apparently it takes a while to compile comprehensively. That said, the comparisson to other countries is relevant. Especially considering how students around the world are kicking our ass. In some cases with MUCH less.
>>
>>I personally feel this has mostly to do with our American culture which does not value education. By that I do not mean monetarily. We've proven that we're more than happy to throw money at the issue, but when it comes to the hard work of actually studying or fostering an appreciation for learning in our children, we cannot be bothered, after all Duck Dynasty is on! Time to jump on the twitbookpinteredit and discuss.
>
>While not disagreeing with your points, you keep moving the goalposts. All I said was that it will be difficult to add psychologists to school staffs when school budgets have already been slashed. Maybe they haven't been in Sacramento. My impression is that it is happening all over the country.

Sadly that is short-sighted though don't you think? Having psychologists in schools might pay for itself over a period of time (blah blah all the social costs saved blah blah). If you did something like wipe out student loan bill for young psychologists if they work in school for not-to-great-of-pay for a couple or 3 years you'd probably not have trouble finding staff to do it either. Of course that would require our government actually doing something constructive and worthwhile so I guess we're screwed on that idea..hahaha