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  • Writing as Warning

    By Oronte April 19, 2007 3:17 pm

    Some of you have written to ask how I, a writing teacher, feel about the creative writing connection in the Virginia Tech killings. I have many things to say but want to be very careful not to use this disaster to point fingers or advance a cause.

    Fact is, there’s no connection between the killer and creative writing. It’s as inconsequential to what happened as his ethnicity. The usual media scramble for something to say after an event leads to a kind of implied causality. With his writing, the issue is culpability—if no one said anything after they read his words, then people died needlessly. But at least two writing teachers did voice their concerns, and the department head took what action she felt possible within the law. The police, a judge, and a mental health facility apparently all knew of this man. And people still died.

    I’ve read his “plays” online. Any writing teacher used to reading amateurs’ writing by the ream could tell they represented a brainsick person, especially when combined with his classroom behavior. They do not look or sound like anything straining to be art, drama, or story. Without stupidly doing a poetics of pathological prose, I can say they remind me of the multiple raging voices that a schizophrenic cousin used to do alone in her kitchen, in the days before better medicines.

    I’ll write more later on reacting to student writing that’s off, odd, or disturbing in less obvious and therefore more complicated ways. I’ve mentioned it before, in “Voice and View,” below, and I’m happy to elaborate. But discussion of the Virginia Tech disaster will be about policies for intervention when everyone knows there’s a problem, not about the creative writing classroom.

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  • Virginia Tech Shootings
  • Posted by Ted Wachtel , President at International Institute for Restorative Practices on May 1, 2007 at 9:25am EDT

  • The world is expressing bewilderment at the actions of Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech student who shot and killed 32 people in the largest campus massacre in history. However, it seems that at least some explanation for his horrific crime is slowly emerging. Cho's story is a classic portrait of a young man who lost all sense of connection to the people around him and became capable of mass murder.

    The New York Times (April 22, 2007) reported that Cho led a lifetime of excruciating silence: "From the beginning, he did not talk. Not to other children, not to his own family. … [In high school] he was unresponsive in class, and unwilling to speak. … Classmates recall some teasing and bullying over his taciturn nature. The few times he was required to speak for a class assignment, students mocked his poor English and deep-throated voice." Recently at Virginia Tech, as Cho's behavior grew ever stranger and the writing he submitted in class became more violent and obscene, he "was allowed to remain in the seminar but was placed off to the side, where, [his teacher] said, he did not speak. She did not share his writings with the class. … And then he stopped going to class” (NY Times, April 19, 2007).

    It is a pattern that has been repeated too many times, in too many school tragedies. When society isolates social offenders, it only decreases their desire to behave appropriately. They lose their sense of "connectedness" to their fellow human beings and lash out violently, a reaction that the world — rightly — finds shocking and appalling.

    This is not a crisis that can be solved by tougher enforcement of “zero tolerance” policies, which studies (such as a recent report from the American Psychological Association) have shown to be ineffective at best and further damaging to social relationships at worst. Rather, it is restoration of the sense of connectedness, essential for social and emotional health, which is critical.

    The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (1994–present), a large federally funded research project, found that where school environments promote connectedness, there are significant positive outcomes among students, such as less violence, less drug and alcohol use and less teen pregnancy. The need for children and young people (and, indeed, all people), to feel they belong and are cared for is one of the most crucial requirements for good health and well-being.

    But how can schools create connectedness, while at the same time addressing serious behavioral problems?

    The emerging social science known as "restorative practices," which is spreading throughout education, criminal justice, and child and family services across the world, speaks directly to this issue. As a proactive expansion of "restorative justice," a collaborative process involving those most directly affected by a crime in determining how best to repair the harm caused by the offense, "restorative practices" posits that the best way to help troubled people is to directly engage them in a restorative environment, one that fosters that essential sense of connectedness.

    In a restorative environment, such as those that have been created at the alternative schools my wife and I started 30 years ago for delinquent and high-risk youth, "restorative practices" are systematically applied. These practices help create a supportive, caring environment for youth who have been rejected by other schools and the world at large. Above all, restorative practices are about engaging people. “Check-in” groups are held several times a day, so that every student may speak about his or her feelings and experiences. In this way, everyone feels heard and understood, building that all-important sense of community and connectedness. When students in these alternative schools misbehave, problems are neither swept under the rug nor handled rigidly. Instead, the students are asked to take responsibility for their actions. They must reflect on their own behavior, hear how their behavior has affected others and find ways to repair harm caused by their actions. A connection is again made, this time between action and consequence, and with a supportive group of peers and staff that, however, insists on accountability.

    Empirical research has shown that restorative practices produce remarkably positive outcomes in the behavior and attitudes of young people who attend the alternative schools where the practices are consistently applied. Similar positive outcomes have been seen in public schools that have embraced restorative practices throughout the world, including those in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Research suggests that restorative practices are effective in dealing with bullying, and in lowering suspension, expulsion and truancy rates. A new graduate school, the International Institute for Restorative Practices, has been founded to provide education and research and to help foster this emerging social science.

    I do not believe that the people who comprised Cho Seung-Hui's community at Virginia Tech are to blame for what happened there. I only want to suggest, for the sake of the future, that if people like Cho Seung-Hui experienced restorative practices as part of their educational environment, it would enhance and sustain that critical sense of connectedness — crucial to all human health and well-being — so that hideous tragedies like this would be far less likely.

    —Ted Wachtel

    Ted Wachtel is the founder and president of the International Institute of Restorative Practices, a graduate school (http://www.iirp.org), founder of CSF Buxmont schools for troubled youth (http://www.csfbuxmont.org) and co-author of the best seller Toughlove.

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