I decided to record in a notebook the themes of the books that I read. After reading Robinson Crusoe, I wrote that its theme was "the value of learning to live by oneself."

Reading, writing, talking, meditating, speculating, arguing: these are the only resources available to those of us who teach the humanities and they are, obviously, resources that can be bent to serve any purpose

Schroeder believes that ·book clubs and coffee bars provide a kind of embodied community unavailable on the Internet

we've reached the point where suburban kids are becoming mass murderers because we've created domestic spaces that isolate indi-viduals in a technological sea of entertainment -the Tv; the VCR, the computer, the entertainment center, the Internet, a different toy for every-one.

Eric Harris certainly didn't accept the idea that anyone was to blame for his actions or that anything could have been done to stop him or Dylan Klebold in going forward with their plan

It's reassuring to think that either the work of the legal system or the educational system can reduce or eliminate altogether the threat of the unpredictable and the unforeseen. This is why we have childproof medi-cine bottles, penalties for not buckling up, informational literature on family planning for students in junior high school: these are all examples of reasonable responses to known problems.

In March 2001, a skinny kid, whom classmates called "Anorexic Andy," walked into his high school in Santee, California, to reenact his version of Columbine. He killed two and wounded thirteen before being subdued. And in April 2002, Robert Steinhaeuser returned to Johann Gutenberg High School in Erfurt, Germany, to avenge his expulsion for forging a doctor's note: he killed two students and thirteen teachers be-fore turning his gun on himself.

eleven and thirteen, pulled a fire alarm and gunned down students exit-ing Westside Middle School inJonesboro,Arkansas, leaving five dead.And the list goes on with additional shootings over the past five years at high schools in Fayetteville, Tennessee; Springfield, Oregon; Richmond, Virginia; Conyers, Georgia; Deming, New Mexico; and Cold Spring, Minnesota.

In February 1997, a sixteen-year-old in Bethel, Alaska, entered his high school and murdered the principal and another student. In October 1997, another sixteen-year-old, this one living in Pearl, Mississippi, killed his mother, then went to school and killed two more students. In December 1997, a fourteen-yea~old took aim at a prayer circle in West Paducah, Kentucky; killing three. In March 1998, two boys,

Despite heightened sensitivity and increased security, however, the schoolyard massacre has proven to be a remarkably durable and recur-ring social cataclysm

there were calls both for increased external controls -new laws, regulations, supervisory agencies -and for increased internal controls -educational interventions, moral training, prayer. Surely; more laws, more education, and more religious instruction would bring these violent stu-dents back into line

s

There was the live footage of students fleeing in terror across the green, the boy with the bleeding head being dropped from the window, the SWAT teams moving in. There was the discovery of what lay beyond the eye of the camera: fifteen dead, a cache of weapons, a large homemade bomb made with two propane tanks and a gasoline canister, the eventual disclosure of an even more sinister fantasy that involved hijacking a plane and crash-ing it in New York City.1

the events at Columbine High School mesmerized the nation.