The New York Times > Opinion > Columbine Questions: Parents, Schools and Bullies (2 Letters) 




      May 18, 2004
      Columbine Questions: Parents, Schools and Bullies (2 Letters)



      To the Editor:
      David Brooks, while right to be supportive of Dylan Klebold's parents 
      ("Columbine: Parents of a Killer," column, May 15), should not dismiss the 
      importance of the school as a major factor in the killings. 
      Dylan Klebold was a bullied child, attending a school in which bullying 
      was not being adequately addressed. Bullied children suffer tremendously, 
      cannot end the bullying by themselves, and occasionally kill themselves 
      or, rarely, others.
      Adults are capable of effectively addressing bullying, but most continue 
      not to do so. The "self-initiating moral agent who made his choices and 
      should be condemned for them" is not only Dylan Klebold, it is also the 
      adults in charge of his school.
      Blaming the child alone won't solve the problem. And the problem needs to 
      be solved.   
      STUART GREEN
      Summit, N.J., May 16, 2004
      The writer is director, New Jersey Coalition for Bullying Awareness and 
      Prevention.
      •
      To the Editor:
      David Brooks (column, May 15) writes: "My instinct is that Dylan Klebold 
      was a self-initiating moral agent who made his choices and should be 
      condemned for them. Neither his school nor his parents determined his 
      behavior."
      Certainly Dylan Klebold's choices are condemnable, but they were not 
      self-initiated. Moral agents and their behavior are fully determined by 
      environment and heredity, and to acknowledge this is not to excuse 
      wrongful acts. It is, however, to suggest that a causal explanation for 
      the Columbine massacre exists, should we care to discover it.
      By claiming that moral agency is mysteriously self-constructed, Mr. Brooks 
      short-circuits the investigation of what drove Dylan Klebold to murder and 
      suicide and makes prevention of similar horrors more difficult.  
      THOMAS W. CLARK
      Somerville, Mass., May 15, 2004
      The writer is a research associate at Health and Addictions Research.


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