Schools need to teach the heart as well as the head, the father of Columbine shooting victim Rachel Scott told an audience of school counselors Thursday.
Several people in Emporia State University’s Colonial Ballroom grew misty-eyed as Darrell Scott talked about his daughter and the impact her story has had on others. Rachel was the first student killed in the April 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., that took the lives of 13 people.
Following her death, Scott created the Rachel’s Challenge organization which in turn has created numerous “Friends of Rachel” groups in schools across the country. The groups encourage students to take positive action to improve their schools and make a difference in the world at large. And Scott said he knows of at least seven school shootings and several suicides that were averted because of Rachel’s story.
“Someone always tells me ‘I don’t know how you can do this,’” Scott said at the conference for the Kansas Counseling Association. “I don’t know how I can not. Sharing Rachel’s story fulfills her desire to make a difference in the world and gives me a chance to celebrate her life long after she’s gone. To me, it’s an honor to share her life with so many people.”
Rachel was 17 when she died. Much of the approach taken by the Friends of Rachel groups comes from an essay on ethics she wrote a month before she was shot. The keys, she said, were honesty, compassion, trust and a willingness to go beyond even the third impression of someone.
“I am sure that my codes of life may be very different from yours, but how do you know that trust, compassion and beauty will not make this world a better place to be in and this life a better one to live?” she wrote. “My codes may seem like a fantasy that can never be reached, but test them for yourself and see the kind of effect they have in the people around you. You may start a chain reaction.”
One effect of that, Scott said, is that the groups’ plan of attack is focused on doing good things rather than avoiding bad ones. Every group is given the same five basic charges: Look for the best in others, dare to dream and set goals for yourself, choose your influences carefully, always offer small acts of kindness, and through all of it, set off a chain reaction of good.
But it’s not just the kids who need to be transformed, he said.
“As counselors, you know teachers can be bullies,” he said, touching off some head nods and murmurs of agreement around the ballroom. “They can be part of the problem.”
In fact, he said, adults can be very poor examples for students these days.
“We’re telling them not to bully each other, not to put each other down, not to be mean to each other,” Scott said. “And yet, they’re watching the news every day, where our leader are doing the very things we’re telling them not to do.”
Part of the overall problem, Scott said, is that schools these days emphasize knowledge but not character. For much of America’s history, he said, a balance between the two was considered essential.
One excerpt from a 1910 teaching text summed up much of his point: “The true aim of education is not knowledge, but how to live.”
“Isn’t that an interesting statement?” he said. “We believe if you teach the heart of someone and inspire them, you can instruct and educate them. If you have their heart, you’ll have their head.”
The irony, he said, is that intellectual achievement was high when character was emphasized, but fell off when knowledge became the sole focus.
Scott’s set of challenges to teachers were to teach by example, love your students, teach to the heart and the head, involve groups that might normally be missed and ultimately have an impact on the world.
He drew from one example in Rachel’s life, where she had approached a new student sitting alone at lunch. “Would you like to sit with us?” Rachel asked.
“I told Rachel, ‘No, I’m OK,’ but she saw right through that,” the girl later said. Rachel immediately brought her friends to the student’s table. That ended up making what could have been the worst day of the student’s life into the best.
How many people, Scott asked, would have taken the words at face value or even be offended?
“We train kids to be a see-througher, not a look-atter,” he said. “If you look deeper, you’ll find a lot going on. ... In fact, if you’re a counselor, that’s part of your job.”