Conflict Resolution 101
Our Children Decipher the Virtues of Violence From George W. Bush

By: Hugh Conrad

Across the United States over the past four years, school districts have attempted to implement programs for middle school and high school students that are designed to eliminate or reduce violence. The name of the programs varies, but the educators try to show our children that differences of opinion should be settled without recourse to violence.

Programs like this have emerged because of the horrific violence that was wrecked upon Columbine High School by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris just four years ago. The two students went on a rampage in Littleton, CO that killed 14 students and one teacher, injuring 16 others, effectively traumatizing a nation.

That led to a period of national introspection, with people seriously taking stock of why young people have so much hatred pent up in them. Educators and psychologists realized that the incessant diet of violence that young people receive, whether it is through the media, video games, movies, or in gun battles on the streets of America, was causing serious problems to the emotional psyches of our young people.

Enter Conflict Resolution 101, a class that teaches students how to deal with conflicts before they escalate to the point that they did at Columbine.

The courses have been a waste of time, thanks to Bush and his neo-conservative Chickenhawks who are determining future U.S. policy.

For example, our children have witnessed the violence that our government has wrought upon the people of Iraq over the past month, taking the lives of American military personnel, media employees, as well as countless Iraqi mothers and children. After watching that, what are the children to believe? Our schools are preaching a nonviolent alternative, but the young people can quickly perceive the duplicity of what they see on the television screen and what they are taught in school.

The children watched a petulant President, saying that he was "sick and tired" of Saddam Hussein and that Hussein had "48 hours" to get out of town. Bush made a serious military conflict sound like it was a shootout at the OK Corral, not a bloody conflict with long-term ramifications for millions of people.

Instead of taking a non-violent alternative, allowing further inspections and using the nonviolent policy that won the Cold War - containment - Bush chose the violent path, attacking Iraq and killing, maiming, and psychologically inflicting punishment upon an entire generation of young Iraqis.

Despite their youth, our children can understand this hypocrisy in all of its manifestations.

The children see this duplicity in other areas. How can we justify to our children the hypocrisy of millions of people - and hundreds of groups - in our country who stand up for the rights of a fetus that cannot live outside the womb, calling themselves "Pro-Life" instead of "Anti-Abortion"? At the same time, they cast their eyes askance as our government methodically incinerates and brutally destroys the lives of innocent women, children, and other civilians in Iraq.

How can we explain to our children why the U.S. Congress works so hard to ensure that every American has the right to purchase at least one handgun a month, resulting in more deaths from guns than any civilized country on earth? All this occurs because the NRA is a major contributor to the Republican Party, not because of any right to own a handgun.

How can parents and grandparents explain to children why the adults of America sat before the television sets, mesmerized by the reports of the war, acting like it was a video game playing out before them? The adults were oblivious to the blood and guts that were being splattered across the sandy Iraqi landscape.

Let's fact it: Purveyors of violence in America are running this country, and all Americans should hang their collective heads in shame at this. Remember the fateful words of NRA czar Wayne Pierre during the 2000 presidential election when he promised that the NRA would have "an office in the White House" if Bush were elected? Now, these violent forces are firmly entrenched in the government offices in Washington, DC, supported by a tepid Congress that is driven by the NRA money, obviating the lessons of Columbine.

Last fall, while the snipers were running through Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, never did the President or Congressional Republicans condemn the guns that were creating this carnage. All they did was force prosecutors to use the death penalty - another form of violence - against the perpetrators of that action.

So when American children and grandchildren tell their parents that they are taking a class in Conflict Resolution, maybe the adults should realize that this course conflicts with everything the kids see at home, on the television, and on the streets.

Presently, these courses are useless. Children learn to emulate those people above them in society. At present, the children see a bloodthirsty President, albeit one who never found himself in harm's way, who is supported by 70% of the voters, if polls are to be believed.

So, after many of our Christian children watched the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was executed in a brutal act of capital punishment by a nefarious dictator, they understand that violence pays dividends in the United States, circa 2003.

Hugh Conrad is member of the National Council of Teachers of English and college English instructor from Lilly, PA. He is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant.