“Why would kids from a place like that do it? Because they can, because it’s been done.” From Classrooms to Chat Rooms, All Threats Turn Serious. One of the tragedies of modern life is the pitiful unoriginality of even violent pathological attention-seeking. ‘ “I think that we have reached a point where
this has become part of the repertoire of
acting out,” said Charles Patrick Ewing,
professor of law and psychology at the
State University of New York at Buffalo and
author of Kids Who Kill.’ And I’m amazed to hear about the modern equivalent of the ludicrous duck-and-cover exercises which in my grade school years were supposed to protect us in the event of a nuclear blast — drills in which students prepare for an imaginary terrorist attack by finding safe havens and escape routes from their schools. Is this preparedness or absurd hypervigilance which gives troubled kids a built-in avenue to act out? New York Times