When I was in high school, I was the outcast (long hair, metal guitarist, only wore black) but I was also an AP honor student. Since I had the opportunity to do a semester of career shasowing, I chose the county coroner. I spent every Friday night and weekend going to crime scenes, nursing homes, fires, morgues, and got to assist with autopsies. Seeing death close up Is what gave me the best perspective on the reality of violence. Seeing what guns actually did to people, understanding the pain involved in how people must have died, dealing with the families of those we had to take away, all of those things and more created a healthy respect for all of the things my peers thought were “cool”. My end project was getting the school board to approve a plan for any student who was charged with possession of drugs, weapons charges, assault, drunk driving or alcohol use, had the option to follow the coroner for community service instead of jail time or highway cleaning project. It was very successful, reducing the number of repeat offenders by 60% in the first two years. In short, I think exposing kids to actual death, allowing them to see the difference between reality and entertainment, would do them good. US soldier suicides are at an all time high, perhaps because of the current generation of soldier that has been raised on Call Of Duty is finding the reality is not as much fun as the fantasy.
When I was in high school, I was the outcast (long hair, metal guitarist, only wore black) but I was also an AP honor student. Since I had the opportunity to do a semester of career shasowing, I chose the county coroner. I spent every Friday night and weekend going to crime scenes, nursing homes, fires, morgues, and got to assist with autopsies. Seeing death close up Is what gave me the best perspective on the reality of violence. Seeing what guns actually did to people, understanding the pain involved in how people must have died, dealing with the families of those we had to take away, all of those things and more created a healthy respect for all of the things my peers thought were “cool”. My end project was getting the school board to approve a plan for any student who was charged with possession of drugs, weapons charges, assault, drunk driving or alcohol use, had the option to follow the coroner for community service instead of jail time or highway cleaning project. It was very successful, reducing the number of repeat offenders by 60% in the first two years. In short, I think exposing kids to actual death, allowing them to see the difference between reality and entertainment, would do them good. US soldier suicides are at an all time high, perhaps because of the current generation of soldier that has been raised on Call Of Duty is finding the reality is not as much fun as the fantasy.