Is it a huge wakeup call or a very rare tragedy? I think its a very rare tragedy. The last such massacre on an American college campus was in 1966. So once every 20 years at one of America’s 2500 schools we have a terrible massacre. That means a 1/50000 chance at a given school in a given year. Drinking, driving, and suicide are much greater dangers to college students in this country.
This fixation is not new.
My grandmother was petrified of Indians. I traced it to constant dinner table conversation of the Indian massacres in Minnesota in 1880.
I think it is a miracle that a Beslan-type elementary school/middle school/high school event perpetrated by Jihadists hasn’t happened yet. Most government schools have a “security” policy that begins and ends with a sign that says “all visitors are required to check in with the main office”. Sure, the statistics today say it’s pretty rare, I’m just surprised this doesn’t happen more often. These schools are wide open targets.
It is a rare tragedy, but does not diminsh the statements this author has made which are all on the mark.
Americans seek an answer to everything. Its part of their upbring and education. But some things HAVE no answer.
The only answer to what happened at Virginia Tech is that Evil and Satan do exist and that is an answer that secular humanists reject.
By viewing this as only a very rare tragedy (which it is), but without practical, everyday implications (which it also is, and which the author grouped together under the term "wake-up call"), you are applying the not-very- helpful standard of parenting identified in the article:
The standards that parents have established for evaluating their own performance as a parent are innocuous. If their children have avoided publicly recognized problems - such as physical or substance abuse, gang involvement, satanic activity, pregnancy, or physical aggression - and continue to get passing grades in school and stay relatively healthy, the parents believe they are doing an acceptable job.
The author's point, it seems to me, is that so long as that's all parents expect of parenting, we are not truly raising our children to be all that they can be. And we are not counteracting the negative---sometimes extremely negative----influences of society on our children's character development.
IOW, viewing the VA Tech massacre as only a "very rare tragedy" misses the point that it should remind us that the world our children live in has a lot of evil in it and we should do everything possible to prepare them to deal with it.