Back to school at Columbine

By Samuel Blumenfeld

On Monday, Aug. 16, students returned to Columbine High for their
fall 1999 semester. During the summer, workers patched the bullet
holes, remodeled the cafeteria, repainted it blue and green and added
new furnishings and tile. As yet, officials have not decided what they
want to do about the library, where most of the carnage took place.
They’ve gotten rid of the bloody carpet and sealed off the room where
most of the students were murdered and where the two killers killed
themselves. A temporary library will be housed in modular classrooms.

In many respects, that sealed-off library can be viewed as a reminder
of the nihilist philosophy that pervades the curriculum at Columbine.
Should that room ever be reopened, we can expect that the spirits of the
dead students and their murderers will haunt its atmosphere. They may
remodel it, repaint it, replace the furniture, remove the books that
silently witnessed the satanic orgy of murder, but they will never be
able to get rid of the haunting spirits.

If the school authorities had any sense, they’d turn that room into a
shrine to the dead, with pictures of the students and their killers,
newspaper and magazine clippings, videos, and poems by students. They
should turn it into a miniature holocaust museum so that no one forgets
what happened at Columbine High on April 20, 1999.

Having studied and written about American education for the last 30
years, I’m afraid that I see in Columbine High a microcosm of everything
that is wrong in American education and culture today. It represents
the full flower of satanic humanism with death education permeating the
entire curriculum and infecting every child with its deadly virus of
gloom, depression, and suicide. It easily leads many impressionable
youngsters into the Goth subculture with its obsession with death.

If you want to know what Goth is all about, just look it up on the
Internet and you’ll be amazed at what you’ll find. For example, there
is an International Goth Club Listing with over 260 clubs worldwide.
They have such names as: Death Guild, Necropolis, Perversion, Bar
Sinister, Coven 13, Sin Klub, Delerium, Dark Carnival, Dementia, The
Morgue, The Mausoleum, Death Rattle, Murder, The Dark Side, The Inferno,
just to mention a few.

Their music is provided by such bands as Switchblade Symphony,
Covenant, Bauhaus, UK Decay, Southern Death Cult, Alien Sex Fiend,
Christian Death, Cradle of Filth, Morbid Angel, Fear Factory, etc.
There is a fascination with vampires, witchcraft, and the occult. At a
website entitled “Suburban Goths” we are told:

    Goth is a state of mind. In fact it is quite individualistic.
    If you ask a number of Goths for their definition of Gothic each will be
    different yet similar in theme. Some will tell you Gothic is a way of
    life embracing death and darkness — to accept death as a part of life
    and bring themselves not to fear it. Some will say it is a style
    characterized by the use of desolate or remote settings and macabre,
    mysterious and violent incidents.

Satanism gained its entry into the public school through death
education. It has led many students to embrace death and darkness as a
way of life. And the obsession can become so strong that even an orgy
of murder can’t fully satisfy the satanic lust for destruction. That is
why on the first day back at Columbine High two one-inch swastikas were
found scratched into a freshly painted stall in a girl’s restroom,
another was found in a boy’s restroom and a fourth was scratched into a
brick wall outside the school.

Yet, Christian parents will continue to send their sons and daughters
into Satan’s territory because they are so totally confused by what is
going on that they refuse to believe that their lives are being lived on
the edge of disaster. Their own Christian faith is so weak and riddled
with doubt that they cannot see evil at work even when it hits them in
the face. They blame the murders not on satanic forces, but on guns
which the vast majority of gun-owners use for sport or self-protection.

Meanwhile, members of the Trench Coat Mafia, the student group that
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hung out with, have returned to Columbine
along with their classmates. A photo and message from the Trench Coat
Mafia appeared in the 1998 Columbine High School yearbook. The message
reads:

    We are Josh, Joe, Chris, Horst, Chuck, Brian, Pauline, Nicole,
    Kristen, Krista, plus Tad, Alex, Cory. Who says we’re different.
    Insanity’s healthy! Remember rocking parties at Kristen’s, foos-ball at
    Joe’s, and fencing at Christopher’s! Stay alive, stay different, stay
    crazy! Oh, and stay away from Cream Soda!! Love Always, The Chicks.

Nicole, a senior, told a reporter, “I know, and all my friends
know, I had nothing to do with it [the shooting]. If they want to tease
me for having a good time with Harris and Klebold, fine. … I consider
them my friends.”

The mother of a former Trench Coat Mafia member, told a reporter that
she encouraged her son, 18, to return to Columbine. He had dropped out
before Christmas because he said the schoolwork was not challenging.
“Sometimes, what you imagine is going to happen is just a whole lot
worse,” she said. “I’m just tickled to pieces he wants to go back.
He’s at home at Columbine.”

Even when kids want to get away from the Columbines of America, their
parents will insist that they stay. Why would a parent be “tickled to
pieces” to see her son go back into the scene of a massacre and claim
that he’s “at home” there?

Meanwhile, as liberals, led by President Clinton, carry on their
hysterical crusade against guns, the authorities at Columbine have
beefed up security with more armed guards, 16 extra surveillance
cameras, and a requirement that students wear ID badges. And wouldn’t
you know it that Satan is laughing all the way to the (blood) bank.


Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education,
including “NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education” and “The Whole
Language/OBE Fraud.” Blumenfeld’s books are available on
Amazon.com and
from the Paradigm Company, 208-322-4440.

Samuel Blumenfeld

Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education, including: "Is Public Education Necessary?" "NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education," "The Whole Language/OBE Fraud" and "Homeschooling: A Parents Guide to Teaching Children." His latest is "Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America's Children." Back issues of his incisive newsletter, The Blumenfeld Education Letter, are available online. Read more of Samuel Blumenfeld's articles here.