Letters

HOW TO SPOT A TROUBLED KID

Of all the school-shooting accounts over the past few years, your story about 15-year-old T.J. Solomon, who fired on his classmates in Conyers, Ga. [SPECIAL REPORT, May 31], was the first to make me feel great sympathy for the shooter. In this case, as in some others, the shooter was being tormented by a popular classmate simply because he was quiet, a situation too many schools allow to go unchecked. I am 35, and still remember being picked on in high school and treated like an outsider. I clearly recall the ambivalent response by my teachers. I think kids today are probably even more cruel than they were 20 years ago, and our schools are not doing enough to stop such behavior. JONATHAN BRODER New York City

Instead of focusing on "How to Spot a Troubled Kid," I wish you had concentrated on "How to Help a Troubled Kid." There's a big difference in involvement, compassion and understanding. THERESE HENDERSON Hanover, Mass.

How to spot a troubled nation: plenty of depressed kids with easy access to a sea of guns. ROBERT F. CURRAN San Francisco

Schools are no longer peaceful buildings that harbor happy children. Rather they have become a nightmare of violence and bloodshed. RANDY KLAAS Shickshinny, Pa.

A parent, whose job it is to instill values and morals, should explain how fantasy differs from reality and help troubled kids grow up to be well-rounded individuals. High school kids today are not spending evenings watching movies with their friends. They are usually unsupervised and getting into trouble. They are going to parks to get drunk and high. Kids will be kids, but someone needs to explain reality. Society should embrace children and teach them not just about algebra and how to make money but also about life. KATE FIELDS Washington

The problems of depressed and troubled youngsters cannot be solved simply by more love, more pills or more legislation in isolation. A network of support, evaluation and treatment is needed, tailored to the personality of each child. ROBERT D. HUNT, M.D. Nashville, Tenn.

I have been a public high school teacher for 30 years, and I read your report with great interest. But school violence isn't just about depression in youngsters. It's about anger. It is not depression that drives these children to kill. It's anger and their inability to handle their rage. A depressed child kills himself. An angry child kills his classmates and his teachers. LORRAINE M. SULLIVAN Arlington, Mass.

I am into the Gothic life-style, and I have seen many graphic films. I enjoy this subculture, but my parents raised me well enough so that I never felt the need to go on a shooting spree. If people were more involved with their kids and quit blaming pop icons for everything, we might be able to solve the problem before more lives are tragically lost. TRACY COCHRAN Powder Springs, Ga.

WONDER DRUGS FOR KIDS

It's a conspicuous sign of social progress that the Holden Caulfields of 1999 can be "cured" with the aid of Prozac & Co., as discussed by Walter Kirn in "The Danger of Suppressing Sadness" [VIEWPOINT, May 31]. It is a shame that Joan of Arc in her benighted state could not have similarly been "cured." Unproductive individuals hostile to mainstream society, ranging from Socrates to Emerson, could have been chemically corrected for their own good to better adhere to the norm. If everyone conformed, schools could successfully be made up of "productive" students who effectively stick with traditional studies and perhaps make the honor roll. It seems that we must eliminate the deviant geniuses and artists in favor of the conforming sycophants whom some see as the fountainhead of societal progress. O brave new world! JOHN M. DE PALMA Succsunna, N.J.

For nearly five decades, Catcher in the Rye and the character of Holden Caulfield have been the example of adolescent alienation. Holden's alienation and despair are served up to young minds without much context or perspective. Young people today need a catcher in the rye to keep them from the steep cliffs of nihilism and moral relativism that are sold to them in popular media and in the classroom. Hats off to the youth workers who are catching kids right and left every day before they go over the cliff. PAUL SAILHAMER Fullerton, Calif.

STUDENTS GET RELIGION

In your article "A Surge of Teen Spirit" [SPECIAL REPORT, May 31], you focused on evangelical teens, a group with the ultimate superiority complex. They believe that they are God's chosen and that those who disagree with them are doomed to hell. Evangelism and the feelings of inferiority it breeds in people of different faiths are hardly the way to prevent school carnage. Religion in public schools can only polarize a community that needs, now more than ever, to be held together. RAMAN KHANNA Springfield, Ohio

Those teenagers who died at Columbine High School were not martyrs--at least not by the usual definition of having to choose between denying their faith and living or affirming their faith and dying. The question "Do you believe in God?" was apparently not asked by the killers in most of the deaths; this seems to indicate that they were merely taunting their victims. The final testimony of the students to their faith is compelling, but it is not martyrdom, and we distort the true meaning of the word by misusing it. KENNETH G. OLTHOFF Linthicum, Md.

NOTHING BUT COCKROACHES

Looks as if we have outsmarted ourselves again. What else besides monarch butterflies is being killed by the pollen from pest-resistant designer corn [SCIENCE, May 31]? Hundreds of types of flora and fauna are already on the endangered-species list. Others are being stamped out before receiving the protection that would guarantee their survival. The human population is due to hit 6 billion in a few months. I see a day coming when way too many humans will share the planet with nothing but starlings and cockroaches. BILL BARMETTLER Chehalis, Wash.

THE SECRET LIFE OF FANS

Re your story on driver Jeff Gordon and the popularity of NASCAR races [BUSINESS, May 31]: For six days a week, we are pillars of the community (he: Chamber of Commerce president, civic leader, successful businessman; she: homeroom mother, baseball coach, car-pool queen). But on weekends, beware! We two have driven 10 hours one way to a race. Slept in the car. Washed up in a gas station rest room. Set the VCR to record a race we actually attended. Watched the replay when we finally got home from sitting in after-race traffic for hours. When our friends read this letter in your magazine, our double life will be revealed. We are NASCAR fans. BRENT AND KIM JENSON Henryetta, Okla.

CORRECTIONS

In our report on NASCAR racing [BUSINESS, May 31], we inadvertently attributed a quote to Doris O'Bryant that was in fact made by another person who was with O'Bryant selling FANS AGAINST GORDON T shirts. We regret the error.

Our piece about prescription medicines for teenagers who exhibit moodiness or anxiety [VIEWPOINT, May 31] incorrectly referred to the authorship of a recent Internet posting that listed some possible symptoms of manic depression in teens. The posting was written with the help of the American Academy of Adolescent Child Psychiatry, not the National Association for Mental Illness.