We’re excited to have Darrell Scott, founder of Rachel’s Challenge join us on Bold TV! Darrell is the father of Rachel Scott, the first Columbine shooting victim. He founded Rachel’s Challenge—a school assembly and training program named after his daughter, Rachel Joy Scott—after the shooting, with the hope of offering a solution. Rachel’s Challenge says news coverage shows the programming has prevented seven school shootings and prevents 150 suicides annually. Darrell attended President Trump’s listening session alongside survivors of the Douglas High School shooting, so we discuss his meeting, his daughter’s legacy, and how we can stop violence in schools.
Can we stop school shootings with laws?
Darrell told Bold TV that lawmakers would be unable to completely stop school shootings. He says schools are failing our children by becoming profession-oriented, instead of character-oriented.
“If we practice in the home, if we practice in the school, if we practice in our relationships with each other, a little more empathy, listen a little more, talk a little less, spending more time trying to connect, we will eliminate a lot of the problem,” Scott said. “No matter how many laws we pass, it’s not going to stop school shootings. Young people are going to find a way to vent, older people as well. If someone has it in their mind to kill others, they will find a way to do that.”
Heart, head, hand
Scott said schools moved away from the education philosophy of Horace Mann, which entailed a focus on the full person, the three H’s: the heart, the head and the hand. In the early 1900s, Scott said John Dewey changed the focus of education to the process–rather than the person–and education shifted to the three R’s: reading, writing, arithmetic.
Rachel’s Challenge aims to fill this more modern void and shape young people’s character by inspiring a permanent positive change through the organization’s programing, which encourages students to communicate, empathize and listen to one another.
The tragedy of suicide among students
Scott pointed to the historic nature of the Columbine massacre as generating multiple copycats in the ensuing years, but that shootings of others are far eclipsed by student suicides.
“Almost every shooter since Columbine has referred back to Columbine in some way,” Scott said. “Not all of them, but most of them have. And yes, Columbine was the first mass shooting, there’s been a hundred and forty-one students killed in school since my daughter was killed, and Rachel was the first of those 141 to die. But more tragically, even than school shootings, is that for every one student who has been killed in a school shooting, over 800 students have committed suicide. And that’s where we put a lot of our focus, is on helping young people feel self-worth self value, understanding who they are and inspiring them to be the best that they can be so.”
