Repository 123: Putin Cites Lack of Arts in Schools as Culprit for Shooting

A quick and shocking post, this morning while reading the Wall Street Journal, I read about the terrible shooting at the Moscow school that left two dead. Equally shockingwas Putin's first remarks about the shooting, where he cited a lack of the arts in school as part of the mixture that causes these tragedies, this is directly from the WSJ article:

At a meeting with cultural officials in the Russian city of Pskov, President Vladimir Putin urged the country to do a better job of teaching its young generation to understand and value theater, drama and music. "Maybe if we did that in the right ways, the kind of tragedies like the one in Moscow today wouldn't happen," he said.

The mass media has done a pretty good job of burying these school shootings in the papers lately. They bury them by design as they don't want the shooters to receive anypublicity. The fact of the matter is that they are frequent, and have increased in numbers. Turning a blind eye on the fact that we have arts, and that we do have access to incredibly visual and violent video games is getting to feel fairly ignorant. And if you live in the US, please know that there are multimillion dollar lobbyists that set up camp making sure that no research be funded that will reveal the effects of violent video games on children.Yes, that's right - Entertainment Software Association has ganged up on researchers and government to make sure that no one can prove this point. While violent video games and lack of arts are only two angles, two ingredients of the perfect storm that would cause a young person to commit these atrocious crimes, it is part of the story so let's not ignore it.