Do gentlemen prefer massacres?

[Boojatta]

Did Columbine High School train young men who attended that school to be mild-mannered, diplomatic gentlemen?

Diplomacy is appropriate in some contexts, such as the application of US foreign policy to Central America or South America. Naturally, the conduct of foreign policy requires some trained diplomats and other professionals, and history shows that corpses begin to pile up in these situations. However, voters can become very distressed when US citizens become corpses in a public school located in the USA.

I would like to propose two different approaches to avoiding these problems.

First approach: make a very clear distinction in the minds of students between, on the one hand, learning or rehearsal of mild-mannered, diplomatic interpersonal interaction skills and, on the other hand, application of those skills.

Second approach: teach students to take the gloves off, not pull any punches, and stop allowing worries about how others might interpret the details in their style of interacting with fellow students to interfere with the substance of the interaction.