A storyteller is someone who tries to explain something he hasn't understood himself?

Maybe you know the feeling of having written a story, or perhaps you only told it to a friend - but they don't agree with you. You make a big effort to tell someone how things are, how they work, but you only earn
a doubtful smile.

That's not a catastrophe. Some storytellers have made the school killings of the last decades their topic.
There you can find several attempts to blame other people for the killings, not the killers themselves.
Some said, it was because of the mobbing. Some said, it was because of the unfair teachers. Some said, it was because of the dominance of special groups at school, e.g. sport teams. Some said, it was because of bad family and life conditions at home.

All these reasons are true, of course. They all play a role, and they can impress a young man of 16 or 18 or 20 quite hard. It is not easy to try being one of those young killers, to imagine their feelings, their experience, their complex situation.

But what kind of excuse is that? Is it reasonable to add up such elements and then come to the conclusion that it was something like logical or 'normal' that they made a school killing? How many young people in the US or in Germany have such experience, the same problems, and the same life conditions? Do they all make school killings? How do they manage their problems? Why do millions of others in the same situation not kill other students or teachers? Is there possibly some kind of concept to prevent them from criminal action, a concept that they can and do set up and practice themselves?

I've made a little attempt to look for a way out, when a deeply disappointed student is obviously planning a harsh attack at his school. It is in my story 'Mike's Plan', the first one in my 'School Stories'.

Henry Arnold, author of School Stories

An incentive for writing a school story

You remember or experience a situation in which a school system representative (teacher or director)
lied on an important issue, let's say a grading in a central subject.

What could you do with such an event to make it the core of a school story?
 
- Let the student tell about his disappointment being lied to on grading by a teacher/director
- Describe the student who really needs a good grade in this very subject
- Imagine the lots of work she/he did to improve in the coming school report
- Mention the progress that was visible in the tests and papers
- Show how friends and parents where happy that things got better
- Move the story to a point where it seems absolutely clear that improvement was done
- Depict a little scene where the teacher giving the grade was angry about this student
- Give some background why he felt motivated to refuse the better grade finally
- Tell details about his close relation to the director who wants bade grades at his school
- Let him utter some of the spreaded teacher rubbish about "good teachers give bad grades"
- Make a hint on the school system based on a scale of 5 or 6 grades that must be applied

So far, this might be enough. Can you use such a list of incentives to write a school story?

Use your fantasy, and you will find a beginning, an end and of course your own central action part.

My idea is, lying as one of the typical patterns of school life, used every minute at every school, especially by the weak characters that work there and are asked to educate young people. The reason is: the system awards them for lying, and they get punished for telling things as they are.The problem is: the leaders of the school system, directors and supervisors on higher levels, stick too often to the rules of lying, simply to avoid questions and quarrels.

Henry Arnold, author of 'School Stories'