Alvaro Castillo (on trial now in NC) acknowledges that he was “obsessed with Columbine.” Recently I commented on the causes of the Columbine tragedy after reading an Education Week report of several research studies). A Slate article on the FBI’s assessment of the causes of Columbine is similar. (And it wasn’t bullying, as is commonly believed.)

Based on what I’ve read about school shootings and what I’ve experienced in our school system, I’m now convinced that Columbine and the Castillo rampage could have been prevented.

Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Alvaro Castillo were all mentally ill when they went on their killing sprees. School officials must have known that something was seriously wrong in these kids lives. Teachers who interacted daily with these kids must have known. So, why didn’t they speak up?

I hope in the Castillo defense we will hear about the defendant’s history of seeking help for his problems. I hope we will hear that his teachers were aware of his problems and that they assisted him in finding help. However, even if he was receiving treatment during high school, no one seems to have helped him escape his father’s abuse. Why?

I am not a lawyer, but I have a theory that lawyers contributed to the problems. We live in a litigious society. We all know that. I believe that school officials and K-12 teachers are afraid they will be sued by the parents of students they identify as troubled and in need of psychological counseling. And I’m convinced that educators are afraid they will be sued by parents they accuse of abusing their children. What goes on behind the closed doors of student homes after school hours is unknowable.

Even when a child presents in class with signs of physical abuse, all a teacher can do is ask how the child was hurt. Most kids will say “I ran into a door.”

• Sidebar: Most abused women make up lies like that, too. I once had an employee who came to work with a bloody, black eye. When I asked her about it she said, “I hit my head on a bedside table.” (What was I supposed to say, “You mean your husband hit your head on a bedside table”?) A few weeks later, she came to work with a gauze bandage around her hand. When I asked her what happened, she said, “I burned my fingers with a glue gun.”

IMHO, one reason we are a litigious society is that law schools crank out too many lawyers who then can’t find useful work – just as we don’t crank out enough doctors and nurses. I have also said before that I believe law schools need to train lawyers specifically for the judge’s bench. We don’t have enough good judges, either.

Maybe if law schools would take my advice, bright young people interested in law would choose to become judges rather than civil litigators. Then the courts wouldn’t be as crowded as they are; fewer cases would be overturned on appeal based on reversible errors of incompetent judges; and fewer out-of-work lawyers would go after the school system – which then would be free to help our kids grow up safe and sane.