… I have very bad hand-eye coordination.
If I were teaching little kids, I would feel obligated to protect them, perhaps even with my life.
But my students are all over 18 years old. Some of them have concealed-carry licenses. Many of them grew up hunting and going to the shooting range. A few have worked for the Sheriff’s office. More than a few are ex-military.
If the feces hits the blower, I’m counting on THEM to protect ME!
Ponder, debate, and blame the patriarchy here…
(Also: Hey, whoops!)
January 2, 2013 at 8:01 am
I’m a professor who routinely teaches large classes. We have had two big incidents on our campus in the last year where people have had weapons on campus, so I am really concerned about protecting my classes/myself. I have no idea how to handle a gun (I’ve never shot one) or how to handle someone with a gun. I always identify two or three students in my class with military or law enforcement backgrounds and I have now actually started asking them (privately) if they will be the point people in an emergency. They say yes (and are flattered) and I feel safer. I don’t know if that is a) okay, 2) anti-feminist, 3) a good move.
January 2, 2013 at 8:22 am
You know how I feel about the proposal. First of all, looking at the sort of open plan schools we have out here in California (and that I grew up with in Arizona), you’d need to either tear them down and rebuild them as fortresses, or perhaps to build a moat and some guard towers. I don’t know- the idea that one armed guard would save the kids is ridiculous to me. It is like the NRA doesn’t really care about making sure kids don’t get shot, it just wants to be sure there is someone to shoot the person who shot the kids. Since so many of these shooters are suicidal, it seems we have that covered. Second, my daughter’s public school can no longer afford a librarian, and the school nurse is there half of one day per week. Roughly 1/3 of the classes are in “temporary” trailers that are roughly 20 years old. We can’t come up with the money to fix any of that, but we’re going to put a highly trained armed guard in the school?
Insanity.
Also, FWIW, I would not have expected my college professors to protect me from someone shooting at us.
January 3, 2013 at 5:22 am
I don’t think a gun visibly present at school would help set any of my students at ease. A gun in my hands would especially not be helpful (and I do know how to shoot, but I don’t think I could shoot a person ever). I really think that there would be *more* violence and not less were we to arm teachers. Having a gun present escalates conflict. And not every teacher is an even-keeled, completely sane adult for every second of every day. I’d worry seriously about my students getting a hold of the gun or someone pulling it in an especially tense situation. Those happen sometimes, and I’m glad my biggest fear then is that my student will hit me.
Maybe it’s pessimistic of me, but I think violence just happens. I’d like to look at ways to reduce people’s propensity to violence, like better mental health care, good job opportunities, and the ability to support a family on an average job. But I don’t want to give up my freedom, or the freedom of my students, on a daily basis on the rare off-chance that we’re a school that gets targeted by extreme violence.
Also, I agree with Cloud — if we have money to do something at school, that money should be used for more support staff and spaces for students. I teach a study hall in the media center, and so does another teacher at the same time, so the media center can’t even be used by any classes during an entire period of the school day. I’m at a high school, and we too only have a school nurse for half the day and not enough mental health resources to help our teenagers sort of out their drama (some of which is far beyond the normal drama of teens). Fix those before you pay for guards at our schools.
January 3, 2013 at 12:16 pm
Hear hear! A thoughtful response.
January 3, 2013 at 10:29 am
I agree with all of you. As Leah says “having a gun present escalates conflict.” Having a gun in the house vastly worsens the odds that someone in that house will use the gun on a family member – intentionally or not. Having guns in schools would, in my view, guarantee more accidental shootings and enable more intentional ones.
People will still kill people regardless, but it is impossible to “accidentally” kill someone with, say, a knife. You have to really mean it. And you can’t kill 20 people at once with anything but an assault weapon or an arsenal (or, of course, a bomb), because everything else takes more time (meaning time for the killer to be subdued).
I don’t think all firearms should be banned, but I do think assault weapons should not be sold to anyone but active-duty military or public-safety officers, and I do think ALL firearms and users thereof should be licensed, inspected, and registered with the same level of attention we pay to our vehicles and drivers. … If it’s not an infringement of liberty to require a DMV sticker on the car, it shouldn’t be considered an infringement of liberty to require an ATF sticker on the damn gun.
January 3, 2013 at 2:12 pm
I’m sure we’ve all been thinking about what we would do in a similar situation lately… My opinion is that, realistically, if someone started shooting in class while I was teaching, I’d be a sitting duck and probably the first target, standing alone at the front of the room. So I might as well try to be a hero in whatever moment I might have. Not so much with the goal of protecting my adult students, but more with the hope of shutting it down quickly if I’m lucky. Which is probably unlikely. If we heard shooting in the hall, could we turn off the lights and projector and hide out of view of the doors quickly enough to make our room look like an empty room? Maybe. Perhaps in that scenario some of my adult students with concealed weapons permits (maybe I have some every year, maybe I don’t, I honestly have no idea except I do know that our campus allows them) would be able to do something to help. I really don’t know what the best response would be. It would be much better to catch budding problems earlier, before the person has armed themselves with the intention of killing as many people as possible. That is where teachers could have a real impact.
January 4, 2013 at 8:36 am
Your last two sentences are spot-on. THANK YOU! YES!
January 3, 2013 at 6:31 pm
I don’t have much to add to what’s been said. I’m with Cloud, I’m with Chacha. I don’t think it’s reasonable or appropriate or useful to expect teachers to be willing to be armed agents nor can I imagine us spending money on arming other agents schools in a way that would be useful. Indeed, I am disinclined to believe that such a thing (arming other agents in a way that would be useful) is possible, but even if it were, I don’t think we could/would act/spend to do it.
I know that its being a military base did not mean everyone was running around heavily armed, indeed, for those directly attacked, quite the contrary, but while the nearby presence of a number of trained, armed personnel may have reduced the death toll at Fort Hood, it sure didn’t bring it down to an acceptable level. How does that event not weigh into the thinking of those who believe having armed personnel on site could/would protect us?
As a graduate student, I dated a thoughtful gun enthusiast (and owner, and user) who insisted that guns are the great leveler, that is, that they create a balance and fairness between the strong and the weak, between — he particularly made the case, knowing I cared about this — men and women. It was clear to me then that this was empirically untrue (and I firmly resisted his preference that I own a gun, though I did learn how to shoot one while I was dating him, because I was and remain confident that I would be unable/unwilling/unlikely to benefit from, rather than being harmed by, having one in my possession), and Sandy Hook has resoundingly convinced me that this — the untruth of guns as a great leveler — isn’t simply “the way things are here and now” (as opposed to the way things could be in some alternate universe) or something we could overcome if we just got rid of the darned P in IBTP. I’m sure we can all find and point to cases where they benefit the weak against the strong, and in desirable ways, but systematic levelers they are not, and I cannot believe they can be.
Were I a sci-fi author, I’d be tempted take Sandy Hook as the starting moment when we realized it was time to sequester a small group of 15-17 year old males (selected at random, in the interest of honoring human diversities and in recognition of our own incapability to choose on the basis of “merit”) in a maximum security facility in which they would be employed for their capability to provide half the genetic contribution needed to grow a human being (presumably using the technology of cryopreservation and artificial insemination), and castrate the rest of the adult males as valued and beloved partners capable of participating in society only once that annoyingly dangerous testosterone was eliminated from their systems. But I’m not, and of course, the idea itself is horrifically offensive.
January 4, 2013 at 8:38 am
I’m pretty sure someone already wrote that book, but yeah. I don’t *actually* want that, but some days I really do…
January 4, 2013 at 2:05 pm
I think it lands somewhere between Ursula LeGuin and Handmaid’s Tale, with a lighter note being Dr. Strangelove.
Some years back I was with a group of horsepersons including a man who began musing (aloud) about how female horses are so much more obstreperous than male horses and how this reflects what we also observe in human beings … and I responded that I disagreed on the human parallel, but did believe that likely if we gelded human males as we do equine, we’d observe a similar pattern. He quickly conceded the point.
Yeah, I certainly don’t (actually) want to, and in just observing the pattern am probably ensuring the next such event will be female-initiated but, gee, is it predictable what the sex of the shooter in these kinds of events will be.
January 3, 2013 at 7:28 pm
Something similar, but with profanity:
http://www.thejayfk.com/?p=2808
January 3, 2013 at 7:45 pm
I’m all about our second amendment rights. But I do think we need to tighten up some laws and loopholes. In our state, all you have to have is a state ID to buy any gun at a gun show. And while you need a license to get a pistol, you don’t need anything to own an assault rifle. I think it’s the common sense things. Don’t take rights away. Just make things more logical.
I wouldn’t send my kid into any Kindergarten classroom where there was a gun. Even if it were there for their protection. It reminds me of the stats that say having a gun in your home is more likely to injure a family member (particularly children) than it is to protect you. If you want to have one, I’ll be the first to support that right. But I’m not going to put my kid into a classroom with 28 other kids and 1-2 adults with a gun. There’s no peace of mind in that for me. Metal detectors maybe?
I think some type of action needs to be taken. What that action is, I don’t know. But I know it’s not arming elementary school teachers.
January 4, 2013 at 8:39 am
Lots of schools have metal detectors, but I don’t know about evidence of whether they reduce assault injuries. Maybe they do. Internet, got any data? Help us out here.
January 4, 2013 at 10:31 am
I’m looking into this issue and wondering if background checks is something on the books? I think laws should tighten up on gun ownership (from background checks, mental health evaluations to registration) as well as on banning assault rifles and ammunition. It might not help every case but it might have prevented people with mental health issues (colorado comes to mind..) from getting their hands on guns. I think in the case of Sandy Hook the shooter just took his mom’s guns? Another thing I want to add is that we’re still acting like the U.S. is so unique in terms of problem/solutions. There have been mass shootings in other countries (Australia for example) and tougher laws were enacted afterwards that have seemed to reduce this type of insane violence and no arming teachers was not the solution.
January 4, 2013 at 5:05 pm
See, what I don’t want to do is further stigmatize anyone with a DSM diagnosis and limit their rights. Plus, I don’t think it would work. But I do think we need to stop poisoning people with the patriarchy!
January 4, 2013 at 11:11 am
What about a simple wireless system of panic buttons? Code 1 for medical emergency, Code 2 for emotional meltdown requiring a counselor, Code 3 for violent outburst of any kind. Code 1 summons EMTs, Code 2 summons social worker, Code 3 summons the police. I can’t imagine that would cost more than about $100 per classroom.
Granted, most schools don’t HAVE $100 per classroom, but that really speaks to our national priorities, doesn’t it?
January 4, 2013 at 5:07 pm
If we had $100 per classroom, I’d really want to spend it on other things. That would be a lot of money we could use doing educational things. Plus, by the time I hit the panic button I’d still be dead, anyway. As long as it takes the police more than 10 seconds to answer the button, it doesn’t seem like it would help. Sadface.
(Didn’t VA Tech have a whole SWAT team on campus? See link above. And that didn’t help. Plus, what about the shooters who plan to commit suicide by cop and so the cops wouldn’t stop them from shooting, anyway, because they plan on shooting until they die? People still die. I think the money would be better spent on prevention.)
January 5, 2013 at 7:14 pm
I have been an elementary teacher for thirty years. My experiences include nine different schools. Almost all have some type of panic button. I think the pa system was used by the office in Sandy Hook to warn the teachers.
Elementary teachers are taught to nurture and de escalate situations- like the office staff at that elementary. I am an excellent shot and would never carry a gun into a classroom. How dangerous is that? Terribly dangerous. If you want a gun at school, have the DARE officer do it! It probably would be more effective then their current work (or cars).
Mental illness is a huge problem and “we” choose to not recognize it. Working as a SPED teacher in a regular middle school classroom, I learned to: take weapons out of hands of students, clear a classroom before chairs were flung, walk into fights that were started “for fun”, and work with students who skinned cats just before they came to school.
Many of these children were exceptionally bright but missing a part of conscience that is assumed by society. Teachers and social workers could help keep them in check. They graduate. Support is gone. And then…Sandy Hook or the local university. No problem…no one will tell…it is their right to privacy.
BTW- few had problems with testosterone. Most were victims of severe neglect or abuse.
January 7, 2013 at 10:26 am
The effects of childhood maltreatment are pervasive, long-lasting, and pernicious.
January 7, 2013 at 2:54 pm
My mom’s response to this whole thing was, “Oh so now they want us to be first responders too?” To which I said, “Hey maybe at least they’ll pay you like one”