Dialogue around school violence
We had an emergency committee meeting in my school, yesterday, where we talked about what to do in case of an intruder emergency. We're relatively prepared, but not prepared enough that I feel secure should someone come into the building with the intent and the weaponry to do harm.
I studied school violence in grad school. Rob Horner is the name, I believe, of the special education/developmental psychology scholar out of Oregon whose work in this area so impressed me. I also bought a book I'm trying to track down from a friend I lent it to written by a Harvard policy researcher, I believe, about how schools and communities have dealt with school shootings in their communities.
The solutions are not as simple as security measures, though these are very important and something I'm intimately involved with here at Eisenhower. The solutions involve the way we relate with one another, with students, with families, with people in the community, and the ways that those interactions either strengthen people and the community or leave people alienated, scared, and willing to do something drastic to act out those dark impulses. Schools are not to blame for these tragedies. But there is much they can do to be more responsible for making them less likely.
The recent spate of school violence is surely something that we can come together around, as a nation, engage in the national sharing of ideas that the Administration is initiating, and come together around the common ground of keeping our children safe.
If there was any domestic issue, right now, that I wish we had dedicated people like Brandi Fisher or Theo Brown or Carolyn Lukensmeyer working to initiate dialogue on, this is the one, right now.
We've started the discussion at my school. I hope the nation takes seriously the need to rally together around this banner to make our schools and communities more genuinely safe.
Love,
Ben
2 comments:
The best defense against crazy dudes running into a school with a big gun is....
(a) Iron clad security
(b) Armed hall monitors
(c) National Guard presence
(d) Fewer crazy dudes
The best defense against a disgruntled, mentally imbalanced student going on a rampage is...
(a) Death penalty for all shooters
(b) Pre-emptive detention of kids in trenchcoats
(c) Armed & trained killing machines/teachers
(d) Fewer disgruntled, mentally imbalanced students
Which of the following is the biggest annual killer of Americans...
(a) Outside crazies shooting up schools
(b) Students shooting up schools
(c) Champagne corks gone awry
(d) Inadvertent bathtub drownings
Patrick Henry is best remembered for what famous quote...
(a) Give me liberty, but keep it safe
(b) Give me liberty, but protect me from all potential harm
(c) Give me liberty or give me a taco
(d) Give me liberty or give me death
D's across the board? You got 100%.
Here's the deal. The world is dangerous and we need to take measures to decrease those dangers we can without infringing upon liberties and the sense of freedom any more than we must.
We also need to recognize that the best way to decrease risks and to maximize freedom is by focusing on root causes of bad acts, rather than on how to immediately defend against them.
That doesn't mean we can defend against them, too. We just need to make sure our defense doesn't (a) do more harm or (b) make the world a sad and insulated place.
I am sure that's the kind of dialog you want, Ben. I can't imagine that you are gung-ho about strapping a pistol to your belt or some of the other crazy crap that is coming out of many pols' mouths in the wake of these recent shootings.
And, no matter what we do, and no matter how much we want to protect our kids, there are limits to safety. There is always the risk of a deranged milkman or an angry kid or someone messed up on the drug of the month doing something absolutely horrible.
And, even though those notions are stomach-churning, we can't allow ourselves to trade off the idea of an open, happy, free and (yes) TRUSTING society because of those bastards.
Safety is good. Too much safety on the back-end is creepy. I hope that all of this stuff actually leads to a discussion about SOCIETY and CULTURE and how they contribute to the creation of shooters instead of solely looking for ways to police schools.
--Carson
Totally dead on in every way, I think, Carson.
That last point, in particular:
"Safety is good. Too much safety on the back-end is creepy. I hope that all of this stuff actually leads to a discussion about SOCIETY and CULTURE and how they contribute to the creation of shooters instead of solely looking for ways to police schools"
I mean, of course the killer pulls the trigger. But if we can take some responsibility for how might leave such folks less disgruntled, less crazy, less alienated, more thoughtful, more accountable, less half-cocked, etc. then we can go a long way toward reducing and ending this crap, I think. And I totally agree with all of your focus, Carson. Getting lost in our fears often makes things more scary which just alienates and undermines the social bonds of community and concern for one another and thoughtful engagement more.
Always the crazy thing for me with school shootings, Carson, is my bewilderment as to why people would choose schools to engage in this kind of insanity. I know all the statistics about how kids are safer at schools than most other places in their lives and I also understand that many people see schools as one more societal institution that they are disappointed with (as well as a vulnerable institution). But schools are also the place I trust the most because they offer the most opportunities, in my experience, for people to do all of the things that moderate such tendencies: to think, to engage, to disagree, to share openly, to identify with others, etc.
They don't do it perfectly. Noone does. No institution does. But, in my experience, schools and unversities do it better than most places, at least in the ways that count most, I think (the internet and television and books and music and other places do a fine job, too; but schools, especially universities, are the places where the serious and mature and thoughtful conversations occur, generally, in my experience).
I guess it's similar to the irrationality of undermining a peace process which is your peoples' best hope. People just kind of lose touch with reality, I suppose, and they get lost in their hate and disgust and their hopelessness.
I really don't know. I wish I did. It would make my job and my life a lot easier.
But what you're talking about is where the heart of that discussion is at, I think, Carson. And it's getting underneath those issues that offer us the most hope, I think. The kind of dialogue you initiated there, Carson, could do the world a lot of good, I think.
Ben
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