An angle on school violence that is never addressed

Laura Wood writes at The Thinking Housewife:

Though relatively few children overall die in these massacres, the impact is still enormous. As I point out in this entry, children are now subject to years of lockdown drills in which massacres are rehearsed in schools. Now think what it is to be a child and to go back in a dark closet or the corner of a classroom with your teacher and cower there with your heads down. Not only does this terrorize children, but it teaches them that the adults in their lives are fearful, helpless and incapable of defending themselves. It undermines their respect for the adult world and steals their sense of security.

- end of initial entry -

Lois W. writes:

Feeling very threatened in school is not a new experience, and the modern version is not especially more terrifying than it was in earlier days.

I was a young girl in the early 1960s, and I remember very clearly the “Duck and Cover” drills we regularly had in our schools. Right hand over the back of your neck, place your eyes over your left forearm, and crouch under your little desk (and as the joke went: Kiss your a** goodbye.) This was the advice of our elders in expectation of an imminent atom bomb on its way to destroy our civilization We all knew it was crazy, yet we had to keep doing the drill. Those of us who took it to heart seriously never expected to grow old.

A few years ago, I took a photoshop course at a public adult education school, where we had regular “lockdown” drills, which I assume are similar to those in the public schools, and what Laura Woods has found so terrible. The teacher would herd the lot of us (all adults) into a designated room, turn off all the lights and tape paper over the window in the locked door. We were expected to remain sitting on the floor silently while the “killer” prowled the halls, testing the doors one by one. I thought it would be a lot more practical to have the bunch of us massed by the door brandishing heavy objects: we could bludgeon him to death before he could get a shot in. But in any case, sitting behind that heavy locked door, it was obvious to all of us that no killer could get in: he would simply try the door, find it locked, and move on.

There was a totally helpless terror in crouching under a desk waiting for an atom bomb to detonate that cannot be matched by waiting for any lone gunman trying to open a locked door. The real danger of school shootings comes BEFORE anyone realizes that it’s even necessary to have a lockdown. Once the shooting starts, the doors get locked and the students behind the locked doors sitting in the dark are at least safe.

Laura Wood writes:

Lois seems to be saying that because children were terrified by atomic bomb drills, it’s okay that they are scared out of their wits by these lockdown drills. I am at a loss to understand that.

She writes:

There was a totally helpless terror in crouching under a desk waiting for an atom bomb to detonate that cannot be matched by waiting for any lone gunman trying to open a locked door.

Well, then, maybe teachers could preface the drills with videos of the atomic bomb exercises to make students see how much better things are today.

I also don’t understand the relevance of her description of the drill at the adult school. Adults can understand the pointlessness of it. Children cannot.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 15, 2012 03:11 PM | Send