I sat on the floor of my computer lab silently along with 18 Kindergartners with the light off. We all huddled under the computer desks that were lined up on one wall, the same wall that backed up to the hallway so we could be out of sight to anyone looking into the windows of the lab, anyone who might have a serious intent to shoot or harm us. This was just a drill of course but the kids didn’t know that. One little boy asked me what would happen if a man with the gun came in our room. I told him I would protect him… but that wasn’t enough for him so he asked again, “What will happen if a man comes in our room and tries to shoot us?” So, I looked him in the eye and said, “I will never let that happen to you. I will stand up to him and if he will shoot anyone it will be me because I will give my life so that you don’t die. Okay?” The little boy seemed appeased. I meant it of course, but all the while I was thinking that we should never have had to have such a horrific conversation.
I kept wondering, what’s going through that little boy’s head… and likewise the heads of all my students who I performed that drill with. I taught mostly middle school kids for 22 years in a computer lab, but it was always no less stressful for the kids of all ages. That had not been the first time I told a student that I would give my life so that they could live on.
None if this “should be” happening of course. Not in my lifetime. At least those are the thoughts that have bounced through my skull more than a few hundred times. Now, with the most recent shootings in the Florida school, I am once again filled with a sense of responsibility. You see, in some small way, I think “we teachers” have been partially responsible. One of the first things that races through my head each time an event like this occurs is, “Our educational system has let them down.” If we’d only been more “inclusive”… more “understanding”… more ready to reach out to those students who have felt like outcasts in our classroom.
In some ways, I feel as if I am risking the patronage of this web site by writing about this issue. I hope not. An old friend, who I went to elementary school with, feels very differently than I do about gun rights but agrees that we need to have this national conversation. So, here we are. We need to talk. If I can feel “in part” responsible, then why can’t everyone chime in about why they think this problem is “in part” their responsibility too? After all, it’s “our” society.
Where I’m at in regards to this most current event is… questioning what it means to be an American. Plus, what does this evolving American Dream now entail? I’m sure that no one dreams of watching their kids pack up their backpack with pencils, paper and a lunch then heading off to school so that they can be slaughtered like geese on the first day of hunting season. No, that’s not the American Dream any of us had in mind.
Why would I question that? Partially because my wife is from another country so I get her more “global” view of the world at times. Also, I heard about the Japanese’ way of dealing with gun violence and I was shocked at what I found out. Japan has a population of approximately 127 million while the United States has about three times as many people with a population of 323 million people. In 2014, the US had more than 33,000 gun related deaths. Japan had 6.
Six. That’s right. S-I-X… total. Now that’s a dreamy statistic. Not the 6 deaths. The stat that’s pretty darn close to zero.
Somehow our value system has gone whacky as well. With 33,000 gun deaths per year, that’s the equivalence of two jumbo jets crashing every single week. Normally, when a jet plane goes down, we call for an investigation and our country extends incredible resources towards figuring out why a jet plane has crashed. However, since people are dying by gun violence… it’s swept under the rug and we just accept that it’s part of the American way? Why? Because if you even question the use of guns, then gun-lobbyists scream that you’re anti-2nd-amendment as if we’re attempting to take all guns off the streets, even when we’re not.
If the United States wants to lead the world in gun deaths, we’ve got it all backwards. We should be leading the world in the FEWEST gun related deaths each year. Not the most.
As a teacher of 39 years, I’m NOT unwilling to talk about the mental health side of this conversation. As a technology teacher who has been in a high percentage of the classrooms in my school while teaching was going on by other teachers, I can tell you that there are too many teachers who are teaching their “subject” more than they are their students. What that means, functionally, is that kids now instinctively know when their teacher cares more for an inanimate object (their subject) than they do for a human being (them). A large part of this is institutionally mandated as teachers are pressured to get their student “lock-step” through the curriculum. Lock-step… those are their words.
Until the system requires that teachers engage their students as learners of functional life (how to make life work)… then this will continue. What do I mean by that? Every teacher needs to make a priority out of teaching the essentials of positive “citizenship” (and their subject a secondary concern) which includes:
- interdependence instead of co-dependence
- how to embrace group accountability as well as individual accountability
- the personal benefits of interacting with others
- the synergistic effects of working together vs. only accomplishing alone
- the worth of “values” like being “kind” (and how if you don’t do that then it will alienate others)
Unless teachers do all of this — and more — then we may never see a de-escalation in an institutional environment that nurtures and encourages kids to become social pariahs, because that’s the world that these “kids-who-kill” come from.
Now, I’m certain that this conversation needs to include the familial component, but the school situation is toxic as it stands right now and rife with kids who are outcasts, who come away from the “school experience” loathing and hating everything and everyone about it. I know there will be many who hate to hear this, but it seems a “natural sequence of events” to me, that these kids return to the school setting to exact some form of revenge. This, coming from a grown man who had few positive school experiences while growing up and spent his whole life trying to right those wrongs for the many kids who were in his (my) charge.
I’ve taught in a school where there were drugs being sold across the street and the kids in our school who were the drug-runners. I recall that one day in a staff meeting when teachers were talking about the drug-house, our principal told the staff members who were concerned about the weapons that they’d seen there, “Just make sure when you’re doing your bus duty out on the sidewalk that you stand so that you are facing the drug house so you don’t have your back turned to them.” So, I raised my hand and asked, “Why, so that we can dodge the bullets as they are coming at us?” That’s just one horrific example of how administrators don’t fully grasp the situations that teachers are in… often involving guns.
In that same school I was teaching the sweetest little boy named Jamaal whose mother was a nurse. One day we were told his mother was shot in the head and killed right in front of him… and a week later he was back at school and we were all supposed to not talk about it and act like nothing had ever happened to him or his mother. In that school, there were also windows that had been shot out and the district didn’t even bother to fix those window for the 11 years that I was there. I had personally confiscated a knife… handcuffs, found a gun on the playground and I knew of kids who were sexually active. Why was that a bit shocking? Because that was an elementary school.
I once recall a teacher who taught across the hall from me who came screaming out of her room that she had just been robbed at gun-point and that the man had her purse. The next thing I knew she had run out the front door of the building and was running down the street in pursuit of the robber. A few minutes later she came huffing and puffing back to school empty handed… as I was I watching her class. I remember thinking: I don’t know what she thought she’d do if she caught up to him?
If there are entire school districts that can’t ensure that it’s students (and teachers) are “safe and secure”… then how are kids supposed to feel like that’s a place they can feel comfortable to learn? For the teachers… a protected teaching environment? Much less a place to survive?
Now, I’ve spoken enough about the school environment. Let’s talk about, what else and who else, can take responsibility for the kind of mass shooting that we witnessed in Florida last week?
Some want to blame the FBI. To me that’s like saying I blame the local police for not catching the guy who just ran the stop sign at the end of my block. There’s just no way they can be there and stop every crime before it happens. It also doesn’t address the nature — and starting point — for the criminal activity. In the mind. In the heart. The real reasons this event even happened in the first place but no one seems to want to talk about it
In Japan, when someone gets out of control and they know a gun is in play… the police attempt to take-down the perpetrator by rolling them up in a Futon-type of mattress and transport them back to the station until they can calm down. It’s a whole national attitude that’s difference in Japan. In the US people often talk about their “Rights” but when we get stuck focusing on our rights, we sometimes forget to do what’s right… or, what’s better. A neighbor keeps parking their car in the easement driveway… but instead of calling he Police — because that’s your “right” to do so — you talk to your neighbor and settle the dispute peacefully and end up making a friend in the meantime. Sometimes… there’s a “better” way.
No, I’m not thinking of moving to Japan, or any other country for that matter, but if Americans can’t see that there are others who are creating a much safer place to live than here… then what does that mean to our collective concept of the American Dream. In the past 100 years or so we’ve seen some of the greatest accomplishment that this, or any other, country could ever hope to achieve. We have banded together to: walk on the moon… dismantle the chokehold the tobacco industry had on our country (and ban them from television)… build the Panama Canal connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans… building an unparalleled interstate highway infrastructure… inventing personal computers and an internet system that now binds most humans on the planet together.
If we can figure out how to accomplish these great feats… what will it take to come up with a comprehensive plan to end so much American suffering. I remember getting under a desk in elementary school as a kid… to practice getting ready for the day that a bomb would be dropped on us. What will it take to make the American Dream someplace safe? Could part of the problem be that 48% of all the hand guns owned in the world are owned by Americans? I’m not against the 2nd Amendment (no I’m not) but the assault weapons need to be addressed. Speifically those. Please.
As much as this is intended to be a “Call-to-Action” it means this is a call to conversation. Let’s air it out. Below you’ll find the thoughts of a poet. What are your thoughts?
Poet Slams Congress Inaction Following Tragedy After Tragedy
Watch this spoken word poet brilliantly slam Congress for its inaction on gun reform (via IN-Q)
Posted by NowThis Politics on Monday, November 6, 2017
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