Betsy DeVos is thinking about using Department of Education funds to buy guns for schools. Arizona Ed Supe Diane Douglas thinks state law already allows teachers to carry guns, though others beg to differ. Battles over school employees packing heat are raging across the country.
If guns are going to be put into the hands of teachers or anyone else other than school police, first, the state needs to absolve the employees of legal liability if any of them injure or kill a student or another innocent bystander.
As a retired teacher it hurts me to write about this, but it’s just a simple fact. If school employees with minimal training in gun use during crisis situations are allowed to carry weapons in school, one of them is going to shoot the wrong person. It’s a statistical inevitability. Police shoot innocent people, and they get far more weapons training than a school employee is likely to have. In the heat of the moment with fear and adrenaline raging, some teacher or administrator or custodian is going to choose the wrong person to aim at, or a shaky hand will jerk the gun in the wrong direction, and an innocent person will get hurt, or worse.
A school employee who shoots the wrong person will live with the mistake for the rest of his or her life, as will the family of the person accidentally injured or killed. But should the employee be held responsible — sued by the injured family or prosecuted in a court of law? The answer is no. The employee should be dealt with far more leniently than a law enforcement officer whose job it is to deal with situations involving violence and guns. People who work at school are trained to teach or administrate or perform other school-related duties, not to handle fire arms in a shooting situation.
The responsible party is the state legislature, school district or school which allowed semi-trained employees to carry lethal weapons. Let families sue the guilty institutions. I hope the families win millions.
If the employee who was holding the gun is so devastated by making a terrible mistake that he or she is psychologically unable to work at a school, that person should get full salary until retirement, as well as health benefits which include mental health care if needed, no questions asked.
Of course, there’s a better solution than giving school employees James Bond-style licenses to injure or kill.
God damn it, don’t give guns to school employees!
This article appears in Aug 23-29, 2018.
Youre right, David, this is a terrible idea.
It is a sick country that is thinking of using its available funds to arm its teachers instead of to ensure they can support their families and / or that teachers are adequately trained and supported and their classrooms are adequately supplied.
You mean I actually got something right? Maybe it’s just a broken watch thing. I’ll get something right every 12 posts.
The Arizona Child Fatality Review has been published for 24 years. The most recent report showed 783 deaths of children of age 1 to 17. Only 29% from natural causes. Of the 783 children who died, 42 were murdered. 38 committed suicide.
Not one of those deaths in 24 years, 23,653 in total, could have been prevented by allowing teachers to carry guns in school. So, by definition, such a policy could only have increased risk of child death, not reduced it.
But, the same can not be said of the 38 suicides. From the research on suicides, we know that every one of them is preventable.
There is a science of game theory. For 200 years, but not before that, we have designed schools to be a zero-sum game for students. Zero-sum games have a crude and ugly side. To increase your status, you have to beat down the person above you and keep the person below you beat down. Read how the Columbine killers were treated by their classmates to get a full sense of this phenomena in action at its very worst.
The human brain was designed to key off and learn as a result of a non-zero sum game environment.
So, by definition, our public “education” is incapable of teaching the students who would be the losers. The human brain gains none of the signals it needs to create permanent memories and skills in this environment. We just simply weren’t designed to be the lone wolves that our ancient classroom structure demands.
While I was superintendent, we had a non-zero sum game educational project under development, code-named freethrows. That project collapsed when I left. So, when I left the department, I had to start from scratch. Last week, I got to watch a classroom of Native-American fifth grade math students each do an average of 350 math problems each correctly in 11 minutes. Last week I also was able to watch two African American and a Hispanic sixth grader in the highest net-crime zip code in Maricopa county do over a 1,000 math problems each in less than 20 minutes. They were averaging over 50 problems correctly a minute for 20 straight minutes. Not one student in a thousand has the mental stamina to pull that off. These three students have been in that non-zero sum environment for a year and a quarter. But, just for mathematics.
Nothing but smiles, laughter in this environment. One student said, “this is so much fun, I am shaking.”
Unlike our other demographic groups, Arizona has the lowest Native American test scores in the nation. They are the ultimate victims of district education. They have, by far, the highest suicide rate.
David, you are talking about preventing child deaths. Look down at your hands. You may not realize it but they are covered in blood.
After reading you for more than 4 long years now, David, I would say you get things right when you think honestly and for yourself. You get things wrong when you willingly serve as a propaganda agent for an irresponsible and dysfunctional political machine. And unfortunately, yes, the ratio is, as you suggest, about 1:11. (I say “unfortunately” because you are smart, articulate, and good at analysis. Seems like you might be able to do a lot of good if you ever uncoupled yourself from the gaggle of irresponsible partisans you run with.)
As for why my comments are not the same kind of “good fun” as Matthew Ladner’s, and have only very recently become worthy of response, I think you should ask yourself some honest questions about that. (Or maybe ask your wife. Because men can’t represent women, you know, and they need outside informants to point out to them why they are according importance to messages that comes from some people and some social locations and not from other people and other social locations.)
“Yes, 1:11 is about the right ratio, unfortunately”: That’s a fun comment. You say I get it right when I “think for myself” and wrong when I “willingly serve as a propaganda agent for an irresponsible and dysfunctional political machine.”
Hmm. How do we figure out when I’m thinking for myself and when I’m a propaganda agent? Let’s see. OK, I got it. When I agree with you, I’m thinking for myself. When I agree with people you disagree with, I’m a propaganda agent.
When you say I’m “smart, articulate, and good at analysis,” I have to figure out how to take that as well. Is it a genuine compliment, especially given that you disagree with me so often? Or is it the kind of flattery that might make me want to “think for myself” more? Or maybe it’s patronizing, telling me, with a weary shake of the head, that I should try to use my abilities for good, not evil.
It is a genuine compliment, David.
When does it seem to me you are acting as a propaganda agent? It is a matter of opinion, but from my perspective it is when what you write serves the agenda of people who purport to serve social justice, (which you seem to actually believe in) but whose documentable actions in office do NOT actually serve social justice. The local party gets away with a lot because there are so many of its members who dont watch those all important governance actions, they just swallow the propaganda whole without doing the tedious and depressing work of tracking governance. And a lot of people in your network appear to be working very hard in various venues to BLOCK information about actual governance actions from getting to voters. You yourself recently had comments deleted that contained valid, verifiable information about the governance actions of one of the politicians who had endorsed Garcia.
As media coverage of local governance weakens, we are entering what one journalist who tracks these matters says will be a golden age of malfeasance in local office. Bad news for those who depend on the services of public institutions like a couple of our larger local institutions of education. But some (including our newly minted Democratic candidate for Governor, whom you and Foster and Juarez and Dong ALL support) believe cutting off exit from those mismanaged institutions will magically make them better. Message from those whove been deeply involved at the ground level: MORE MONEY and INCREASING ENROLLMENT by preventing the exit of families who want to leave DOES NOT serve social justice and WILL NOT improve these damaged institutions. There is no magic pony outcome to obliterating vouchers. Just a lot of families of limited means getting worse services than they would have otherwise.
The question of why some with whom you disagree are good fun to debate with and others are ignored or what would you call what you are doing in the comment above? Can you see yourself responding to Matthew Ladner in that tone? If not, why not? What makes the difference, David, between the way you respond to the commentary of a Republican operative who will disagree with you 12 out of 12 times and a Sanders Democrat who will disagree with you 11 out of 12 times? Do tell.
You need to look back at some of the things I’ve written to, and about Ladner. I’ve written too many to list, but here are two: https://blogforarizona.net/matthew-ladner-… and https://blogforarizona.net/gi-guarantee-wa… .
The tone I’ve used with Ladner is a caustic as I get. Believe me, my comments to you have been measured and polite by comparison. I’ve jabbed at you playfully now and then, but I’ve treated Ladner’s assertions with anger, derision and mockery, all of which has been well deserved.
Interesting, David, thanks for the links. I particularly enjoyed the second one with the ball/baseball exchange.
Meanwhile, in Tucson, community advocates willing to try to play a grassroots role in organizing pressure for accountability with the giant, impenetrable bureaucracies surrounding some of our local public districts continue dropping like flies. A couple more that I know of just deserted the field, which no doubt delights a network which depends on the entrenched staying power of its dysfunctional governance regularly and reliably exhausting and demoralizing each new round of citizens that steps forward to try to make a constructive difference.
But should it delight them? It is just these kinds of citizen / parent gadflies who catch administrative mis-steps and enable some public districts to be reasonably responsive and responsible. It is part of how democratic governance is supposed to work. Perhaps someday someone locally (perhaps even you, next time you are invited or urged to participate in the pillorying of someone who is appropriately participating in local election campaigns) will question the wisdom of systematically putting a stick in the spokes of the workings of democracy. (Or knocking someone off their bike and beating them up, which in some Tucson cases seems a more apt analogy.)
If not, it will just further build the credibility of those like your sometime sparring partner Ladner who argue that public school districts do not work and are expendable. They shouldnt be; they dont have to be, but the way some are allowed or enabled to govern them, they make themselves exactly that.