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School Shooting ... Drills?

By Justin Bathon

Police in Chicago are recommending that schools start putting their students through school shooting drills.

Just as they hold fire drills to help prepare students on how to survive a blaze, schools should schedule regular training exercises on what to do when a gunman walks into a classroom, one law enforcement official said Monday.

"We have outgrown the area where fire is the biggest threat to our students," said Detective Robert Carroll of the Cook County Sheriff's Department. "You are far less likely as a student to die as a victim of fire than you are of violence."

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Not sure how I feel about this one. The lawyer in me says that prepping for all scenarios is a good idea, but the teacher in me is thinking this is a really, really bad idea. Isn't there an implicit acknowledgment that we don't trust our students when we start expecting that they will shoot their peers?  It is one thing to prepare for events that we can't control such as fires/tornadoes/earthquakes and even preparing for terrorist attacks from outside individuals, but to expect the students (perhaps we should call them inmates) to seek to murder their own peers? ... wow. Now, I am not naive on this issue. Do teenagers murder other teenagers? Unfortunately, yes. Does it sometimes happen at school, unfortunately, yes. But what kind of message are we sending our students? Are the feelings and psyche of the 99.9% of students that will never be subject to such an attack going to be seriously damaged? Will they be more fearful of coming to school? What are they going to do, seriously, dress a kid up in black and give him a fake gun and let him run around the school? And this is going to happen in all schools across the country? Kindergarteners? I don't think so.

I have serious questions and reservations about drilling kids for school shootings. From a law enforcement standpoint, I can understand their position that the more prepared students are for such an incident, the more likely some are to survive it. But, there is a reason the police run prisons and not schools. There is still something innocent and safe about schools. Schools are still a place some kids are happy to go. A place they feel protected. I am not sure implicitly telling them their lives are in danger is a particularly good idea. Maybe at some schools with older students in high risk areas, but this is not something I think we need to institute nationally in every school.   

Full post as published by Edjurist on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).