I just hope all the stuff in this thread is some kind of insane fad that will soon die out. Max Torque’s URL about a school that a zero tolerance police of “no fighting, even in self-defense” just made me mad. What is such a policy teaching kids? That they cannot defend themselves, even when teachers aren’t around to do it. I think this kind of policy only contributes tp the desperation some kids feel. I can’t possibly see how it helps anything.
The odd thing is, when I was in high school (early 90’s) I knew a kid who brought a switchblade to school with him. It wasn’t like it wasn’t a big deal-everyone (including him) knew he would get into trouble if he were caught with it. But nobody thought owning it alone made him a dangerous or violent. In fact, a lot of guys carried pocket knives. Of course, if that happened now, they’d probably be expelled. Sheesh.
I attended three different high schools in Dallas, Texas, back during the 1950s. My parents couldn’t decide where they wanted to live, but that’s another story. Each of the three schools had a gun club for students and two of them had indoor rifle ranges. Weapons training was provided by volunteer members of the NRA, assisted by the assigned ROTC advisor.
At two of those schools, fist fights on campus would be broken up and the two fighters would be taken to the gym, issued boxing gloves and “may the best man win” in a fair fight refereed by the football coach.
I guess we would all go to prison for life in today’s environment.
Using the provided example and following the topic discussion -
Why blame a school. Did a teacher or school admin give the kid the gun? Did he get it via the black market or from other criminal source?
Put the blame where it is due, the dumbass parent who left the gun out for the kid to get. Why should the parent not be responsible, legally and financially? If I were to be as irresponsible with a weapon as what the parents of the child in the provided story link seem to be, I would wish someone would take my daughter away from me.
At least, I was back in the neolithic when I attended school. In those days (at least in the schools I attended) guns were extremely rare. I did, however, regularly attend classes carrying one or more knives of various length. (Well – I didn’t regularly attend, but when I bothered to atend I was regularly armed.) From all indicatins, the situation has grown worse in the last couple of decades.
Now, I am in no way attempting to defend the specifics of these absurd policies. However, I understand the feeling on teh part of administrators that they need to draw a clear line, and that if they err in the placement of that line it should be on the side of too much caution rather than insufficient diligence. I have no problems with a school establishing and following clear guidelines, so long as those guidelines are communicated and emphasized to both students and parents. I see no reason to suspend a kid for advertising a bad rock band through his sartorial decisions, but I also see no reason why said desire to advertise should override a school dress code.
There is nothing cruel or destructive about setting arbitrary limits on the fashion choices available to students. I doubt even the ACLU is willing to sue for a student’s right to accessorize with gun replicas.
Publish the rules. Enforce the rules. If that is the biggest complaint the students (and their parents) have, then I imagine the teachers and administrators sleep quite well.
On another note:
If my son were assaulted at school, and the teacher’s response was to put gloves on the boy and set him up for further physical abuse you bet your ass I would be upset.
If my son assaulted a weaker student, and the teacher’s response was to put gloves on the boys and encourage the violence to continue you can bet your other ass I would be upset.
Oh, I don’t know. I’d say the problem isn’t so much the guns themselves as it is that siege mentality. It makes guns totems, objects of mystery and fear. There is little more attractive to a schoolkid than an object of mystery and fear.
We know that children crave attention. We know that a lot of children can’t distinguish between good attention and bad attention. It follows that the siege mentality you describe (which I also see) guarantees that kids are going to bring guns to school, because they want the other kids to extend to them that horrible power they associate with the gun.
Because of that siege mentality, children have been indoctrinated with fear and ignorance, and no respect to balance it. If guns are regarded as just another tool, kids can be taught to respect them, and what fear they have of them will be a healthy fear born of knowledge, rather than the entirely unproductive fear of the unknown.
Problems are rarely inherent in things. Problems arise from the ways we use the things. Familiarity and respect trump fear and ignorance every time as bases from which to construct our conception of a thing’s utility.
I remember going to Brooklyn Tech HS, in which we have to use more tools than the A-Team would use every week, and that is just for machine shop and technical drawing classes. My goodness, murder plots were written involving the use of a lathe!! Yet we have no incidents related to the use of these items, including the very dangerous (in my opinion) and ubiquitous T-square. It is a self-control problem today, on the part of the administrators who want to do something about the problem of youth. Yet they have not tried to solve the problem of cruel teasing, assaults adn what not.
