Texas school tells classes to fight back

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=El_Kabong]
I’m totally on board with the OP. As we know, almost every school child eventually ends up in some sort of hostage situation by the time they reach high school age, and every hostage situation I’ve ever heard of always ended up with dead children piled up in heaps.

I know all you milquetoasts and pantywaists are far too limp-wristed to ever allow your ten-year-olds to pack concealed heat, so the least you can do is let your school boards hire altruistic outfits like Response Options to teach kids how to stab adults in the calves with a pencil . Lord knows such skills are the only things that saved me the three or four times I was held hostage by gun-toting maniacs in grade school.
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Huh you were lucky !We had it hard at our school!

42

[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
I want to clear up that I’m not psychotic. I understand that 7 year olds rushing grown men is likely to fail. But high school students against other high school students? With 20 people throwing shit at one guy, who isn’t exactly a combat hardened special ops soldier, sounds like it could be pretty effective. Yes, there could be casualties - but you’re going to get casualties when a crazy dude comes in, guns blazing. I would hope that the training would include the idea of choosing the best routes, with an aggressive route being one of the options, based on the situation.

Also, I think schools should have more stuff you typically learn in the boyscouts - at least introductory first aid, if not more advanced - how to handle various emergency situations… knowing how and when to set a tourniquet is a far more valuable life lesson than what year the hudson river was first discovered by Europeans.
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Unless you distract the gunman by suddenly throwing the discovery date at him …JUST when he least expects it …

43

i would think hiding high ie on top of a book shelf; rather than low (under a desk) is best in mad gunman situations. people rarely look up.

under a desk for natural disasters, up high for human attacks.

44

I look at it from a different perspective: There is an almost zero chance that these kids will ever be in a situation to use what they’ve been taught. School shootings are exceedingly rare when compared against the number of schools there are across the United States. You might as well also teach them proper procedure for what to do in case of being struck by lightning or having a meteor land on their school.

However, I’m fully in favor of teaching this kind of thing if it teaches kids to be more proactive, less sheep-like, and more aware of the fact that ultimately, they are responsible for saving their own asses when the time comes.

Because the OP is right. We are creating a society of people who are taught to always respond to violence with passivity and wait for the heros to show up and save the day. And it’s not just at the level of criminality and deadly violence - Kids are often not allowed to fight back against bullies, for example. In my day, if a teacher broke up a fight, the critical question was, “Who started it?” The kid who started it got in trouble, and the other one didn’t. Or if the teacher knew one of the kids in the fight was a bully, the other one would often be off the hook automatically. But today, it’s often zero-tolerance. Get caught fighting, you’re out of the school or suspended or otherwise punished. Instead, you’re supposed to find an authority figure to protect you. But of course, those authority figures are themselves so hamstrung by regulations and fear of parents and lawsuits that they can do very little about bullies anyway. So the little bastards run amok and it’s the good kids that get hurt.

Let’s start making our kids a little tougher. If the program in the OP helps them psychologically understand that they have to look out for themselves, I’m all for it.

45

[QUOTE=Martini Enfield]
And for some reason, I keep imagining Sergeant-Major “Shut Up” Williams from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, in full uniform, parading up and down in front a classroom full of 7 year olds, calling them “'Orrible little men and women” and telling them that “They’re a bunch of poofs” if they don’t try and engage armed intruders in hand-to-hand combat.
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R. Lee Ermy would be a great visual as well…

"All Right Maggots! today we’re going to learn how to …PAY ATTENTION WHEN I’M SPEAKING, JOHNNY, YOU LITTLE MAGGOT, DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY!.. Disarm an assailant using the common popsicle stick…

46

Because they have a magic potion prepared by the druid of their tiny village that makes them invincible! Duh.

47

The chances of this kind of horror happening at any given school are so slim, it’s hardly worth discussing.

And depending on the age of the kids in question, it may be pointless to try to teach them “proper” response in case an armed maniac enters their classroom. (If it really happened, little kids would be too terrified to remember what they’d been taught in any case, and probably too little and weak to do much).

But if nothing else, it’s good that people are being reminded: the old rule, that we should just sit on our hands and do whatever the bad people say, MAY be a disastrously bad rule to follow.

It all depends on what a gunman seems to want. If he seems just to want money, it’s PROBABLY smartest to give him what he wants, and hope the proper authorities catch him later. But if you sense he’s a genuinely evil or psychotic person, one who wants to hurt or kill a lot of people, the old rules should go out the window.

Years after the fact, I’m DISGUSTED that no male in Montreal saw fit to try to attack Marc Lepine. Instead, like cowardly sheep, every male that Lepine told to leave the classroom did exactly as he was told, leaving the women to be massacred. I HOPE the males who left feel guilty to this day. I sure hope they
don’t reassure themselves that they did just what the authorities always said they should do in a crisis.

48

[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Questions from the back of the class:

“What if you think he’s got a gun? I mean, it’s always the geeks right? They can’t stand the good-natured torture they get from student-athletes and so they go nuts and start killing people. Happens all the time. So, what if you think a geek has a gun and is going to go nuts? Can you kill them then? That would be all right, saving lives and everything, wouldn’t it? 'Cause I got a list about a yard long of geeks who are right on the edge. Why wait for the inevitable? Get 'em now, before they have a chance to graduate … er, hurt anyone …”
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“And what about pointed sticks?” :smiley:

49

As for whether teaching kids to fight back is worthwhile or not…

Teen jailed after Oregon high school shooting spree

One of the kids who tackled him had already been shot in the stomach. He kept charging him and took him down. Hero indeed.

Sure glad those kids didn’t get the ‘be a sheep’ lecture. They charged a guy who had a semi-automatic rifle, and saved lives.

The Appalachian Law School shootings ended when a teacher ran out to his car grabbed a gun, and threatened the gunman with it. The gunman lowered his gun, and when he did some students tackled him.

From this cite:

And this one from the same cite is very interesting, because it involves young children who fought back:

No one was killed, although the assailant was clearly trying to kill a bunch. Had those kids calmly done what the attacker told them to do, he might have slit a bunch of throats. But they didn’t. They fought back with everything they had, and they all survived.

Maybe it’s not so stupid to teach kids that they should defend themselves after all, huh?

50

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]

However, I’m fully in favor of teaching this kind of thing if it teaches kids to be more proactive, less sheep-like, and more aware of the fact that ultimately, they are responsible for saving their own asses when the time comes.

Because the OP is right. We are creating a society of people who are taught to always respond to violence with passivity and wait for the heros to show up and save the day.

…

Let’s start making our kids a little tougher. If the program in the OP helps them psychologically understand that they have to look out for themselves, I’m all for it.
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Thank you, that said what I’d meant to say better than I did.

I’ve stated on other threads that it’s foolish to make policy based on what are statistical outliers - rare situations that seem bigger to us due to perception bias and a lack of intuitive grasp over comparing everything that happens on a dialy basis to a big media-fueled story.

So, I don’t think they should offer training in response specifically to school shootings. However, being encouraged to be proactive in your own defense can come in handy in a multitude of situations other than specifically a school shooting. Since most of the teaching kids receive is to encourage passitivity, I was happy to see one school district do this - and hopefully start a trend.

I also think there should be practical education classes geared around things like first aid, basic self defense, emergency survival skills, maybe even gun safety. A half-semester course of that would probably teach them more practical things than the rest of the year in school.

I do find it amusing, though, that in response to school shootings, people come out of the woodwork to say “See! this is why we should ban guns!” but if a result is encouraging people to be proactive in their own defense, the response is “really, these are extremely rare…”

51

I’d be curious to see what you would do, tough guy. Big talk is easy when you don’t have a psycho pointing a gun at you.

And what freakin “sheep” lecture are you people talking about? People don’t follow the gunmans instructions because they’ve been trained to. They follow them because they are confused and scared shitless. They don’t know what the fuck to do because, not surprisingly, they are not trained combat soldiers or law enforcement officers!

I swear the SDMB must be full of the baddest mofos around.

52

[QUOTE=msmith537]
I’d be curious to see what you would do, tough guy. Big talk is easy when you don’t have a psycho pointing a gun at you.

And what freakin “sheep” lecture are you people talking about? People don’t follow the gunmans instructions because they’ve been trained to. They follow them because they are confused and scared shitless. They don’t know what the fuck to do because, not surprisingly, they are not trained combat soldiers or law enforcement officers!

I swear the SDMB must be full of the baddest mofos around.
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No, I’m NOT a “bad mofo.” I’m not a tough guy. And it’s entirely possible I’d have been every bit as cowardly as those guys in Montreal were.

And if I were… if nothing else, I hope I’d be ashamed of myself for the rest of my life.

53

[QUOTE=msmith537]
I’d be curious to see what you would do, tough guy. Big talk is easy when you don’t have a psycho pointing a gun at you.

And what freakin “sheep” lecture are you people talking about? People don’t follow the gunmans instructions because they’ve been trained to. They follow them because they are confused and scared shitless. They don’t know what the fuck to do because, not surprisingly, they are not trained combat soldiers or law enforcement officers!

I swear the SDMB must be full of the baddest mofos around.
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And as long as we’re being “curious,” I’m curious what you’d say to those men who walked out of the classroom, leaving the women at Marc Lepine’s mercy, if one of those women had been your sister or daughter.

Would you still be so quick to say, “Oh well, he had a gun, what were you supposed to do? No hard feelings, guys! Have a long, happy life, and don’t think twice about the girls you left to die.”

54

I’ll ask you to wonder if what one of the wife’s, children, parents and family members would think if their “man”, jumped Lepine and got shot…stopping nothing. Being proud, doesn’t pay the bills, nor put food on the table, when your main supporter is dead.

I’m sure you would send them 1/2 your paycheck for life, right? Would you move in and help raise their kids? I think it’s great that people have the ability to transcend their own limitations and risk everything they have for strangers; it’s the one thing that gives me hope…however I refuse to judge any man whose shoes I will most likely never walk in. There’s a difference between knowingly chosing one’s person’s life over yours and believing that leaving a scene may be the best course of action.

In a perfect comic book world, some guy would have gotten shot, spit blood in Lepine’s face and executed a perfect round-house kick knocking the weapon out of Lepine’s hand…that doesn’t happen.

What sheer arrogance you have to suggest, that those men don’t wake up at night wishing they had done something different. They don’t need some keyboard cowboy wishing them nightmares, I’m pretty sure lots of them are having them without your help, thank you…seeing how they were there.

Yippe-Kai-Yay, motherfucker.

55

[QUOTE=astorian]
And as long as we’re being “curious,” I’m curious what you’d say to those men who walked out of the classroom, leaving the women at Marc Lepine’s mercy, if one of those women had been your sister or daughter.

Would you still be so quick to say, “Oh well, he had a gun, what were you supposed to do? No hard feelings, guys! Have a long, happy life, and don’t think twice about the girls you left to die.”
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Should I expect them to sacrifice their lives for my sister or daughter? They didn’t create the situation and I don’t blame them at all. The fact of the matter is they probably did not have a choice. Some guy gets in your face and tells you to get out, are you going to try to tackle him? Do you think you can cover that distance before he gets off a shot AND overpower him?

56

I’m with astorian. Maybe I would have left too, although I hope not. I like to think that if I had an inkling of what was about to go down, I would have died trying to stop him. If not, I would have been ashamed of myself.

What is happening to our culture? The message above this one basically says, “Being a hero doesn’t put food on the table.” What kind of a crappy ideology is that? When a bunch of men stand around watching a woman get raped on a pinball marchine, I guess maybe they’re all thinking, “hey, stepping in here might get me hurt, and that doesn’t put food on the table.”

We used to worship heroes and ridicule cowards. It is one of the pressures that society uses to reward valuable behaviour. In WWII, women who’s sons served put stars in their window, proud to display their values. Men who refused to serve had better have had a damned good reason to avoid being shunned. And if your wife saw you standing watching a woman being raped, she’d be horrified. Because that’s not the way men are supposed to behave.

Perhaps none of them men in that school went to help those girls, because they were a generation too late to have those values not just taught, but internalized to the point where some men would have just seen it as obvious that they must try to intervene.

57

[QUOTE=msmith537]
The reality is that if a guy walks into the room with a Kalashnikov, he can probably take out half the people in the room before they can get close enough to subdue him.
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Cite?
I assume you are familiar with the operation of the AK, correct? And you know that the guns used in school shootings are semi-auto and not “machine guns” (which are a pain to control, anyway). And you are an expert in firing under stress? And also in disarming an opponent.

I stand by my earlier statements, and still feel this is a waste of precious school funds.

Why is it the anti-gun crowd (and I’m not including you in this, msmith537, just a random rant) seems to believe that a good guy is totally unable to keep their gun from being snatched by a bad guy, but bad guys are super-powerful and it’s impossible to disarm them?

58

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
What is happening to our culture? The message above this one basically says, “Being a hero doesn’t put food on the table.” What kind of a crappy ideology is that? When a bunch of men stand around watching a woman get raped on a pinball marchine, I guess maybe they’re all thinking, “hey, stepping in here might get me hurt, and that doesn’t put food on the table.”
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Why don’t you make some more straw, Sam Stone?

I’m sorry to break your comic book fantasy world; but being suddenly dead, hero or not doesn’t occur in a vaccum. astorian was going on and on about shame and cowardice and what people (he and I guess you) think; the other side of that is pride and being heroic and how that affects those whose lives are directly affected by it, after the cameras, and blogs fade away.

Ok they’re proud, you’re a hero. What happens next? Do you really believe your family won’t be affected by your death? Will their pride be enough to feed them?

Heroes don’t plan on being heroes, they don’t wake up put on their underoos and decide to do something heroic; it just happens and from what I’ve heard, they don’t think about it, they just do it…because if they thought about it, they wouldn’t do it. Because most likely they have people that would like them to come home in one piece.

The question I’m asking is, if your wife, your children knew that today was the day you die saving a stranger or coming home which would they prefer? I don’t think it outrageous for some wives to prefer that their husbands came home that night. I don’t think it outrageous that some husband decides that he wants to see his kids grow up. I also don’t think it outrageous that some will chose to risk their lives anyway; but that’s probably a different thread.

I just refuse to call those who didn’t in that circumstance cowards, as I don’t believe they understood what was going on, until it was too late.

…but that’s me.

59

[QUOTE=astorian]
I HOPE the males who left feel guilty to this day. I sure hope they
don’t reassure themselves that they did just what the authorities always said they should do in a crisis.
[/QUOTE]

Maybe they do feel bad about it, maybe they don’t reassure themselves in that way, what of it? How is a person supposed to react in those circumstances? :confused: What if someone tackles a gunman in a bank and is shot dead for the sake of whatever cash was lying on the front desk? Should others in the bank feel guilty, should they not reassure themselves that they did the “right” things?

As to this disaster training, I thought school sports were supposed to teach people to be less sheepish and more decisive?

60

[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist]
Cite?
Why is it the anti-gun crowd (and I’m not including you in this, msmith537, just a random rant) seems to believe that a good guy is totally unable to keep their gun from being snatched by a bad guy, but bad guys are super-powerful and it’s impossible to disarm them?

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Because presumably the good guy is not a hardened criminal or a psychopath and is thus more likely to hesitate or freeze up when it comes time to kill another human being.