David Kirp is one of our most perceptive thinkers and writers about education. You will enjoy his new book about a wonderful public school in New Jersey. It is called “Improbable Scholars.”
In this article, he says that the massacre of little children in Newtown represents a frightening turning point in our society. What happened is –or should be–beyond our imagination. But it is a terrifying reality.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
David Kirp observes: “Newtown marks an end to innocence, and in ways big and small – ways that we cannot entirely fathom – all of us are the losers.”
A great editorial from the San Jose Mercury News:
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_22240508/mercury-news-editorial?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
“If we allow this moment to pass without insisting on common-sense restrictions on weapons designed for war, we will be saying that what happened in Newtown is an acceptable price to pay for the Second Amendment.”
Newtown changes everything the same way September 11 did. It’s not that we were any less safe on September 12 than we were on September 10, but just that our blinders had been ripped off, leaving us in a state of fear. Our resolve after September 11 could have driven us to actually take a hard look and figure out what went wrong, but unfortunately before that could happen, various forces took advantage of our shock and fear to push through their self-interested policies like heightened security procedures that make no rational sense, but make people feel like something’s being done, while at the same time making the population more docile and controllable.
Similarly, we could use Newtown to take a good, hard look at gun proliferation and the abyssmal way we treat our mentally ill, but instead, self-interest groups will push through a bunch of measures that, at best, are band-aids, at worse will exacerbate the problem, all while someone profits from it.
I don’t know what it will take to truly wake this country up. We’re like the proverbial frog in the slowly heating water. The difference is that the frog thing is a myth – the frog really will hop out.
The unintended consequences of any crises or mind wrenching event may define a sea change in how a society moves forward
from that moment. We have entered into a very defining and dangerous time in the lives of our children and the future they
will come to know as their normal.
Financial burdens will drive an isolationist movement, technology
will support that movement, an Age of Control will be pushed
faster into their activities and redirect their freedoms. The military
industrial complex (already far ahead in community engineering techniques in their ability to control and maintain group and individuals behaviors)will be more visible in the children’s lives and
create a compliant environment taking what we have known in the
past as freedom of thought and freedom of life, liberty, and what
they might have chosen for happiness and reshape their existence.
September 11 began that future with the messages children receive
when they go through devices that check their person exposing
them to other people’s eyes and hands out of the control of their
parents who are held back from that assault of mind that relinquishes the parents ability to protect and makes the child helplessly compliant
to an unseen threat. Is that mind control? What do you think?
Add in the technology that feels like second nature to them and
there is yet again and unseen or unknown mechanism for mind
manipulation and control.
It is genius to get the masses to ask for their own controlled
environments and further isolate themselves. I remember as a
child being told to sit in the hallway of school with our backs to the
wall and our heads in our laps when the sirens would warn of a
incoming attack (this was war time and I was in elementary school) making us believe that we would be safer from that assault on us. I would think while in this position how all this really did, if a bomb would drop, is send my head up my own rear-end (and all the other children’s) leaving little human packages for the head counters if there was anything left of us when it was all over. Efficient but not going to protect us.
Real change for the gun argument is to get weapons that are meant
for war off the streets and out of the homes and hands of the public.
That makes sense. Arming more people makes no sense. If the total
number of children killed in schools is 100 nationwide and the total
number of children and citizens outside the school who are killed
and maimed each year is in the thousands then providing better law enforcement property and ability for safe communities would make more sense. This inclusive of enhanced mental health services. Beyond that there really is nothing that can be done except for teaching your child higher level thinking and survival skills and giving
them your philosophical imprint and I will hope it is holistict enough
to be tolerant of others and inclusive ot ideas and creative endeavors. Give them a chance to hold onto their own minds and
thoughts. Yes! I know this sounds conspiratorial. I so hope I can be
proven wrong. Time and the children will be the proof in the pudding.
It also will hopefully bring an end to the constant teacher bashing in this country
I hope you’re right. But the reformers don’t give up so quickly. We have to stay on guard.
Look at the NRA, and how they were quiet for awhile…and then started advocating for armed guards in schools. Ed reformers are no less aggressive.
With the nobility with which teachers saved the lives of and gave their lives for their children I think it is time that the profession was recognized for what it is,a calling not a job. We need to use Newtown to find some way to create a moratorium or ceasefire on teacher bashing in America—To make it as unfashionable as it is to bash soldiers returning from war.
While honoring teachers, we should also be used to help reduce violence in the schools and the proliferation of guns, particularly guns whose only purpose is to kill people, in society. I mean who knows more about behavior management than we do?
It’s called displacement.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that it breaks out first from the most bullied groups or weakest links of our society — the stress is everywhere and it affects us all until the system cracks, one damn “isolated event” after another.
People feel abused, bullied, or oppressed, justly or not, at the same time they are made to feel powerless, and they take it out in a sudden burst of violence on the only ones they feel more powerful than. Sometimes they hurt only themselves. Oppressors are very good at divide and conquer, manipulating the oppressed to fight among themselves, forcing them to seek out still more powerless scapegoats.to prove they have any power at all. Look around, the results are never pretty.
September 12. Good point.
The Monday after the Connecticut shooting, the most important presence in front of our schools and in the halls were teachers, custodians, secretaries, and principals greeting, hugging, and taking cues from children.
Adults define safety in terms of armed guards at doors, bullet proof glass, metal detectors, and eyes in the sky over campuses. Children feel safe when adults are calm, routines are in place, and there is a “right amount” but not overt and 24/7 armed supervision.
And, therein lies the problem.
In the past week, a small but loud contingent of parents in our district have started petitions and calls for armed “guards” at all schools (we already have and SRO at the high school). Forget logic, statistics, and concerns of what message we send to children – parents are understandably at a raw, emotional, level.
So, yes, this IS a defining moment in the culture of what school will be for children. The innocence of school the way it oughta be.
I remember the meetings and the day well when we placed armed School Resource Officers in our suburban high schools. They were/are there for student “stuff” – pick up on the tips – deal with student issues – getting along with students… and prevent the rare moment of potential student terrorism, usually picked up on a tip. Parents were outraged – “Will he carry a gun?” “Why do we need this?” Now – it’s the norm.
It appears we are at the next defining moment? The question is: Are we past the days of SROs and now faced with armed, Israeli-like protection at all grade levels?
I was watching Bowling for Columbine last night. Here is a quote from a father of Columbine victim:
“I am here today because my son Daniel would want me to be here today. If my son Daniel was not one of the victims, he would be here with me today. Something is wrong in this country when a child can grab a gun, grab a gun so easily, and shoot a bullet into the middle of a child’s face, as my son experienced. Something is wrong. But the time has come to come to understand that a Tech-9 semi-automatic-bullet weapon like that, that killed my son, is not used to kill deer. It has no useful purpose. It is time to address this problem.”
It’s now way past time to address this problem.