Mitchell Robinson explains why it is wrong to arm teachers, and what we should do instead.
He begins:
“Teachers can’t get their schools to pay for the professional development they need for the jobs they have now. Most teachers I know are paying out of pocket for travel to and from conferences, registration fees, professional membership dues, and graduate courses. Where’s the money going to come from to purchase each teacher a weapon and provide the training needed to become proficient?
“Will we be evaluated on our shooting accuracy on a 4 point rubric, with competitions for earning a rating of “highly effective”?
“Will we need to post a daily shooting objective on the white board: “Teacher will be able to hit an assailant with the first shot fired 80% of the time from a distance of 50 yards.”
“Will high school teachers get the newest models of weapons and pass down the broken and outmoded ones to middle and elementary schools?
“Will teachers with the highest target shooting scores be given the “plum” teaching assignments, AP classes, and cushiest schools?
“Will teachers need to purchase their own ammunition, bought on sale at Target or WalMart and shelved with the “Back to School” items, like notebooks and backpacks?
“Will music and art teachers not get their own weapons, because their subjects aren’t “required”?
“Will teachers in charter schools be held to the same expectations as teachers in traditional public schools?
“Will parents who home school their children be required to purchase guns and go through state-mandated training?”
Read on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wayne LaPierre is salivating at the thought of the USDE using education funds to purchase guns for teachers. Can you imagine the scheme he is working up in his greedy little mind? Government contracts are lucrative and I’m sure he has this all thought out. Both Wayne and David Coleman trying to make a quick buck off the death of children is absolutely abhorrent.
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In my long career as a public school educator, the one thing that disturbed me most was the many disconnected youngsters I met who seemed even more lost in a school system that continuously moved in the direction of more depersonalization. So we eliminated the neighborhood school in favor of the more comprehensive one. We increase our emphasis on data-driven scores. We test and punish. We treat each teacher as if each were the same. We believe fair means treating everyone the same rather than treating everyone as an everyone. We have become more mean spirited in our policies spear-headed by economists rather than by educators. We scoff at creating learning communities that are warm and inviting in favor of no excuse schools. We test and punish. We create more and more specialists who add to more and more disconnection. We use fear and intimidation to score high standardized tests and we take away recess from 1st graders for test prep. We adopt the medical model of looking at human learning as what must be fixed rather than on what might help human possibilities blossom. We standardize, sterilize, compartmentalize.
Teachers who connect to kids are the outlaws to the system. They are with us, thank God, but they swim upstream and they suffer because they do not conform. Just like kids who swim out of the main stream. The kids I loved best were they who were not afraid to be different. The kids I knew needed me most were the ones who had so much trauma knowing they did not fit in.
What disturbs me about this shooting in Florida that others seem not to be talking about is the fact that Nikolas Cruz was a kid out of the mainstream who showed over and over and over again to all that he was a severely disconnected child. I’m sure his standardized scores were not what would add to a school’s or to a teacher’s overall positive evaluation. He lost both his parents. He showed behavioral problems in several schools over numbers of years. He loved guns and he threatened to use them. I understand how a school of 3000 especially in a upper suburban town can respond to a kid such as he by really not connecting. I can understand how the priority of public school policy today based on so much mean-spiritedness and test and punish doctrines can lead to an even greater sense of disconnection to one who already is psychologically and emotionally and socially underdeveloped. And so, Nikolas Cruz was finally suspended from school. Suspended as a behavioral problem, only to reemerge as a monster avenger.
I’m not sure anything would have turned out differently if our priorities were different. But I do know that public school policy for the last 3 decades focuses more on creating disconnectedness than on creating warm and inviting places for youngsters to grow cognitively, spiritually, and emotionally. I also know that solutions being bandied about such as adding security and arming teachers only enhance the disconnected policies already that to me have created so much harm.
While it may seem to some amazing that the youngsters fighting for sensible changes seem more mature than the adult policy makers. It is no surprise to me.
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Thank YOU, Jim!
Yesterday I had a doctor’s appt. While there, the physician talked with me about: WHY DIDN’T Nicholas Cruz have help with his issues? Physician said that this is a mental health crisis in our country, which seems to affect our teen males, especially. We didn’t have time to talk about the reasons for this malady. Physician said that “arming teachers” is NOT the answer and more harm would occur. Physician didn’t want teachers armed, said that this is not their job.
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posted! here are some links for you:In case you missed these links:
A Combat Zone, With Desks
Let the Teachers TEACH!
What’s Missing From the Gun Debate
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/18/whats-missing-from-the-gun-debate-217022
Nick Kristof has explained. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/06/opinion/how-to-reduce-shootings.html?emc=edit_ty_20180223&nl=opinion-today&nlid=50637717&te=1
Arming the nation’s teachers is, of course, not one of them.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-plan-arm-teachers-me-makes-no-sense-safety-ncna850316
David Frum on the NRA,
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/David-Frum-on-the-NRA-Gun-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Competence_David-Frum_NRA_Other-180223-955.html#comment691092
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One of my brothers packs a gun for his job. He was also a Vietnam Vet who’s job was to rescue “DOWNED” pilots. BTW, he was the only one in his team who returned alive.
Anyway, once when he was cleaning one of his guns, it went off right in the house and hit the shower stall. So, if my brother who knows guns and who uses guns for work and must continue getting training, what makes people think teachers should be armed? Answer: ONLY an IDIOT who cannot think and who is paid off by the NRA.
Good gawd.
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“Bakesales for Bullets”
Brownies for bullets
Buns for guns
Cookies for Kevlar
Food for funds
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“VAIM” (Value Aim Model”
VAIM the teachers for their aim
At the gun-club firing range
Keep the ones who make the grade
Only ones who should be paid
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SomeDAM Poet,
YOU are just so CLEVER. Good ONE!
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and not mentioned, likely to be publicly blamed, shamed and ostricized after the fact for killing a student: the shallow public can and will turn on a dime
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Let’s arm the Oval Office with a real president, instead of a juvenile NRA lobbyist.
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Akademos: Ohhhh. I LIKE that thought. It hits the problem right on the spot.
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It’s all about the money, about profits, not the 2nd amendment or freedom. From the theguardiandotcom: As CEO of America’s second-largest gun manufacturer, James Debney – whose company made the assault rifle used last week to kill 17 people at a high school in Florida – makes $5.3m a year.
A second-amendment proselytizer Debney of American Outdoor Brands (formerly Smith & Wesson), has repeatedly made donations to political action committees opposing gun control in the United States.
And as a top donor to the National Rifle Association (NRA), Debney wears a distinctive gold blazer with a crest designating his membership in the group’s elite Golden Ring of Freedom society, reserved for million-dollar backers.
But that jacket is something of a strange fit, for a British expat with a background in bin liners. End quote
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The GOP seems to never learn, but maybe this time they will???
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Thank you, Diane. Great article.
Esp. loved this. The physician I saw yesterday would agree and of course, so do I.
Instead of “enhanced security measures”, I want to “arm” our teachers and students with “enhanced nurturing measures” in every schools…
more school counselors
school nurses
special education teachers
school psychologists
social workers
school nutritionists
school physicians
librarians
music and art teachers…
Maybe if we can keep the guns out of our schools, and “arm” our schools with the persons and services that so many of our most vulnerable kids really need, then our schools can help our children build a country where these acts of violence become nothing more than a dim and distant memory…not a seemingly everyday tragedy.
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“Where’s the money going to come from to purchase each teacher a weapon and provide the training needed to become proficient?”
I would not ask this question. Big mistake. If for anything, Congress would be willing to shell out money for this. They would even say, “we just gave $5 billion extra for education”.
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Yes, Congress would gladly allocate money for guns because it enriches their sponsor, the NRA, the Pro-Death Lobby.
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The argument can be used not just for teachers, but for every civilian: there is no such thing as a “responsible gun owner”, and especially not a “responsible assault rifle owner”. Being responsible is not a permanent thing: you could be responsible now, irresponsible tomorrow. Your lover may cheat on you, your son may hit you, you may get depressed. Then, if you have an AR 15 at home, you cannot tell what you would do with it.
Some people think that professionals or ex professionals should be allowed to have an AR 15 at home. No, at home, they are not professionals, they are humans as the rest of us. If you are in doubt, just start thinking about those vets, who handled complicated weaponry in various wars, and now they are home with PTSD. How many of them commit suicide or worse?
Here is an article (of the many) discussing the “civilian” violence of veterans
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/04/ptsd_and_violence_by_veterans_increased_murder_rates_related_to_war_experience.html
This is why the usual NRA-friendly promise “We’ll make sure, nutcases don’t get AR 15’s” can be interpreted in only one correct way “Since everybody can have crazy periods in their lives, nobody should be allowed to have assault rifles at home.”
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Too late for this one:
“I don’t want school doors to be locked, and to need to be “buzzed in” when a parent or university student teacher supervisor is visiting.”
My school has had this for a long while.
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Wait – one more to add to the list:
Weapon and ammo can only be purchased from an approved vendor. (which usually charges three times the purchase price of any other store in the area).
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