You read the news: another school shooting. This time in Michigan. Students and teachers in most schools have drills to practice defense against a shooter, in this case, a sophomore in the high school. Why did he have a gun? Why did he shoot? What will the country do to prevent future school shootings? Will we ever have gun control? After Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and countless other such massacres, we know the answer. It’s not the answer that one would expect in a civilized country. Next time you hear a politician spouting off about being pro-life, ask him or her how they can be pro-life and pro-gun.
A sixth-grade teacher, Melissa McMullan, shared her reaction to the latest tragedy:
She writes:
Today, I am deeply saddened by the loss of lives, injuries sustained, and emotional trauma that will all reside permanently with those impacted by the actions of a child compelled to bring a gun to school in order to kill. I am also struck by the heroism of teachers.
I find myself thinking about the promise of public education. Education is our society’s most potent weapon. It has the potential to be the great equalizer, eradicating poverty and fostering independence. This drives me to love my students fiercely and continually strive to offer better instruction than the day before. I am not alone. My building and school district are filled to the brim with teachers who pour everything they have into their classrooms every day. We are not alone. Across the country, teachers go into their classrooms every day to give their students everything they have. And then some.
But we are suffering. Our students are suffering. We are asked to keep our students seated three feet apart, make sure they are wearing masks, monitor mask breaks, teach outside, make sure we are simultaneously offering virtual instruction to students who cannot come to school, manage the continual flood of absences and find ways to keep our instruction moving forward. We counsel students, their families, and our colleagues about the uncertainties of living through a pandemic that no one has a handle on. How our students learn, and what they need from us have vastly changed. Yet, as always, we are asked to comply with an antiquated (and irrelevant) teacher evaluation system.
What happened on Tuesday, at a school outside of Detroit, is a sickening reminder of what matters. People sent their children to school and three will never come home. Some were injured, and the scars from those injuries will never leave them. While many others, albeit physically unscathed, will never get over the trauma of having the safety of their school violated in such a manner. And a child had access to a gun, knew how to use it, and used it to injure and kill students and teachers in his school community.
What struck me is that teachers, as always, stepped in and did exactly what they needed to do to protect their students. I am in awe reading about the teacher who heard gunshots and quickly responded. The teacher was able to get all of the students in the room, lock and barricade the door with desks, and ask students to arm themselves with objects to throw should the door be breached. Ultimately the teacher had the students jump out the window for safety.
I am left wondering how many more responsibilities can we give teachers? How long will our leaders ignore the overwhelming list of responsibilities that have been added to our plates, while continuing to evaluate us based upon metrics that have no relevance? We have to ask ourselves:
What do our nation’s children need from public education?
How do we support teachers in meeting our children’s needs?
Our current metrics are not only costing valuable time, energy, and resources, but they are part of a system that is failing teachers and the students they love. What took place in Michigan is not the canary in the coal mine, it’s the mushroom cloud. We need leaders to stand up now.
Melissa McMullan, PhD, 6th Grade Teacher
John F. Kennedy Middle School
Port Jefferson Station, NY 11776
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My own response to Second Dementment Politicians would be more along these lines …
The cowards can put their guns in the same place.
Plops and (toilet) papers
Amen, Jon!
With 120 guns per 100 people in the U.S., the ship of gun control has not only sailed, it sank.
The world’s second highest is the Falkland Islands, population 3000, with 62 per hundred.
Most of Europe is at 20 guns per hundred or less. Is it any wonder we lead the world in mass shootings? With the imminent takeover of America by the GOP, we better get used to it. If I could convince my adult children to go I’d be out of this country in a heartbeat.
At least the people of the Falklands Islands have a good reason: to repel a takeover attempt by Argentina.
What’s our excuse?
To repel a Canadian attack? A Mexican attack? An attack by murder hornets?
Kidding aside, I am actually somewhat concerned about a Canadian stealth attack.
They have already taken over the NHL and the NLL.
A fourth student just died. Others are in critical condition.
With all the attention on semiautomatic rifles, the handgun, used here, is by far the most common weapon in homicides in the U.S.
Was it a semiautomatic hand gun?
Probably. I think the vast majority of new handguns are.
Do a Wikipedia search on “semi-automatic” (one round per trigger pull) and you will find that there are well over 200different types of semiautomatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns. They are the most common type of firearm by far and the vast majority are used for hunting, target shooting, and home defense security. Banning any one of those types would be futile. I live in a rural area where gun ownership is the norm; I know very few homes without multiple guns. Yet there have been exactly zero mass shootings in my state. As tragic and horrific as they are, they remain a relatively rare event. Schools remain very safe places for children to learn, play, grow, and develop. Kids do not need another layer of anxiety over this event given the nearly two years of disruption and chaos.
zero mass school shootings
Who goes hunting with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun?
and in a sane world, wouldn’t hunting with that kind of weapon be illegal
Dr. McMullan’s reaction to the horrific school shooting at Oxford High School is spot on. My heart breaks for all that were involved, and for the families who will never see their loved ones again. I cannot imagine the amount of psychological trauma that these students and teachers will need to deal with in the aftermath of this tragedy.
After reading about what actually happened, I am in awe of the teachers and students and how they responded. In today’s world, we are not just teachers anymore. The word “teacher” just doesn’t cover it. We are recess monitors, lunch aides, nurses, psychologists, copy machine and printer techs, family counselors, and social workers. And now in the wake of the shooting at Oxford High School, teachers are part law enforcement officers who need to protect students with their own lives. As a teacher myself, I am absolutely devastated about what happened, but I am also incredibly proud of the teachers at Oxford.
YES!
The GOP is adamantly opposed to gun control, gun bans and doing anything remotely constructive after these school shootings and gun massacres. The whole right wing libertarian confederation of yahoos has a highly distorted view of the 2nd amendment, as if it is some absolute right to own any gun you want, when you want and in whatever quantity. If I had my druthers, hand guns would be banned unless you could show some need for one and semiautomatics would not be available to the general public. Of course, that will never happen, the gun lobby is too strong plus hordes of Americans are in love with their guns. As it stands now, there is no hope that anything sane or rational will be done to deal with all these gun massacres. Remember when the GOP was fear mongering that Obama wanted to confiscate your guns, blah, blah, blah. The GOP nudniks want to go in the opposite direction and have even more guns in the hands of the so called “good guys” (sic). The good guy with a gun is good until he gets drunk, has a temper tantrum and shoots up the local Walmart because they made him wear a mask.
Well said. Unless the American public refuses to vote for these gun loving representatives, the attacks will continue. If the majority accept all the deaths by guns, the bloodshed will continue.
The point is that an overwhelming majority of Americans do not accept this. But despite the rhetorical outcry, this is a distant priority for most when compared to the price of chicken. A broad acceptance of a false interpretation of the judicial and intellectual history of the 2nd amendment is another obstacle I don’t see ever being corrected. Finally, short attention span politics do not favor a broad understanding of fundamental issues.
The Onion nailed it with the following headline:
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
I thought after Newtown that now, finally, something will be done. This was, after all, a mass shooting of elementary school children. Little children.
Yeah, Republicans, take your thoughts and prayers and stick them up the place you think with.
How does one respond to what these parents are feeling today? Words fail. This is unspeakable.
And yet we must. We must speak. And act.
We must speak the truth. We cannot continue to cultivate a society that needs to teach students and teachers how to save themselves from an active shooter in their buildings.
It’s insane. It’s just freaking insane that THIS . . . THIS . . . has literally become the quotidian reality.
When John Lennon was killed, I was in my first teaching job in a public high school. A student approached me in tears and said that he wanted to do something. So, together, we organized an anti-gun rally, which was held in the high-school gymnasium, that parents and students attended. The organization of the rally was itself an excellent project for the students.
This would never happen today with administrative approval. Not in this climate, despite the good will of administrators. In gun-crazy United States, such administrators would lose their jobs.
Off-topic but on-topic, if you haven’t seen this new Beatles documentary, you must.
What is the name of the new Beatles documentary?
Diane, it’s called “Get Back” — it’s a three-part series directed by Peter Jackson. It’s streaming on Disney’s streaming service.
Thanks
E.g., this wonderful footage:
Oh, that’s just wonderful. One of my prized possessions is a facsimile edition of Eliot’s The Waste Land with Ezra Pound’s notes on it. And I love, love, love looking at the drafts that famous works went through. Sometimes, as in Yeats’s great poem “The Folly of Being Comforted,” the writer ends up spoiling it by going too far with the revisions–an earlier version being much better.
https://www.wbfo.org/2021-11-09/a-secret-tape-made-after-columbine-shows-the-nras-evolution-on-school-shootings
Blood on their hands
The blood of children
I so wish I could share this on Facebook. I taught for 25 years, the last 5 after Columbine. I volunteered a couple of years ago at my granddaughter’s elementary school. It was there I experienced my first active shooter drill. To say the least it rattled my nerves just knowing this was becoming a reality. I was a 6th grader when there was a horrific fire in a school a few neighborhoods over from me. 92 children and 3 nuns perished in that fire. I ended up at a high school where several girls from OLA attended, many with visible scars, physical and emotional. Preventions and drills and restrictions came from that event on December 1, 1958. I hate the “Unmask our children, parents choose, schools teach”flags that are so prevalent in my rural area. I often think of the remark to athletes to “Shut up and dribble.” I will now look at those signs with even more disgust. We are asking so much for our educators. I thank God for the bravery of so many and know that they are not fully appreciated. I appreciate reading your daily email messages. Thank you, Carole D.
On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 11:00 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” You read the news: another school shooting. This > time in Michigan. Students and teachers in most schools have drills to > practice defense against a shooter, in this case, a sophomore in the high > school. Why did he have a gun? Why did he shoot? What will t” >
I heard a prominent Black comedian acknowledge the USA as the country of his success. He also said he felt like an unwelcome visitor in the parts of the country where communities have ubiquitous American flags interspersed with Trump flags planted in their yards.
And, yes, he’s right, the flagged communities have a disportioncate number of racists and they likely vote for men like Trump and Gosar.
I’ve just become numb and fatalistic about guns in the U.S. When my European friends ask what it’s like knowing so many guns are around, I tell them the odds of it affecting any individual are infinitesimal, but the odds that many people, in some place, at any time, any where in the U.S. will be murdered and loved ones will be permanently damaged is 100%. It’s just something we live with and hope for the best because nothing will ever change. Ever.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/school-shooting-oxford-high-school-michigan-fourth-victim-dies/
The shooter had issues. Question: Why did his father purchase a gun for him?
Because the father also had “issues.”
You are right LetThemLearn.
So now this family has an even bigger mess.
Why did his father purchase a gun for him?
Because we live in a country where people imagine that it is a right for every idiot to have a gun. Because there are laws that allow every idiot to have a gun, laws like those in Wisconsin that allowed Kyle Rittenhouse to go into a volatile situation with a military-style rifle.
and why don’t we hold the person who buys a gun accountable for what happen with that gun
Ciedie, I think the prosecutors will bring criminal charges against the boy’s parents for not securing the gun they bought.
Already have …
Involuntary Manslaughter … their actions were beyond egregious …
I can think of a few scenarios in which this ends. Unfortunately if I stated them I would be on a no fly list.
Trying to imagine what you’re thinking of, but can’t.
Try harder !
There are several videos taken by students in the school that have been uploaded. Here’s one.
Oh. My. Lord.
I don’t think it is the shooter asking for the door to be opened – more likely a law enforcement officer. However, the video does show the fear (and how it has become so bad that students are now trained to be suspicious, not a bad thing for them to learn, but so tragic that we live in a country where they are well-prepared for this because it happens to often.)
It was a cop.
flerp,
Yes, I went to the trouble of informing readers here that it was “more likely a law enforcement officer” since you linked to the misleading description “footage of the possible shooter trying to get into the classroom by impersonating a sheriff”.
If you knew it was a cop, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have made that clear yourself when you posted the video with the caption “footage of the possible shooter trying to get into the classroom by impersonating a sheriff”.
I pasted the link to the tweet. The tweet says what it says. I didn’t write it. Settle down. You don’t need to fight about everything.
“I pasted the link to the tweet. The tweet says what it says. I didn’t write it.”
Yes, that is my point, because flerp has done this multiple times with tweets that make public school educators who are concerned about racism look like idiots, fools, or anti-white racists.
Linking to tweets in which public school haters use dishonest words to demonize public school educators as ignorant, evil or just anti-white and then when those dishonest words are called out, saying “the tweet says what it says, I didn’t write it”?
If that is okay with all the educators here, I will stop trying to make sure that readers understand the entire context when tweets with misleading words (usually words that demonize public education) are posted.
I don’t understand the mindset of someone who knows that it was a cop at the door but posts a tweet that is captioned “… the possible shooter trying to get into the classroom by impersonating a sheriff”. It takes 5 seconds to add 3 words to the sentence “There are several videos taken by students in the school that have been uploaded. Here’s one (it was a cop at the door):”
But I also don’t understand the mindset of someone who knows that a hard-working public school educator isn’t an idiot or an anti-white racist who is teaching dangerous ideas to students, but intentionally links to tweets of a soundbite of that hapless educator with out of context captions that are designed to deceive casual readers into hating that teacher or educator because they only read the caption.
“The tweet says what it says. I didn’t write it.”
It was a harrowing video that I thought should be shared and so I shared it. What is the matter with you.
What is the matter with you? I gave your post more context in my first reply to you and agreed with you about how it was harrowing how students reacted. You could have just posted a thank you to me.
You didn’t “share” a “harrowing video” – you shared the tweet of the video with a caption that was misleading. That “harrowing video” can be seen in lots of places without a misleading caption, but you shared a tweet with a caption that could easily have left the impression that it was likely to have been the shooter “impersonating” a sheriff’s deputy.
I am sure it was just an honest mistake. Was it also an honest mistake when you “shared” tweets with descriptions of video clips of educators saying supposedly bad things that demonstrate how evil CRT and the educators who are concerned with racism are?
You can’t control what a misleading caption that demonizes that educator says. You can only post it here. I get it.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ethan-crumbley-identified-as-oxford-high-school-michigan-mass-shooter?ref=scroll
This teen had issues and so did his parents.
In a just country the Supreme Court would be on trial.
Until we have proper gun control laws in the United States (when hell freezes over), we MUST institute metal detectors and bag searches at the doors of schools just as we have AT EVERY COURTHOUSE AND, we need searches of cars and other vehicles entering school properties. We can do this OR we can have a lot more dead children.
Ask one of those parents of the kids from Oxford whether it’s worth the cost.
If I were a Principal or Superintendent, this would have started on Day 1 of my tenure. The last time I suggested this, a LOT of people piled onto me here. But do you resent going through a metal detector and having your bags searched when you enter a courthouse? Of course not. Yes, I understand that some POC are sensitive to searches given that they are subjected to them in this country, sickeningly, a lot more often than white people are, but this would apply to EVERYONE, no exceptions.
The cost of not doing this can be counted in the lives of children. That is far, far too great a cost to pay.
If you work in the courthouse—and thus have to go in every day—you usually have an ID that lets you bypass the metal detector.
I agree with you 100%(metal detectors, bag checks, SRO’s). No one will “pile on” with you because no one wants to offend the “word slayer”. Please take note who doesn’t respond to your comment.
The far Left wants no SRO’s in schools and no metal detectors or bag checks and the far Right wants to send in fathers armed with AK47’s to patrol the halls or make teachers carry a weapon to work. Both ideas are crazy and yet there will be nothing but fighting about it and absolutely nothing gets accomplished.
If ever I have stifled debate on these pages, I heartily apologize for having done so.
Which reminds me of something my Irish ex, who attended Catholic school, once said to me: When she was a kid, she thought the phrase from The Act of Contrition was “O my God, I am hardly sorry for having offended Thee” and that the quotation from Psalms in the liturgy was, “May the good Mrs. Murphy follow you all the days of your life.”
I won’t pile on you, Bob, but I would oppose the use of metal detectors at my son’s high school. But that’s largely because nobody can remember the last time a student tried to bring a weapon into the school. If students bringing weapons into the school was a regular occurrence (as it is in many schools, unfortunately), I would definitely change my view.
That makes sense, Flerp. So now you have me wondering, which is better, to teach kids by our practice that everyone is treated the same under the rules and make teachers and administrators go through what all the kids do, or apply this just to the kids? An interesting question.
The problem, Flerp, is that it’s never “a regular occurrence.” It’s an irregular occurrence. You can never know when your school will be the next one to win that macabre lottery. Most of these shootings have happened at middle-class schools where they were unexpected.
These incidents are random and happen where people least expect them. Parents saying, this wouldn’t happen here are one reason why things don’t get fixed with this admittedly nonideal solution for a nonideal world. And then there is the question of the statistical likelihood of this happening at any particular school. Number crunchers will chip in and say, well, clearly, this isn’t very likely at any particular school. But they forget to add the decisive WEIGHTING of the numbers that comes from the WEIGHT of what happens when it does happen. That doesn’t just tip the scales, it breaks them. One child lost to a school shooting is too many.
“This beautiful, smart, sweet loving girl was tragically taken from us all today leaving a huge hole in all of our hearts … ” Baldwin’s grandmother Jennifer Graves Mosqueda wrote on Facebook. “This horrific day could never have been imagined or planned for.”
Ofc, no one should hold this poor woman to things said in a moment of such grief, but it could have been imagined and planned for but for those who think that it can’t be imagined and planned for.
Nothing can be done to prevent this says only country where this is a routine occurrence.
LisaM
Wouldn’t the extreme positions on the continuum be the left imposing restrictive measures to prevent. carnage and the other end, be right-wingers committing carnage? (It’s rhetorical.)
Did you read the shooter’s mother’s letter allegedly written toTrump and posted on Facebook?
The shooter was a kid. A bullied, screwed up kid. And a mass murderer now. Kids mythologize. Cast themselves in grandiose roles. This hits a peak in high school among the most troubled of them. It’s freaking tragic. We have to take steps so that this kind of thing CANNOT happen.
His brother said he wasn’t bullied. Speculation- his parents’ hate screwed him up.
If the 4 murdered could become Democratic voters, he and/or his parents might see it as a win?
The young guy in Sweden who targeted a camp of young liberals certainly saw it in that light.
When a young guy is taught to loathe democracy and to think that a man like Trump will advance him, the stage is set.
When I worked in textbook publishing, I was in and out of K-12 schools all over this country–schools of every kind. The only places where I saw metal detectors and bag searches were in inner city, mostly African-American schools. But notice that these shooters are white kids in middle-class schools. So, when it comes to metal detectors and bag searches, we have it exactly backward, don’t we? I’m not saying that we should remove them from the inner-city schools. I am saying that we should stop with the typically American racist double standard.
Systemic racism. Throw a stick at something in the United States, and you hit it.
Metal detectors are not installed in large urban schools because students are black. They were a response to drug and gang related violence, not the concern over mass shootings. The crack epidemic of the 1980s wreaked more havoc and devastation in our inner cities than most realize. I doubt that many black parents would elect to have those metal detectors removed from their schools. Not racism, just student safety.
There are over 40 states in which there have been zero mass school shootings since Columbine. Students need to know that these events are extremely rare and less than unlikely. Proper perspective is imperative, kids are too anxious as it is.
I know we’re supposed to play nice, but this statement is just plain stupid. Please tell me, what is the “proper perspective” when your child takes a bullet between the eyes? You know, to dredge out a old, extremely simple argument, one failed shoe bomber means the entire flying world now gets imaged and groped. What’s the perspective on that? After all even if he had been successful, what’s the percentage of people who died compared to all those who travel without incident? Extremely rare and unlikely. From a policy point of view, at which number of schools shootings should we begin to be concerned?
We have a whole prison industrial complex built around the idea that black kids who smoke pot are going to be violent. Give me a break. Rare and less likely has also been the mantra of those who have been certain about Covid since day one. Do you know what the survival rate of childhood cancers are now? Approaching 98%. A child getting cancer who will die is rare and less than unlikely. But it happens to tens of thousands of families every year.
Rare and less than unlikely. We should do an inventory of laws that fit that bill and change or eliminate them? Jeesh.
We have a whole prison industrial complex built around the idea that black kids who smoke pot are going to be violent?
I asked an an LEO that I know what he thought about the legalization of pot in New York. He said he was fine with it because he never encountered a violent pothead.
I know reading comprehension seems to be thing for some, but a judicious reading of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow makes that point effectively clear, although I doubt she would have chosen my words, she might have chosen non-violent drug offender instead. A lifetime of reading newspapers daily, also confirms the thesis. Plus paying attention to the world around me. Alexander is, however, a Black intellectual, so I am sure you will dismiss her arguments. And she does make arguments, she doesn’t just throw random crap out there with no context.
And note the complete ignoring of my point. Please, at which number of school shootings should I begin to be concerned and write my member of Congress?
Anyone with a mild curiosity in the subject—especially anyone concerned about posting comments that are “just plain stupid”—would have noticed that Michelle Alexander’s thesis in “The New Jim Crow” is wrong. See the work of professor and decarceration advocate John Pfaff. Drugs are not what’s driven mass incarceration. Violent crime is.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15591700/mass-incarceration-john-pfaff-locked-in
To your other point, you should write your congressperson now.
Until you can explain the salient points in a reasoned way, quit posting some random article and expect me and others to do the work for you. I would think as an attorney you could at least do that.
I can only advise you to read Pfaff’s work and reconsider using Alexander as your go-to citation for the incorrect assertion that a racist war on drugs is why mass incarceration exists. But I can’t make you do it. It’s up to you, and depends on whether you care.
Flerp may be reluctant to saddle up, for public consumption, next to Prof. John Pfaff of the Vox article?
I thought it odd, until I didn’t, that Pfaff failed to mention the ALEC template about “3 strikes” incarceration in his points.
A few Pfaff bio items follow. (1) Pfaff’s c.v. isn’t posted at his Fordham ( a religious, private school) page site so the public is unable to easily access his funding sources. (2) Pfaff clerked for a Reagan appointed judge, (3) He has a degree in economics from libertarian University of Chicago. And, (4) he has an association with the John M. Olin Foundation. Sourcewatch identifies some grantees, Manhattan Institute (Koch) and George Mason (Koch).
I have no knowledge about Pfaff’s ideology or if it influences his research. Given the aforementioned bio, before I would cite Pfaff’s work as valid contradiction to other research, I’d delve deeply into the subject.
In general terms, when a researcher parses out, to make a case that there is less federal impact than state and local impact, data on the political leanings at the local level which drives both policy and prosecutors is essential.
Koch/his conservative allies and, the push for policy at the state level (e.g. abortion bans) can be characterized as a tethered relationship.
flerp,
I can only advise you to read Alexander’s work and reconsider using Pfaff as your go-to citation for the incorrect assertion that a non-racist war on violent people is why mass incarceration exists. But I can’t make you do it. It’s up to you, and depends on whether you care.
(I have no doubt that flerp will find what I wrote above to be a very convincing reason for flerp to become a acolyte of Alexander — after all, I am using the brilliant reasoning that flerp himself uses.)
Linda, if you’re trying to suggest Pfaff is some kind of right-winger, you’re not going to get too far. He is very far left on criminal justice reform.
I don’t agree with a lot of Pfaff’s policy proposals, but his factual research is enlightening. Anyone interested in the real causes of mass incarceration, and who is willing to reconsider the incorrect notion that drug offenses are a substantial driver of mass incarceration, should read John Pfaff’s work, or at a minimum read one of the many interviews with Pfaff.
That much-touted Koch enlightenment about justice reform had a short shelf life.
But, I do see the point that when Trayvon Martin’s killer walks, the prison population is reduced. (ALEC’s stand your ground laws.)
Flerp
How are sales of that swamp land in Florida going?
“The John M Olin Fellowships and the advancement of conservatism in legal academia”
Sending 55 million kids to school every day thinking that they are somewhat likely to be victims of a mass shooting is reckless and irresponsible.
Suggest writing your Congress member about the dangers that e-cigarettes pose to children and teens. Vaping will produce far more deaths than school shootings.
Besides the inaction by Congress after Sandy Hook tells me that it would be a lost cause.
They looked at 20 dead five year old children and metaphorically shrugged.
Rage-
A compare and contrast exercise in e-cigarettes as a manner of death and the murder of Sandy Hook kindergartners?
(I hear a high school teacher laughing somewhere.)
Telling the parents of 55 million kids that it is reckless and irresponsible for them to worry about mass shootings because e-cigarettes and vaping are much more serious?
Ironic that this comes from someone who believes that what should really concern parents is the extreme dangers of CRT in our public schools!
When I was growing up there was a lot of smoking and drug use in high schools. But rarely a mass shooting. (In fact one that I remember was the “I don’t like Mondays” teen who shot young kids during recess — she wasn’t even a student at the school and never entered the building).
NYC PSP,
I think you should take a self-imposed holiday from reading FLERP’s comments. The back and forth between the two of you is tiresome. There are big issues to address. I would say the same to FLERP.
Diane Ravitch,
As I mentioned before, if you would like flerp’s links to tweets that demonize educators and CRT (with misleading captions) to remain here without any context from me, so that casual readers (especially parents) feel outrage at how dangerous CRT has infected public schools and how awful teachers are, I will comply with your wishes.
My problem is that when I see something misleading posted, I think the real facts should be noted and corrected. And I happen to believe that one reason that propaganda has infected out public discourse is that too many of us have let this go unchallenged.
We no longer have any public discourse where conservatives make truthful arguments. They don’t have to. We have let them get away with it for so long that they don’t even feel as if they need to adhere to a modicum of honest discourse.
But I’m not a teacher nor an educator, so if someone wants to post a tweet with a misleading caption that makes teachers and educators look bad, I will just shut up and hope other parents take the time to research and investigate instead of assuming since no one responded and the tweet was posted by a far more “respected” member of the Diane Ravitch community, that the tweet that demonized educators and CRT must have been true.
The fault is at least half mine, Diane. I have bad habits, always have.
I urge you not to read NYC PSP comments. And the same advice to him/her.
I presume Rage’s comment was provoked by Tucker Carlson’s recent fawning over Alex Jones.
Will the Center for American Progress be issuing a statement about Common Core?
The more that news comes out about the Trump supporting, gun rights supporting mother and husband, the more outrageous it is.
These parents bought their son a gun and took him to practice shooting with it last weekend. But when called in to the school to speak to the administration about their son’s threats, THEY DON’T MENTION THAT THEY JUST BOUGHT HIM A GUN!! And when asked to take their child home, they decline and their child – who just happens to have the very gun that his parents had just purchased for him as a present – remains at school to shoot it up.
I can’t imagine what the families of the dead students feel. These parents made it easy for the student to kill.
^^and the parents are apparently now fugitives?? Because why wouldn’t law enforcement give them the benefit of the doubt and not bother keeping track of their whereabouts?
Are the right wing gun nuts starting “Go Fund Me” accounts now?
Omigosh, NYCPSP, your last comment is chilling. In fact, they may be sheltering w/some “right wing gun nuts.”
What I really wanted to say, though, was, once again, a teacher (or teachers: so much is going on, here, that I’m not sure if it was the same teacher who discovered the ammo search & the very specific drawing) but he/she/they immediately sent the student (I will not say his name: once Anderson Cooper–after Sandy Hook, I think, pledged that he/CNN would either not name a shooter or say the name only once. Well, unlike New Zealand, this has never happened) to the office, where, one would think the right thing would have occurred –like, check the backpack FIRST!! & call the police.
In fact, something should have happened the day before, when this (was it the drawing?) was first reported…by a teacher, who did the right thing.