Time for a radical change

I’d think we as a society had almost found some sort of resolve in the threat of school shootings.

When I say that, I mean, up until a couple weeks ago, I think we thought we had a handle on the situation.

It was always a familiar pattern, from Littleton to Springfield, Ore., to Edinboro, Penn., a disgruntled or disturbed student decided to bring a weapon to school and kill their classmates.

We could do something about that. We could use an iron fist when it came to bullying. We could study students more closely to make sure they weren’t ready to go off the deep end. We could encourage students to alert adults to any potential threats from other students.

But in the span of one week, we had two individuals randomly walk in to two schools on separate sides of the country and kill students.
Anomaly? Let’s hope so.

But, it’s still time for a new game plan. We learned how to protect kids from each other. How do we protect them from the rest of the world? And with that, I’ve put out the million-dollar question that every parent asks before they lay their head down on their pillow at the night. It’s a question I’m already starting to ask with my own child still four years away from school.

The only solution I can come up with is to fortify our schools – bulletproof windows, armed guards at the door, a barbed-wire perimeter. Students are unloaded from their bus through a secured, covered entrance at 8 a.m., a bus picks them up at the same spot at 3 p.m. No more outdoor recess, no more leaving campus for lunch.

Knee-jerk reaction? You bet.

Completely crazy? Sure.

Crazy because sending our children to school in virtual prisons is unnerving to you? Or crazy because that whole idea of civil rights and freedom is rearing its ugly head again? You know – the same idea that allowed us to stand in long airport security lines for maybe a week after Sept. 11 before we started complaining about it? We want to be protected, we want our kids to be safe but we’d really rather not deal with the inconveniences that come with it.

We have a problem in our society, it’s called short-term memory. We weep for those lives cut way too short but when it comes to action, we tend to be a little shortsighted.“Our children can’t learn like that – locked up in a building like felons. Let’s just put up some metal detectors and then we can sleep at night.”

So once this problem fades from the media’s front page, we’ll move on to something else. It’s the “cross your fingers and hope it doesn’t happen again” mentality. I believe school districts do all they can to protect students. But if we believe the need for an ID badge will stop a homicidal maniac, we’d be better off strategically posting an army of cardboard cutout police officers around school grounds.

It’s time for an honest discussion about how we protect our kids. Uncomfortable to talk about? That’s too bad.

I’d rather talk about this now then talk about how we bury our kids later.