Each time there's a school shooting, everyone who knows best is front and center, telling the rest of us what will help these situations.
"Arm the teachers!" is the usual rallying cry, and this time, the president has joined in. Not only arm only the 'best' teachers, but let's give them a bonus, he has suggested.
Arming the teachers is a band-aid on a much greater problem, the problem of why people shoot up schools, churches, restaurants, college campuses, theatres. No one wants to delve into THAT problem. Instead, they cry, "Arm the TEACHERS!" for a few weeks, and then the hullabaloo dies down. People move on with their lives, until the next mass shooting occurs.
I have been inundated with all sorts of "experts" explaining to me what must happen: better access to mental health care, more guns, fewer guns. But no one seems interested in why people feel this deeply rooted anger than can only be expressed by killing others and then, usually, themselves.
My students and I talked about what's happening in our society this past week. I think they had better insights than the adults in charge of this country seem to have. They talked about disconnection from one another; why have an actual conversation when a text will do? They spoke about the stresses they feel about their futures, their schooling, their college choices. The pressures they feel from parents, friends, schools, and social media to be more than they are.
They told me they never really speak about their feelings or emotions to others, preferring instead to say they're "tired" rather than how they're truly feeling.
And I wonder about that statement. We don't really know people anymore. My students were hurting and scared, and yet we keep moving forward rather than take a moment to check in. We tell others to practice "self-care," but we don't identify what exactly it is. We allow others to sit and stare at their phones rather than communicate.
Ever been to the park and watched parents and their children? The children are running around, interacting with one another. Parents are on their phones. We're disconnected. We're polarized. We always have to be right (my students pointed this out to me--there's a fear of being wrong in our culture). We don't LISTEN anymore because we're always so busy thinking of our responses.
And where is kindness? Compassion? In fact, I accidentally bumped the car door of someone in a parking lot with my door. The woman started chewing me out. I apologized and apologized, but she wouldn't let it go. I didn't even damage her door. There wasn't a mark. Finally, as she continued to chew me out for something I really was sorry for, I lost my temper and told her to "FO." I should have simply walked away, especially because she wanted to continue to argue. But no, I gave into my anger and responded disrespectfully.
Arming teachers with guns doesn't treat anything. We need to truly investigate the true cause of people's discontentment, the why of why kill others, the root of the problem. Killing others on a mass scale isn't okay. But it's not guns or simply mental health. Those are part of the problem, but figuring out the entire problem should be our goal. Bipartisan investigation. Not arming teachers.
