Recently I heard a woman on the radio lamenting the fact that there hadn't been an armed security guard at Sandy Hook School because that guard would have been able to shoot the killer who massacred too many young and innocent lives at the school. I appreciate her and many others' attempts to imagine how this incredible tragedy could have been avoided, but the methods many have suggested leave me cold.
As soon as I heard about the shooting, which happened while I was in the Delhi Airport waiting to return to the United States, I predicted this would turn into an opportunity to further bolster the notion that, rather than restrict the ability for people to have guns, people would begin advocating for teachers and administrators to have the ability to carry concealed weapons in schools so that they could protect themselves and others in case of emergency. Having spent 6 months outside of America, in a country with a completely different relationship with things unexpected, it became clear to me how people in the US could feel perfectly justified to promote the ludicrous notion that the proper reaction to a person killing innocent adults and children with outrageous firearms, legally procured, was to arm more people with firearms. In America, our desire to control, and the unquestioning belief that we can control, our own lives and the world around us is the driving force behind an enormous number of foolhardy and useless attempts to "protect" ourselves and each other. When events like this massacre occur our frenzied race to grip the outside world by the throat, to hold and manipulate whatever feels out of our grasp, to control the things that are by nature uncontrollable, completely clouds our ability to see other ways out of the same crisis that might be more effective. We cannot control bad things that happen in the world, but we can minimize risks we see and try creative and perhaps unexpected solutions to address our fears.
Fear is a deep and powerful motivator. Giving students strategies to examine and cope with their fears could be one of the most empowering actions a school could take. In order to be well-adjusted in the world one must be able to distinguish between the times when fear is a reliable indicator that removal from a situation is essential and potentially life-saving and when fear is an emotional reaction that in a rational light is unwarranted (like a fear of flying). This is a skill that requires practice and opportunities, both real (such as travel to a foreign place) and artificially created (as with Project Adventure programs), and schools are the perfect place for those opportunities to take place.
As soon as I heard about the shooting, which happened while I was in the Delhi Airport waiting to return to the United States, I predicted this would turn into an opportunity to further bolster the notion that, rather than restrict the ability for people to have guns, people would begin advocating for teachers and administrators to have the ability to carry concealed weapons in schools so that they could protect themselves and others in case of emergency. Having spent 6 months outside of America, in a country with a completely different relationship with things unexpected, it became clear to me how people in the US could feel perfectly justified to promote the ludicrous notion that the proper reaction to a person killing innocent adults and children with outrageous firearms, legally procured, was to arm more people with firearms. In America, our desire to control, and the unquestioning belief that we can control, our own lives and the world around us is the driving force behind an enormous number of foolhardy and useless attempts to "protect" ourselves and each other. When events like this massacre occur our frenzied race to grip the outside world by the throat, to hold and manipulate whatever feels out of our grasp, to control the things that are by nature uncontrollable, completely clouds our ability to see other ways out of the same crisis that might be more effective. We cannot control bad things that happen in the world, but we can minimize risks we see and try creative and perhaps unexpected solutions to address our fears.
Fear is a deep and powerful motivator. Giving students strategies to examine and cope with their fears could be one of the most empowering actions a school could take. In order to be well-adjusted in the world one must be able to distinguish between the times when fear is a reliable indicator that removal from a situation is essential and potentially life-saving and when fear is an emotional reaction that in a rational light is unwarranted (like a fear of flying). This is a skill that requires practice and opportunities, both real (such as travel to a foreign place) and artificially created (as with Project Adventure programs), and schools are the perfect place for those opportunities to take place.
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