Idea of arming teachers comes from twisted minds in a failing society
With his customary needle-sharp analysis of any problem, the U.S. president has joined the cry for arming teachers in the wake of the wrenching tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. True, a few minor details might have to be worked out, but, overall, an inspired idea.
The school enrols more than 3,000 students, which means there would be a teaching staff of maybe 120 to 140, depending on grade configurations. There would also be a non-teaching staff of 20 more custodians, teacher’s aides, secretarial staff and so on. They would also have to be armed, or what’s the use?
There can be little doubt, according to gun advocates, that school safety would be improved by bringing and keeping track of as many as 160 guns in the school — but these are just logistical issues.
Would teachers bring their guns from home (where the school district had provided childproof lock-boxes), in which case all staff would need carry permits, or would the school have an armoury where staff could pick up their weapons when they arrive each day?
Given the statistics on domestic gun violence in the U.S., a counsellor or two might be needed for those homes, now armed, where relationships were a bit shaky.
Would choice of weapon be up to individual teachers or would the union contract require some standardization, so that all staff were armed in the same way?
The calibre of the gun would be important. A .22 would not be much use in bringing down an intruder, while the .44 magnum favoured by Harry, the drama teacher, now referred to behind his back as “Dirty Harry,” packs a loud and powerful kick that Ms. Robertson, the near-retirement foods-and-nutrition instructor, might find intimidating.
Mr. Albertson, the diminutive social studies teacher, would be walking the halls with a more confident swagger now, and pity any student who snickered behind his back.
From the principal’s point of view, conducting a staff meeting while facing 120 or so armed and not-entirely-happy teachers would certainly test administrative mettle. Union meetings, which sometimes become fiery, would best be held out in the sports field, with plenty of room to run if things became confrontational between political factions.
There would have to be a testing range in the basement, where teachers would be required to take monthly qualifying checks. Additional staff needed there — maybe an ex-navy SEAL who doubles as staff weapons instructor and doorman at startup time.
But enough tasteless joking and cheap satire about the unmitigated stupidity of talking about arming teachers with guns.
To talk about bringing guns into a school betrays a depth of ignorance about schools and kids that is indescribable in normal terms. It is something dredged up from the fetid depths of a twisted, gun-obsessed imagination.
When philosopher Martin Buber came to Sydney University in the early 1960s to teach about his theory of “I-thou” relationships, he opened his lecture by saying: “The most important message one human being can send to another is: ‘You have nothing to fear from me.’ ” A powerful construct for young teachers about the importance of trust in their quest to win the confidence of their students.
The thought of children sitting in a classroom facing a teacher wearing a gun is something far beyond the childish trust and confidence kids need to have in the adult who teaches them.
A teacher with a gun conjures up an obscene scenario. For some kids, no biggie perhaps, but for others a terrifying prospect every day they are forced to sit in that classroom fearing that gun and the person who, perhaps unconsciously, touches it by his or her side from time to time or keeps it in a desk drawer where kids once were able to find extra pencils or erasers or a candy reward.
To allow a heartbreaking tragedy like the MSD High School shooting to turn schools into dangerously armed fortresses populated by gun-toting adults is simply a brainless way of avoiding the political consequences of making those decisions about the availability of guns, especially semiand fully automatic weapons, that even the most basic common sense dictates.
If America is so broken that its leaders cannot make those blindingly obvious decisions, and its leader needs scripted notes to fake concern and provide obvious answers to simple questions, then the “Great Society” has failed.