A fear culture
Parents want answers on security issues
Picture this scene. You go to Forestdale, your child’s school to take care of some administrative business. It’s the middle of the school day so your parking spot is nowhere near the front doors. You see a secondary entrance so you try that door. It’s locked so you give it a couple of jiggles to make sure then you make the trek to the front doors. What response would you expect to this action from the school and the community? In the Sandwich School District the response is nothing short of amazing.
Dec. 17, the school instituted a “lockdown” procedure when an individual attempted to enter the school through a locked door. Under the lockdown procedure, some students are instructed to line up against walls or duck under desks. Teachers also put paper over the glass windows on the doors leading into the classrooms. The lockdown procedure keeps students in their rooms until the situation is deemed safe. The man trying to get into the school turned out to be a parent, trying to access the school through a secondary door.
That, in addition to a December 15 incident when a seventh grade boy brought a trigger-locked pistol to school, have some parents in a serious tizzy.
School committee member James Foley acknowledged parents’ concerns.
“What I am hearing is there is a unanimous fear for safety, and the perception that we ignore it,” said Foley.
Kevin Mahoney, a Forestdale parent, urged the group to take action quickly.
“There isn’t so much fear, but anger and lack of trust,” said Mahoney. “Act now, not later. This can’t be a two- or three-month or two-week long thing.”
One parent, Christa Cabral, presented a petition with 180 signatures asking that a buzzer system be installed at all Sandwich schools.
A buzzer system would cost the town about $5,000, according to Cabral, and would permit secretaries or volunteers to unlock the front door to allow someone into the schools. With all secondary doors closed and locked, Cabral believes monitoring the people coming into the schools through one entrance would stem any external threat to students and school personnel.
Except all secondary doors are already locked, as that unwitting visiting parent discovered. Another offered solution was filling Forestdale’s resource officer position because an officer “might have been aware of the weapon”. There was no explanation of how a resource officer would have been aware of the weapon before anybody else was. In any case filling that position isn’t an option.
[School committee chairwoman Sherry] Marshall told the group it is not possible to replace officer Michael Caico, the Forestdale School’s resource officer at this time. Caico is currently on administrative leave pending a criminal investigation by New Hampshire authorities.
Predictably Zero Tolerance reared its head.
Patricia Collins, a parent of Forestdale students, had a different plan to deal with bringing the gun to school.
…
“The one immediate thing to do is enforce the zero-tolerance policy,” said Collins, urging the committee to take action against the boy who brought the gun to school, and follow the policy outlined in the student handbook for the safety of the children.
Patricia doesn’t seem to realize that expelling that child has nothing to do with future safety issues at the school. Overall the attitudes and statements of the parents and council members are very reminiscent of Chicken Little. The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
If there is a genuine safety problem there is only one foolproof method to address it. That method does not include more barriers or concentration on zero tolerance rules. It involves educating and teaching the kids. At least one parent understands this.
[Forestdale School PTA President Paige] Lyons was quick to point out all school council members went before the committee within the last month identifying the need for additional school psychologists and teachers to work with kids deemed at risk for dangerous behavior. Recent events only punctuated the issues raised. “We really need more support in the schools to help with these issues,” said Lyons.
I think you may have inadvertantly pulled this article from the onion.
I really wish I had.
Reading that article I caught such a feeling of the mob getting ready to storm the castle.
It is sad, but true, that educators must act defensively. They can be sued as individuals and school districts if (almost) anything goes wrong. That was not true decades ago. And today even an accusation can destroy careers.
Juries are now much more likely to award damages than they were years ago.
So schools add alarms, prepare extreme defenses, and tolerate zip. Which leads to idiotic incidents. But the problem resides within our mad legal system; it is very sensible for educators and school boards to fortify schools.
When we return to the idea that sensible and reasonable stewardship is a defense from lawsuit or dismissal then educators will behave sensibly and reasonably.
This culture of fear is widespread. An acquaintance of ours told of an incident where she approached the vice-principal of her son’s junior high-school at a school function, probably a week or so after having met with her with regard to a disciplinary incident involving her son only peripherally. The vice-principal, upon seeing her approach, help up her hands, palm out, took two steps back, and said “please stay back!” Startled, the parent looked behind her to see who was threatening the VP, to see no-one, just a bunch of confused parents wondering what terrorist threat was emerging that none of them could see! She was able to confirm with others that were there that she was not acting threatening, nor was her breath a problem.
Zero Intelligence
Wow just came across this terrific site and cannot recommend it highly enough. My wife and I have just decided to home-school our children due in large measure to the idiocy that masquerades as intelligence at schools around the country. Zero Intelli…
Culture of fear. If you recall, it is the culture of fear and powerlessness that led to the people on the planes on Sept. 11, 2001 being able to be led to their deaths at utility knife-point. By giving people the idea that everything is a threat, we are actually diminishing their safety.
As Peter Parker’s/Spiderman’s aunt would say ”there’s a hero in all of us.”
They don’t need a buzzer system. They had one kid who was proud of his dad’s gun — a little foolish perhaps but not a threat. And they had a parent, which could have been any of these parents, who needed to come into the school.
No true threats, but apparently these folks think they need to be on high alert because at any moment Sandwich schools will be on the hit list of every two bit thug and raging parent (though they have yet to appear).
They could have avoided the ‘lockdown’ by just going to the door and asking who the person was. Brilliant!
Next thing this school system will ‘need’ are bullet-proof windows and an anti-terror squad.
Jim, this one gets the 1st place award for True Insane Inanity.
Read about the same ridiculous-ness from a teacher’s perspective. It’s insanity. http://ginnybonk.blogspot.com/2004/11/lockdown-procedures.html#comments
I like your blog!
I suspect that the people complaining the loudest are the first people who would try to sue if someone came into the school and shot up things (and people). Most schools have similar procedures these days, given the recent history of mass shootings at schools. I know when I was taking some graduate education classes recently, we were advised to keep our classroom doors locked and have an emergency plan for students in the case of violence (how to move the furniture in the classroom to provide the most safety for students). I even know people who work in day care facilities with emergency plans that are similar to our lockdown plans.
I suspect that this situation seems entirely different depending on whether or not you’re the person responsible for the safety and well-being of 30 children or on the outside looking in.
A vice principal terrified of a parent (feigned or real?), a parent annoyed that she is reacted to as if she were a criminal, during a chance meeting with the vice principal a couple of weeks after a disciplinary incident involving her son. School officials who are under the impression that every single child in their public school is a potential criminal and must be monitored constantly.
Isn’t it time for the insanity to stop? Isn’t it time for parents to either tell their kids’ school officials lay off the zero tolerance/bunker mentality, and if that doesn’t work, just educate their children at home or in schools where everyone isn’t at one another’s throats all the time? This isn’t healthy for either the employees of a public school district or the children who have to attend school there. It’s sick and the sickness is spreading.
There are a lot of good reasons to home school children these days. No one’s actually afraid, and there are no 7 year olds grabbing guns until they’ve been desesitized to being afraid of them by the constant drum of fear mongers. We need to dazzel children with potential of art’s and science, instead we have a script. A dull, repitious and ritural to perform for every situation. Actually ritual is good, we develope skill through reptition, but the skills of teachers require more than a script.
What teachers find most appalling are administrative mandates that Randolph, as one of the 209 exempt schools, was supposed to be able to ignore. For example, teachers said the superintendent’s office was forcing them to use elementary-level teaching methods inappropriate for high school, including minute-by-minute agendas, and dedicating segments of class for students to read aloud. An assistant principal, Virginia Tomlinson, said more scripted teaching techniques were needed for the many new teachers. Ms. Swarns declined to comment.
This school is no longer producing the college bound students in Harlem it did 2 years ago. It will be replaced with 4 smaller schools.
“This school is no longer producing the college bound students in Harlem it did 2 years ago. It will be replaced with 4 smaller schools.”
There is going to be a time, sooner rather than later, I think, where kids are just going to e-mail it in while in the comfort and safety of their own homes. Kids love coming home from school and multi-tasking on their computers — doing homework assignments one minute, looking at shopping websites the next, playing computer games for five or ten minuts at a time, e-mailing their friends two minutes later, or on that instant chat thing they do.
Too much nonsense going on in today’s public schools — multi-culti PC curriculum, dumb and dangerous zero-tolerance rules that can destroy a kid’s life forever, indoctrination in lifestyles that parents don’t want their children indoctrinated in, etc., etc.
Parents will once again be in control as they decide whom they want to teach their children and in what subject. Brick and mortar schools are on their way out. Zero tolerance will be on its way out also. The school house won’t exist.
Sorry, Hillary and Bill — the local public school is not going to be the center of village life.
kids are just going to e-mail it in while in the comfort and safety of their own homes. Kids love coming home from school and multi-tasking on their computers — doing homework assignments one minute, looking at shopping websites the next, playing computer games for five or ten minuts at a time, e-mailing their friends two minutes later, or on that instant chat thing they do.
There’s no doubt about it, that’s what kids like to do these days. They chat, research, edit and play games all from their computer. There are lots of schools now that can operate online and teach a kid in any state. It’s only a matter of time til there’s a huge downsizing of education. The only reason for going to school will be justified social interaction. A misbehaving child will just stay home.
Education did not create a village the community trusted, it created a self-serving corporation that protected it’s assests at the expense of the public. Education used the same business schemes as corporations and made number based desisions to control policy. Downsizing corporations have also lead the way for education. The number crunchers will discover the scripted, irresponsible and easily replacable cog could be in Columbia, Europe, Africa or China. Globalization is already an intimate part of the school system, the natural sequence will be outsourcing education.
Maybe that’s a good thing. I think I rather pay labor to rebuild our cities than the dancing security mongers.
If education is not available to the public why should the public pay for it. Imagine the huge savings to state and local taxes.
http://www.indiadaily.com/breaking_news/20459.asp
US parents outsource maths tuition to teachers in Kerala
Jan. 11, 2005
Twice in a week, Ann Maria, a sixth grader at Silver Oak Elementary School, California logs on to the internet from home after school hours. Ann is not chatting up her friends. She is connecting to her personal tutor, already online, armed with headset and a pen mouse sitting in a call centre like cubicle almost a timezone away in Panampillynagar, Kochi, Kerala. Your neighbourhood tuition teacher, riding on the Information Technology Enabled Service (ITES) wave, has gone global
You know, i just read through this article, and what i found disturbs me. Me thinks the writer is what is in some circles called a chickenHawk?
Something about your rant is most disturbing, and all parents with small children should beware of you…
sro, I think you’ve made a terminology error. “ChickenHawk” is a derogatory term for somebody who supports military action but does not serve in the military. This article has nothing to do with war. It is about education being denied to children because the people who are supposed to be providing that education are both terrified and foolish.