Missing the Point

Those who have been reading my thoughts on education for a while know that I measure anything that happens in a school by whether it is safe and educates children. And I interpret this broadly: the physical maintenance of a school building might not directly impact student safety or education, but the lack of it might result in conditions that do; school lunches do not educate students, but hungry students have a hard time paying attention.

That brings me to this story from the Christian Science Monitor about “The case of an Oregon teacher fighting for the right to take a gun to school for protection from her ex-husband.” On the surface, the problem seems very straight-forward: the district has a strict no-weapons policy, consistent with state law in 37 states; the teacher has a 2nd Amendment right, a permit, and a legitimate safety issue concerning her ex-husband.

Nobody seems to have considered the safety issue posed by having a teacher who is known to have received credible threats from a violent man. What happens if he shows up at school? How many people will he kill or wound before he can get to her classroom? Can she really shoot him without creating a safety risk for the students? She is concerned about her safety and rightly so, but what about everybody else? Having a gun in the classroom isn’t safe, and having her lure a dangerous nutcase to the classroom isn’t safe either.

She needs to consider a job where she does not pose a safety risk to her students. She could work in distance learning. She could become a teacher/coordinator for an organization like K12 or for a homeschooling support group. She could work in a juvenile detention facility, where the same security that keeps the students in and contraband out would keep her ex-husband out.

I truly feel for people who are victims of domestic violence. I have written about the problem several times over the years. I have given time and money to benefit shelters for those escaping abuse. I think it would be counter-productive for employers to fire people on the basis that someone might come looking for them with violent intentions. But in most workplaces, your co-workers are adults who can take actions to promote their own safety and the safety of others, who are capable of preventing someone from entering the workplace, who have a chance of disarming or dissuading or delaying or even detaining an assailant, who can dial 911 at the very first sign of a problem. This teacher’s coworkers, for all practical purposes, are children. They look to the adults around them in a school to see to their safety both on a practical and a legal standpoint. They deserve a teacher whose very presence does not pose a danger.

Cross-posted at Central Sanity.

In closing, college kids don’t know nearly enough about history and civics; one Congresswoman is fighting to stop bullying, as research points out that “Studies show that schools that list all sorts of bullying and tell students, ‘None of this is allowed!’ are more peaceful than those with vague anti-bullying policies”; stay-at-home-mom (who just happens to be a lawyer!) is a crusader against mortgage fraud; “dress for success” applies to protest movements too; and finally the EU may pass a law to lift the “liquids on airlines” ban. Let’s hear it for common sense.