Aw Shoot.

It is my personal opinion — and forgive me if you’ve heard me say it before — that everything that goes on at a school needs to be measured by one double edged yardstick: Is it safe, and does it help educate children? If something isn’t safe, it doesn’t belong in school, end of discussion. If it doesn’t help educate children, it is suspect. There’s a lot of leeway on this side, because sometimes non-educational issues effect learning. For example, school breakfast programs don’t really teach kids much (except maybe what a balanced breakfast looks like when it doesn’t include a bowl of sugary, unnaturally colored breakfast cereal), but hungry kids have a hard time thinking about math.

Now, one thing that The People In Charge say is that they want students to be able to solve problems. Many schools have elaborate programs with catchy acronyms to help kids solve problems. Yet actions speak louder than words, and most schools say through their actions that they don’t really care if problems get solved, as long as we can pretend everything is just fine.

All too many times, a problem is misidentified. You have probably had this experience: you try to talk to somebody about a problem, and that somebody focuses on the example you used instead of the underlying issue, or worse yet they percieve the problem as something completely unrelated to the matter at hand.

This brings me to an item I read this morning. “According to the U.S. Department of Education’s latest figures possible, in 2002, more than 2,500 children were expelled from school for a period of one year for bringing a firearm to school.” That’s pretty serious! Granted, there are over 47 million kids, in almost a quarter of a million schools. But to put this in perspective, the number of kids were expelled for bringing firearms to school in 2002 is roughly equal to the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq to date. Please remember, this is only the number of kids who brought guns to school who were both caught and expelled. There is no way to know how many kids brought guns to school without being caught, or how many were caught but not expelled for some reason.

The item in question, correctly, goes on: “Statistics like this should give us pause and ask, ‘Why and how are children getting their hands on guns?'” Why and How are exactly the right questions, and in the right order! How unfortunate that the rest of the article focuses on the fact that we must keep guns out of the hands of kids because after all guns can kill people.

When I see the examples outlined — kids wanting to make “another Columbine” or “kill classmates and faculty” — I can’t help but ask why?? What is going on at these schools that this seems like a good idea? What is so horrible in that environment that killing people seems like a perfectly good way to solve the problem?

Of course guns are not safe and therefore do not belong in school. However, an environment that makes kids believe violence can solve their problems is also not safe, and also does not belong in school.

In closing: sure, it’s a great idea to send a bunch of white supremacists to be peacekeepers in a place where everybody is brown; the 10 most powerful figures in the Religious Right; you may have a Bad Boss, but I bet he didn’t try to have you put in jail as a terror suspect; and job growth is less than expected, with 121,000 new jobs being created in June (revised May number is 92,000). Remember, the economy needs between 150,000 and 200,000 new jobs in a month just to keep up with new people entering the workforce. So when the White House points out that 1.85 million jobs were created in the last 12 months, they are hoping you won’t notice that barely keeps up with demand.

Please notice, “Teaching, Learning, and Education” is a new topic category here on ShortWoman. I will be revising the category on old items. If you have linked to them, please be aware that you may have to revise the link. Sorry for the inconvenience.