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October 14, 2006
Combat Violence in Schools by Teaching How to Be Violent?
Teaching kids to fight back against classroom invadersYoungsters in a suburban Fort Worth, Texas, school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they've got -- books, pencils, legs and arms.
"Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success," said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools.
That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed.
Read the entire story (CNN.com)
This baffles me. At a time when all parents are concerned about violence in schools, we have a school programmatically teaching its students how to be violent. Granted, the context of the lesson is how to fight back against an intruder, but these are children; are they really able to reconcile these lessons in violence with the larger message that violence in society is a bad thing? Or, rather, are we instilling in them the lesson that violence is the best, if not only, way to combat aggression and giving them the basic skills to use violence against others?
I think Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi would be saddened indeed.
Of course, it will only take the death of one child attempting to fight back for this program to come to a screeching halt. But it's sad that it will have to come to that.
Posted by Craig in Society / Politics
Comments
The name's Gandhi, incidentally.
Posted by: Jace ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.gearbits.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 15, 2006 4:25 AM
D'oh...thanks.
Posted by: craigf at October 15, 2006 9:46 AM
If I'm good for anything, it's someone to play devil's advocate ;)
Context aside, there's something to be said for teaching kids self defense. A heaping helping of discipline, physical fitness, and the ability to disarm a possibly dangerous situation in the best possible way, can't be seen as a bad thing.
Getting back to the situation at hand, maybe there are better ways to get better results, without "rush him and hit him with everything they've got -- books, pencils, legs and arms."
Sure, there'll be angry "dodgeball, not jujitsu" parents, but seems to me that there may be some resistance to the "throw your pencils and legs" plan as well.
Posted by: hal-j at October 16, 2006 1:03 PM
Hal: Self-defense is a good thing, for sure -- I took Tae Kwon Do lessons in my teens for just that reason (well, and to help my balance and flexibility). But there's a big difference between giving children training in self-defense skills and teaching them to make ridiculous suicide attacks on intruders.
Do you really trust the judgment of a 9-year-old to be able to decide between "this is a situation where I should just be quiet and still" versus "this is a situation where I should attack." Some situations will undoubtedly be made _worse_ by having the children act aggressively.
Finally, notice that this is a private company doing this training. It is capitalizing on parents' and schools' fear to make money. If this were a large police department or the FBI setting up such a program, I might believe it has some merit, but it's quite possible that this company isn't motivated by what's best for the kids, but rather just how much money it can extract from the schools.
Posted by: craigf at October 17, 2006 8:58 AM
Craig: No arguments. That's why I wanted to put aside the context, and discuss the concept of legit "self defense training" as an alternative to the bizarre "pencil throwing" method.
However, we have to look at this from a "how far is too far" point of view. There were more people killed in aircraft accidents in 2006 than in school shootings. Should we require everyone who travels by air to have basic flight training?
I guess one of my points was, if these students are going to get some sort of training, maybe there's a better way. "Don't bring a pencil to a kung-fu fight" and all that.
Posted by: hal-j at October 17, 2006 2:22 PM