The Bush Administration’s overreaction to the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, continues to ripple across our increasingly
violent and fearful society. The United States leads the world in gun ownership
and gun violence. Powerful, largely rightwing forces within our society are
determined to keep it that way. It should surprise no one that the election of
a black, liberal President saw a corresponding rise in gun purchases.
Those who see gun ownership as a God-given—or at least Constitution-given—right
dismiss the alarming statistics: more than 30,000 gun deaths a year (about
three every hour), some 70,000-plus non-fatal gunshot wounds a year. They fail
to see a problem in the fact that during the 20-year Vietnam War period, between
1955 and 1975, more than 58,000 U.S. service members were killed, slightly less
than the number of U.S. civilian gun deaths in any two-year period.
In recent weeks I have visited a number of public schools in
Indiana. Most, especially in the wake of the elementary school shootings in
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, are instituting new security
measures, such as locked entrance doors with cameras. One school I visited had
begun locking all interior doors: offices, classrooms, library, and so on.
Observers, whether school staff or visitors, were issued a master key to allow them to
enter classrooms without interrupting the lesson by knocking for admittance.
Children and educators increasingly work in prison-like
conditions in many schools. Ironically, the security measures are largely
palliative, designed to provide the illusion of safety rather than true
security.
In that school with all the locked doors, every door
featured a large glass window. The locked library was behind a wall of glass.
The camera-equipped entrance doors to the school: all glass. Any would-be armed
assailant determined to enter the school or any room within it could do so with
relative ease. Such security measures affect only the law-abiding, not those
with criminal intent.
I’m reminded of the wag who commented, “One guy in a plane
tries to set his shoe on fire and now millions of passengers every day have to
take off their shoes to get through airport security.”
This is not to minimize the devastation that one deranged
gunman brought to a small community in Connecticut. But exceptionality should
not be used as an excuse for universality. Teachers are routinely taught not to
punish the entire class for the transgression of one or two students. Yielding
to unreasonable fears and spending money that could be used for teaching and
learning on unnecessary and ineffective security apparatus for schools is sad
and worrying. Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 admonition that “the only thing we have
to fear is fear itself” is piquant. Fear is seldom a motivator for good. Roosevelt was talking about the Great Depression, of course,
not gun-toting killers. But the sentiment is transferable.
In the same inaugural address Roosevelt also, in the same
context, said, “Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the
moment.” I would suggest that the dark realities of the present moment are not
would-be assailants lurking near schools, ready to invade classrooms and gun
down children and teachers. Such incidents are exceptions, dreadful, tragic
exceptions. The dark realities are our unreasoning fears, which pierce the hearts
and minds of parents, educators, and most damagingly, children.
Locked glass doors won’t keep out a determined killer but do send a dangerous and damaging message to children, namely that they live
in an uncertain world, a world in which they need to be constantly afraid. What
kind of educational message is that?
