Last year, my daughter’s fourth grade class was shown a video about what they should do if a gunman intruded upon their school. The video included scenes of children texting their parents, “I love you.” My daughter’s school does not permit students to have mobile phones. Her takeaway, then, was that if a gunman did blast into her school, she’d have no way to tell me and her mom goodbye.
Around the country, students are being subjected to such psychological torment by adults who insist they’re doing these things to keep them safe.
Not long ago, her fifth grade class was put through a lockdown drill — but wasn’t told it was a drill. Trembling, she hunkered down next to a friend, squeezed her hand and quietly recited Psalm 23. She’s 10, but when she got home, she told us she thought that day would be her “last day on Earth.”
Around the country, students are being subjected to such psychological torment by adults who insist they’re doing these things to keep them safe. While not all students are being so blithely traumatized, almost all are being made to prepare for some kind of situation that warrants a lockdown. Even as far back as the 2015-2016 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, “About 95 percent of schools had drilled students on a lockdown procedure.”
Franci Crepeau-Hobson, the chair of the National Association of School Psychologists School Safety and Crisis Committee, told me Tuesday that as well intentioned as school officials undoubtedly are, “a lot of it is sadly driven by, you know, a fear of litigation and lawsuits. You know, ‘If we don’t practice this, and then something happens, we’re held accountable.’”
No parent wants to get the call that parents at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, got a year ago. Or the call received by parents at Oxford High School in Michigan, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and so many…
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