School shooter drills terrorize our kids pointlessly

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In MY experience, by the time my child was in school, he was well aware that there are evil people and bad things that happen. He had been taught since his toddler years what to do in cases of emergency. For instance if there were an intruder in the house or a fire, he knew to break a window and run away to the neighbors.

He was taught how to cross the street safely.

He was taught how to escape a fire.

The day a kid brought a gun to school playground, he did what he was supposed to do and he was not injured.

He knew when to hit the dirt, when to hide and when to run away.

He also knew that he was a beloved child of God and that if he were killed, that he lived in a state of grace so he was ready to go,
 
I believe the real point of contention here is not in having a drill and being prepared.

It is in how some schools handle it.

My kids came home telling me of the drill along with plenty of commentary from staff instilling fear of guns instead of a confidence in knowing what to do.

That is a radically different thing than other drills which instill a confidence.
 
vz71 said:
My kids came home telling me of the drill along with plenty of commentary from staff instilling fear of guns instead of a confidence in knowing what to do.
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For me, that would mean I show up at more school board and PTO meetings. I would volunteer to assist in putting together a better training.
 
vz71 said:
I believe the real point of contention here is not in having a drill and being prepared.

It is in how some schools handle it.
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It may also partly be the culture of 24 hour news coverage of such incidents. I would be slow to allow younger children to see news of violent nature. I would think if kids were raised with scenes of car accidents and dead victims, then even buckling a seat belt would cause some apprehension.

The purpose of all training is to instill confidence so that performance in an emergency is less intimidating. Most likely, one day a school that has had these drills will be targeted by a shooter. Then we can see if the drill added some comfort to those kids involved, knowing they had something to do, and how to do it.
 
Guinness said:
Tornado drills outside of “Tornado Alley” definitely are.
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Good point. Drills outside the area where a mass shooter could kill school kids is pointless.

These type of drills will continue for the foreseeable future. I can see where parental involvement might reign in overzealous administrators that try to treat kids like soldiers.
 
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vz71 said:
Do enlighten us.
What exactly is involved in the active shooter drill?
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It’s not a drill, it was training for teachers. One thing they did was ask for volunteers from the teachers and had them sit in configuration like a classroom. They then simulated a shooter coming in

to the room and the teachers were supposed to scatter and not all pile up in the same area. They then “shot” into the scattering teachers with something (wife wasn’t sure what) that sounded like a gunshot and left welts on some of the teachers legs, etc.
pnewton said:
You know this how? Lack of agreement with you? I know people tend to confuse their opinions with objective fact, but the two are different. I think the error may be thinking of “the” training as a monolithic method that never varies. I only know of the training done in the schools in this area. There is no reason drills need to be traumatizing.
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I think you are talking about student drills and I am talking about training just for teachers. The training I’m talking about takes place in the summer and students are not in attendance.
 
This is a drill for students and I’m talking about training for teachers.
 
The actual topic is significant. I do not see how any teacher training would be traumatic. That could be done when there are no students on campus. That is what they do here for teachers, administrators, and police.
 
MidwestGuy said:
The can lock each classroom door and only have a small window on the door.
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Something to think about: for the cost of one officer for one year, a lot of structural improvements can be made to make classrooms safer. I would like to think that would be the very first thing done.
 
You must not have followed the entire thread because the teacher training started with my asking another poster questions. I did not bring up that teachers would be traumatized, but that students would be if they went through the same as the teachers.
pnewton said:
You obviously have no idea what I have an idea of, but then disagreement is often characterized as ignorance here. But I have to say, this is a switch. It is the teachers now who are the “traumatized?”
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You’re right here but you probably didn’t realize you were referring to yourself. Just reading the thread would have shown what a silly statement this was.
 
pnewton said:
Something to think about: for the cost of one officer for one year, a lot of structural improvements can be made to make classrooms safer. I would like to think that would be the very first thing done.
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They have done those also.
 
What I’m writing will only make sense to those who read the actual article, (not a common practice on internet forums, I’m afraid).

I propose getting rid of school fire drills.

First, you’re making kids be quiet and listen to the teacher to practice for a real fire. Having them practice that is a waste of time at best and may emotionally scar them. Besides, there’s no guarantee that they’ll line up quietly in an actual fire situation.

Then there’s the question of why we have fire drills at all. Despite all of the hysteria, fires in schools are rare. (On a serious note, which happens more - school shootings or school fires?)

Students might confuse a drill with a real fire and become traumatized.

Fire drills are just fear-mongering. Let’s get rid of them.
 
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I’m not sure I agree.

In the event of a fire, even if the kids become panicked, the drills would at least have shown them where the exits are, where the safe waiting spaces are. And hopefully, the kids will be evacuated quickly before the fire spreads significantly
 
I’ve taught at schools where the lockdown/active shooter drills are done well and helped prevent anxiety and schools where they were not done well and caused excessive anxiety. Not all schools are equal in the ways they handle this or anything else.
 
So how would kids not learn anything from active shooter drills?

The author’s arguments are extremely poor. She doesn’t believe in the drills because:
  1. School shootings are rare. So what? So are school fires. So are earthquakes and tornadoes. We don’t avoid preparing for bad event just because it rarely happens.
By the way, unless this expert is wrong, there have been zero fatalities in a school fire for over 50 years. Active shooters in schools: The enemy is denial Meanwhile, here are the fatalities from school shootings. https://www.chds.us/ssdb/number-killed-by-year/

If we can hold fire drills for something that pretty much never happens, we can hold active shooter drills for something that all too often does.
  1. The drills may “traumatize” children. Goodness - and here I thought liberals were the so-called “snowflakes!” Do you know what’s really traumatic? School shootings. Better to minimize the trauma by preparing the children for an emergency.
  2. We don’t know if they’ll actually behave in the real event. Yes. We don’t know that they’ll misbehave, either. That’s not a valid reason to ban drills.
And to address the OP, this has no more to do with the NRA and gun owners any more than preparing for a fire drill is an assault on owners of cigarette lighters and Coleman grills.
 
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Bad guys exist, and you might have to one day take personal action to protect yourself from them. If an educator or parent doesn’t know how to present this information to kids in ways that don’t terrorize them, the educator needs a new career, the parent needs to grow up and get a clue.
 
TheLittleLady said:
According to the National Safety Council, chances of being killed in a mass shooting are 1 in 11,000. Odds of dying in a tornado are 1 in 60,000
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And the odds of choking are 1 in 4k, or 1 in 100 for a vehicle accident.

I do question some of their math though if they think you are more likely to die from an asteroid than from a bus/train accident or an earthquake.
 
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