School shootings are still insanely rare. When you account for high crime areas the likelihood of an average kid experiencing a school shooting is so low it should make you question anyone trying to make it seem otherwise.
This may be akin to the craze of fear of terrorism that swept the general public after September 11th. I found that craze to be entirely irrational, but it would hardly be appropriate for the same individuals to see their kids as being particularly irrational, if their fear of being shot is real.
As far as I can tell, fear of being shot is not the primary factor why students don't want to go to school. The article, for example, doesn't mention global warming / climate change (our planet burning) or AI (possible humanity ending). How incentivized would you be to spend your youth working hard for a future that might not exist?
But the shooter drills are incredibly common. Just because it doesn't happen often doesn't mean children aren't often being forced to think about it happening.
Not sufficiently rare enough to avoid transforming education in a myriad of ways, from clear backpacks to endless drills to metal detectors at the door to armed people in body armor walking around.
And the idea of having to account for "high crime areas" as if it is a normal thing for a subset of the population to be dealing with guns on a regular basis in schools is a very American attitude.
While outright shootings might be rare, bullying by fellow students and teachers is common. Shootings might just be the straw that breaks the camels back.
What does this mean? Kids in high crime areas are still kids, you still have to count them when they get shot.
The harm of a school shooting is certainly not contained to the specific individuals who got shot either, which if one of these has happened near you you know. Everyone at that school and to some extent the entire city is affected socially and psychologically. They are a particularly powerful terrorism for this reason.
"School shooting" is a polysemous phrase. There's the very literal version--a shooting that happens at a school--but also a more specific one that refers to a much rarer situation--a lone kid consciously plans to go in and shoot a lot of people en masse, as a kind of suicide that is intended to leave a permanent presence on a community that the kid viewed as having wronged them in some way. The former is much more relevant for policy making, but in public discourse the latter plays the disproportionate, defining role. OP is frustrated by that vacillation. School shooter drills are almost irrelevant for the modal literal school shooting, but they inflict psychological damage on students and even create the archetype of the statistically rarer type in the public imagination.
yboris|2 years ago
As far as I can tell, fear of being shot is not the primary factor why students don't want to go to school. The article, for example, doesn't mention global warming / climate change (our planet burning) or AI (possible humanity ending). How incentivized would you be to spend your youth working hard for a future that might not exist?
citizenkeen|2 years ago
MattGaiser|2 years ago
And the idea of having to account for "high crime areas" as if it is a normal thing for a subset of the population to be dealing with guns on a regular basis in schools is a very American attitude.
c00lio|2 years ago
giraffe_lady|2 years ago
What does this mean? Kids in high crime areas are still kids, you still have to count them when they get shot.
The harm of a school shooting is certainly not contained to the specific individuals who got shot either, which if one of these has happened near you you know. Everyone at that school and to some extent the entire city is affected socially and psychologically. They are a particularly powerful terrorism for this reason.
scarmig|2 years ago