Post Crisis: Overreaction at Schools

The government, in particular our public schools, sometimes seems to lose common sense especially following a crisis.

Everyone agrees that we must do as much as possible to stem the gun violence, especially in schools. But what happened to talking to the children and explaining the dangers of weapons in school? Shouldn’t a well educated teacher be able to tell little Johnny or Jane why even pretending to ‘shoot’ someone might be scary to another child? Isn’t this what we hire our educators to do? It should be expected that our teachers use common sense.

But too often we see the knee jerk reaction by school staff. Consider the five year old girl who was talking about her Hello Kitty bubble shooter or the little six year old boy who used his finger as a pretend gun. Or the little boy who made a ‘gun’ out of Lego blocks… Shouldn’t these be, as this president once said, ‘An educable moment’???

Sadly, too often they are not and the children are suspended until public outcry brings some common sense back to school officials.

Just this past week in Arizona a student, who aspires to join the military upon graduation, had a picture of a flag and weapon shown on his computer screen. Once again, rather than using common sense and speaking to the student school staff chose to suspend him.

Yes, really.

I’m a parent. I want my schools safe. But I also want to see some common sense demonstrated by the school officials.