Lucille
12-18-2012, 11:58 AM
A '9/11 For Schools?' Let's Hope Not
A decade of frantic overreaction and wasteful, destructive policies based on the false promise of perfect safety
http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/18/gene-healy-on-a-911-for-schools
"It's going to change the way we look at things," a security consultant told Fox's Megyn Kelly on the day of the Newtown elementary school massacre. America's schools will need armed guards, "perimeter security, CCTV, preventative issues with the school psychiatrist [and] police department ... " Newtown, he summed up, "is going to be for schools what 9/11 was for airports."
Let's hope not. If the reaction to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is anything like the reaction to Sept. 11, we're in for a decade or more of frantic overreaction and wasteful, destructive policies based on the false promise of perfect safety.
[...]
Students' risk of suffering from panic-fueled policy choices is considerably greater. As Gardner notes, after the Columbine massacre, "zero tolerance" policies proliferated and "the term 'lockdown' moved from prison jargon to standard English as it became common to conduct drills in which students imagined armed maniacs in the halls. Money shifted from books and maintenance to metal detectors, cameras, and guards."
There may be worse to come. On Sunday, Matt Drudge—always quick to highlight the latest Transportation Security Administration atrocity—charged that the "Obama administration let school security funds lapse." Apparently, we need more federal funding to armor up our schools, despite the vanishingly small risk. This sort of political point-scoring is an excellent way to transform public education into a 12-year shuffle through a giant TSA security line. But the resulting environment is no way to raise independent, free-thinking citizens.
http://static.safehaven.com/authors/berwick/23073_e.png
A decade of frantic overreaction and wasteful, destructive policies based on the false promise of perfect safety
http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/18/gene-healy-on-a-911-for-schools
"It's going to change the way we look at things," a security consultant told Fox's Megyn Kelly on the day of the Newtown elementary school massacre. America's schools will need armed guards, "perimeter security, CCTV, preventative issues with the school psychiatrist [and] police department ... " Newtown, he summed up, "is going to be for schools what 9/11 was for airports."
Let's hope not. If the reaction to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is anything like the reaction to Sept. 11, we're in for a decade or more of frantic overreaction and wasteful, destructive policies based on the false promise of perfect safety.
[...]
Students' risk of suffering from panic-fueled policy choices is considerably greater. As Gardner notes, after the Columbine massacre, "zero tolerance" policies proliferated and "the term 'lockdown' moved from prison jargon to standard English as it became common to conduct drills in which students imagined armed maniacs in the halls. Money shifted from books and maintenance to metal detectors, cameras, and guards."
There may be worse to come. On Sunday, Matt Drudge—always quick to highlight the latest Transportation Security Administration atrocity—charged that the "Obama administration let school security funds lapse." Apparently, we need more federal funding to armor up our schools, despite the vanishingly small risk. This sort of political point-scoring is an excellent way to transform public education into a 12-year shuffle through a giant TSA security line. But the resulting environment is no way to raise independent, free-thinking citizens.
http://static.safehaven.com/authors/berwick/23073_e.png