This week we have become increasingly frustrated with the erroneous assumption that schools somehow “own” the problem of gun violence. In the name of “centering the national debate on gun violence”, this past week the public has been treated to a gut wrenching back to school video from Sandy Hook Promise that graphically illustrates the trauma inflicted on our children by the constant, unremitting assertion to kids that at any minute they will die in a school shooting, when in reality research indicates a greater likelihood that a child will be killed on their way to school or playing a school sport then in an active shooter incident at school. Days before the video’s release, during New York fashion week, sullen looking models paraded down the runway wearing school shooting sweatshirts that featured Columbine, Sandy Hook, and yes, Parkland. These “fashion statements” were supposedly designed to impact the national conversation on gun violence, complete with bullet holes. Then finally late last week, the Onion came under fire for publishing a fake school shooting story that was supposed to “satirize” our national gun debate.
We’re unsure how exploiting, glamorizing, or satirizing school shootings somehow solves a weighty political, constitutional, and moral problem that extends far beyond the statistically rare event of a school shooting. Based on the public outcry over these three incidents, apparently most people don’t either. If we really want to talk about gun violence, let’s examine it in the context of where it happens most often – in our neighborhoods and our homes.
Clearly there have been horrific acts of murder perpetrated in schools over the 20 years since Columbine created a cultural touchpoint that has been appropriated by gun control and gun right advocates ever since. But the nature of schools themselves is not the cause, or the solution, to gun violence. Student aren’t shooting up schools because they can’t remember the date of the Magna Carte or because this week’s spelling words are too hard. They aren’t committing gun violence because the cafeteria lunch has too many (or too few) vegetables. They aren’t engaging in acts of mass murder because they have too long of a ride on the school bus, or they don’t have a date to the prom. School shootings occur because of mental health issues, emotional instability, and environmental factors that begin and reside in homes and communities – not just within the school.
As educators, we need to stop owning the problem of school shootings and gun violence. First off, a school shooting is a statistically rare event that doesn’t necessarily warrant the time, attention, resources, and trauma that is devoted to it. My research on violent incidents in schools for the 2018-2019 school year indicates that less than 6% of all violence that occurs in schools involves a shooting. (www.eSchoolSafety.org/violence). Perhaps even more troubling, when training and preparation focuses solely on the least likely event, schools become less, not more, safe and supportive environments.
As John Dewey put it, schools are a reflection of society. It is not the job of schools to solve all of society’s ills, in particular one this divisive and complex. More importantly, schools should not be the battle ground for the politically motivated agendas and attacks that created the current stalemate on gun violence. Teachers and students (as well as the victims of school massacres that have occurred) are not pawns to be used to score points in an unwinnable war.
We don’t much care what your stance on gun rights or gun control is. Stop beating schools over the head with it. As educators, we have better things to do – like protecting students from the myriad of other safety concerns that are more likely to happen than a school shooting. Or maybe even doing the thing we’re really supposed to be doing –educating kids.
Politicians, advocates, artists, and provocateurs on both sides of the gun issue need to stop dragging educators into the center of this debate or furthering the fiction that the only gun violence that occurs (or matters) is in the halls of America’s schools. Let’s take this conversation into the venue where it belongs, the community square and the halls of government. Leave educators alone – we’ve got important work to do.