Trump’s proposal to arm teachers has unleashed an unprecedented rejection and union in the union. They do not want that responsibility: “My job is to teach,” they insist.
Trump’s proposal to arm teachers has unleashed an unprecedented rejection and union in the union. They do not want that responsibility: “My job is to teach,” they insist .
President Donald Trump’s penultimate quip is to suggest that teachers receive military training. In response to the massacres in schools, let them be the teachers, those who plumb the psychopath with combat ammunition. “I think he’s trying to put the responsibility on the teachers,” says Brenda Danae Berber, a third-grade teacher at Alexander Elementary School in Houston, Texas. “It is a reactive response because it actually gives the attacker the initiative. The focus should be on them and how to prevent these tragedies from happening. But it is easier for Trump to pressure the teachers than the National Rifle Association. In the end, everything has to do with who offers you the most profitability. We need more written regulations for gun owners.”
For Kimmy Flores Jr., a physical education teacher at James Bowie Elementary School in San Marcos, Texas, “it’s a hasty decision.” “You have to consider the age of the teachers. Most have either just graduated or have taught for many years and are older. In addition, you must consider the added intensive training that they would have to receive to be well prepared. Finally, from an economic point of view, you have to think about the cost of weapons and training and, also, I suppose, about the increase in pay for teachers who carry a weapon.
Karina Malik, a teacher at Two Points Elementary School in Washington Heights, New York, explains that “it’s not a good idea, among other things, as a classmate asked me the other day, ‘Would you like to be the adult with a gun in hand when the special forces enter the school? And then, well, imagine going to school with the responsibility of knowing that maybe a murderer will come in today, imagine teaching class thinking that and that you have to save the children. Either you’re going to save them or teach them.’
“I wouldn’t mind having a weapon in case of an attack,” says Flores, “but I wonder, for example, where it would be stored. Would I carry it with me or would it be in a closet? And I think about the safety of the students. Bringing weapons on campus increases the chance that students could harm themselves if left unattended.” “I wouldn’t feel safe,” says Berber, “my job is to teach, not to be a bodyguard. I would protect my students if necessary, but it is the school that must ensure safety.
Meanwhile, schools follow strict emergency protocols. Including the simulation that a murderer has entered the center. “I have to lock the door,” says Malik, “turn off all the lights and hide in the closet with the children, who are between 5 and 7 years old, while another teacher, previously designated, walks through the corridors and calls one of the one to all the doors screaming that she has an emergency, and the children are with me, listening to that, in the closet, and you should see their eyes, there is terror in their eyes, but we can’t open it, because the teacher might have a guy pointing at his head, and children can’t talk, they can’t laugh, they can’t sneeze, and that has to be done with 4 and 5 year olds as well,and sometimes the children begin to cry, to tremble, you have to whisper in their ears that it is a practice , that it is a lie, but it is traumatizing. And this is once every two months.
As if that were not enough, this from the writer Sarah Zhang, who in 2015, in the magazine “The Atlantic”, recalled that “in 1996, Congress – pressured by the National Rifle Association – prohibited the Centers for Control and Prevention of Diseases to finance research related to firearms. From these sludge comes, for example, the difficulty in estimating the number of shootings in educational centers. One of the most reliable accountants, coordinated by Education Week, estimates the number of shootings with deaths and injuries in schools so far in 2018 at six. Twenty deaths. Sixteen students and four adults. 43 injured. The criminals? a 15-year-old student in Benton, Kentucky, who killed two classmates. Nikolas Cruz, in Florida, who murdered 17 people. And the 32-year-old murdered at a high school game at a Philadelphia High School Etc.
“Among the teachers I work with,” Malik adds, “the mood is that we’re not even going to carry guns.” And the metal detectors? «Look, I studied at a Queens Institute that was quite dangerous. There were many bands. And we had a metal detector. Metal detectors are already installed in schools in neighborhoods with a lot of violence , and I promise you that despite the detector, every time there was a fight at school there were so many knives and guns that it was crazy. There are many ways to sneak a weapon, and no metal detector is going to stop it.”
Again like in the days of the Cold War, when the schoolchildren hid under the desk while the wolf knocked on the door.
