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This might be an unpopular opinion, but I have pretty much zero concern that my kids will ever be involved in a school shooting.
Every year there are about fifty school shootings (and some of those are just shootings that take place near a school) There are 100,000 public schools in America. There are 25,000 high schools in America, so that’s .2% of all high schools will have a school shooting.
We could break that down even more, but you get the idea. I am not worried about my kids ever being killed, injured or even witnessing a school shooting. I know that’s what all of the parents of Parkland, Florida and other schools say, I totally get it.
But let me tell you about what I am concerned about,
I am concerned with my kids going to a school full of daily violence and constant lawlessness, chaos and disrespect.
We focus on the school shootings because they’re shocking and acute and severe. But the constant chaos in our schools everywhere and every day doesn’t make headlines. Madison, Wisconsin: police were called to three high schools in the same district on the same day, in the same hour. School police officers needed to call for backup at three schools within 24 minutes of each other!
A parent wrote to the principal of one of those schools about how it’s just chaos everyday. Why don’t they do something!
And it’s because of Restorative Justice.We’ve talked about this in the previous posts, but the premise is: because more minority kids were getting disciplined than white kids in high schools, there’s a disparate impact. So now no one gets disciplined anymore and it’s game on in the classrooms. Kids know they can get away with anything and they continue to push the limits, knowing they’re untouchable.
So this one parent says “the district is bending over to not ‘offend’ the offenders.”
He talked about how it started off as a few violent kids, but it’s just growing every day because they all know they won’t get in trouble. It’s just Lord Of The Flies, and the kids who do want to learn, they’re at the mercy of the tyranny of the few who are violent and disruptive. Not only that, but the trouble-makers are coddled and protected because they’re so violent and disruptive. It’s completely backward.
We had a teacher call in to my radio show, and talked about how this Restorative Justice in her school has affected her and how she can’t discipline any misbehaving kids. The principal told her that if this kid acts up again, remove all of the other kids from the classroom. Do you see how insane that is? If my kid was in that classroom and he was penalized for some other kid’s misbehavior, I’d be furious. And they do this because they know that the teachers won’t ever discipline them. So it’s just game on and everyone’s penalized because of it.
These kids clearly have no discipline at home, or any family at home, and there’s no middle ground (as the president said last week in his speech) between school and prison. And no school is willing to expel, suspend or discipline in any way, everyone and all the other kids are victimized and punished because of it.
So I’m way more concerned about this than a school shooting.
If I may, this is why I get frustrated, it’s just my personality, it’s just my way of looking at problems, but I get frustrated when people propose things that are on the surface. I hate that we have to talk about metal detectors and armed security guards at every school. I don’t want my kids going to a prison everyday!
I get it. It would stop school shootings, but what the heck is wrong with us that this is even necessary!
We got to get to the root issues here so we don’t need metal detectors or armed teachers. We do these things in the meantime, I’m not against them per se, I just hate that it’s necessary.
It’s because of the breakdown of the family, No discipline. No Dads properly directing boys into men. And here we are. It’s pretty awful.
Not just the school shootings, but everyday in our schools.
I’d love hear your experience. Parents, teachers, please share in the comments your examples of breakdown of values and expectations and the chaos that you experience everyday. Everyone needs to hear the truth. We need to know what you’ve experienced.