The biggest problem with arming teachers

[Orange Free State]

Well, I left high school a long time ago, but I remember many of my teachers as being nut cases, and probably some of the worst people to be walking around with a firearm. They’d have shot students, each other, or themselves.

[PJMcK]

1. Your post is offensive to teachers

I'm sorry you had such a poor experience as a student. Almost every teacher I ever had, pre-school through post-graduate school was intelligent, interesting and dedicated to their profession. Nearly every teacher I have ever met has similar qualities.

Perhaps the common denominator in your experience looks at you in the mirror.

[malchickiwick]

2. Speaking as a teacher: Whatchyootalkinbout Willis??

Perhaps as a student you were a bit of a POS??

[unblock]

5. that may be true, but you're kinda making the o.p.'s point.

as a parent, i don't want mini-unblock being anywhere near an armed teacher who would think of him as a "pos" if he misbehaved.

i don't agree with the o.p.'s broad brush any more than you do, but arming teachers is a horrible idea for many reasons, and if you arm huge numbers of any population (e.g., 20% of all teachers in america), you're going to be handing at least some of those guns to people who don't have the right temperament for it. that number is likely vastly lower than the o.p. implies, but bad outcomes are almost guaranteed.

[Orange Free State]

12. Perhaps I wasnt. Did fine as a student, never created problems or got in trouble.

Made it through a school with a 2/3 washout rate, then paid my way through engineering school on a seven year plan while parking cars for a living, and worked on design of transportation projects, railroads, and dams. If you live in the Northeastern US you may have at some point trusted your life to my competence as an engineer by driving on my projects. I eventually learned to fly to get around to my work. I am near retirement age now, and I still judge some of my teachers back then as mentally unstable. I do remember some fondly as good educators, but others were whack jobs. One principal distributed John Birch Society flyers about the satanic origin of the peace sign. One Spanish teacher was a screamer who would get so red in the face I thought she might have a stroke, she left for a sabbatical and never returned and ended up as a bank teller. She probably screamed at rolls of quarters. As a child I was terrified of her, and I cringe to think of her being armed and walking around a school.
One OUTSTANDING teacher knew that computers would be important and created a computer science program from nothing, with scavenged teleprinters and a primitive modem from Bell Labs, where he had once worked. He did this in 1970!

I intend to spend my retirement working on creating clean water supplies in third world countries. I probably have a few good years when I will be physically and mentally able to do so. I have raised a good son who will enter graduate school soon, and have a long marriage to his mother, the best woman imaginable.

So call me a POS if you will. Your opinion doesn’t count.

[malchickiwick]

13. Well, since you were unable to articulate an argument against arming teachers w/out disparaging

all of us with a broad brush, I would argue that it is YOUR opinion that doesn't count.

[BlueJac]

3. Sad comment

[no_hypocrisy]

4. I see a different problem with arming teachers.

As a substitute teacher, I've seen a lot of situations where certain students do not recognize a teacher's desk as sovereign. In other words, I've had to reprimand students as young as kindergarten who will go into a teacher's desk, that is, open closed drawers, to take out hidden objects they are denied. Stuff like Playdoh, slime, spinners. Juvenile breaking and entering goes to a whole new level if a teacher has, say, a Glock in the drawer, not a Fidget Spinner. (Obviously the teacher wouldn't have the weapon on top of the desk among textbooks, collected work, etc.)

I shudder when I think of past experiences with these kids if they had found a gun instead of slime in the drawer. I promise you these kids would have been delighted with the find, aimed at me (or other students or themselves).

With this "suggestion" of arming teachers, I can only imagine being a substitute for a teacher with a hidden weapon who forgot to take it with them and a student finding it before I do . . . . . .

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Yep. Arming us is just introducing guns into the classroom and

exponentially raising the chances of a school shooting.

[Squinch]

6. No, the biggest problem with arming teachers is that it's a ridiculous idea, and the

dedicated men and women who tolerate low pay, and crazy parents, and disrespectful students, and random ignorant people on message boards who are smearing them for no reason, do not need to now be made responsible for solving the societal ills of white supremacist slaughter mongers.

[GreenPartyVoter]

8. Thanks for that!

[Squinch]

9. You are very welcomed. I am not a teacher, but I work alongside teachers.

I see every day what you guys go through. It's awful, and those who do it are dedicated people placed in impossible situations every single day. I am a very capable person, but I know I could never hack it as a teacher.

I've had some varied work experienced, and for my first career I was an office person. I would LOVE to see all those desk jockeys who sit in judgment of teachers put in front of 28 nine year olds for a day. I guarantee most of them would not last two hours.

[GreenPartyVoter]

10. I'm working as an Ed tech. I get the joy of working with kids with

far less of the headache of being a classroom teacher. It's amazing what they have to stay on top of, and then have to cope with all the other stuff that comes with the job. Wayyyy too anxiety-inducing for me!

I, too, would love for people to spend a month trying to teach so they can see how hard a job it is, especially the folks who think it is glorified babysitting with too many perks and vacation days!

[gratuitous]

11. There are so many problems with this nitwit proposal, I can't call any one the biggest

For instance, schools across the country are broken into all the time to rip off iPads and computers. How many more school break-ins will there be if there's a cache of firearms to be plundered?