General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhen I was your age...
There is a poignancy about this that is so sad. Who would want to be growing up today?
rickyhall
(4,889 posts)FraDon
(518 posts)n/t
Martin Eden
(12,871 posts)But we never had to kiss our ass goodbye like today's victims of mass shootings.
Hstch05
(219 posts)I graduated high school in 1988, and never had to do a duck and cover drill. I think by the time my generation rolled around, we knew the futility of hiding from a nuclear blast, and just accepted that if it happened, we would all be dead. Not a lot of comfort in that, but it was realistic.
Now I'm a high school teacher, and have been for 25 years. I remember what things were like before Columbine, in contrast to how they are now. For years after after, we practiced lockdown drills, sheltering in place with the lights off, the door barricaded, and the students hiding as far from the door as possible. This year, they are called Active Shooter drills, and we are encouraged to either fight or flee. If we get the lockdown announcement, we have two choices: stay where we are, or run out of the building. If we stay where we are, I'm supposed to lock and barricade the door. Then any student who is comfortable doing so should get ready to attack whoever comes through the door with something heavy (chairs, textbooks, backpacks). I have a baseball bat behind my desk that I bring out for the occasion. Those who want to hide may, but they should be spread out and not in a large group. Most of the students opt for the attack posture. When we talk about it after the drills, the majority say that they would rather do something than nothing. Option two is run. If the lockdown is announced and they specify what part of the building the threat is in, classes in other areas have the option to run out of the building and meet in prearranged locations out of range of the school. We meet by the tree line at the edge of the school property.
It's not perfect. And it takes a lot of time with the negative imagination to have to come up with solutions to school shooters. It is draining. Columbine wasn't the first school shooting, but it is the one that caught the country's attention. Parkland made us rethink shelter in place as a viable strategy in addressing school shooters. Now now this week in Colorado, Kendrick Castillo was killed stopping one of his classmates from killing even more students in his rampage.
Should any of this be happening? Should kids have to be put in life and death decisions like this in their own schools? Of course not. But the guns aren't going away any time soon, so this is what we've been forced to deal with.
sop
(10,203 posts)It had never actually happened to us, so I don't recall being scared or upset. It would have been another matter had a couple of American cities already been nuked. Teachers didn't tell us much about Hiroshima or Nagasaki back then; I'm sure Japanese students would have reacted differently to duck and cover drills. Kids today have to deal with the reality of school shootings, often occurring every month.
FailureToCommunicate
(14,014 posts)down on us from Russia while we cowered under our desks seemed pretty awful when we were in grade school.
Our father used to say he walked two miles to school and we kids all said sure sure dad. Then one time on a visit to his boyhood Missouri farm we walked it. It really WAS two miles!
pdsimdars
(6,007 posts)MarianJack
(10,237 posts)...the boy had to listen to limp dick turd heads like Grand Wizard Donald Trump and turtle man Mitch McConnell send their "thought and prayers."
RESIST!
Farmer-Rick
(10,190 posts)I think of girls getting acid thrown in their face for daring to go to school. I think of rouge militia groups attacking schools in South America. I think of government military troops sweeping through schools looking for army recruits of the age of 12.
We in the US are no different.
erlewyne
(1,115 posts)Because it is so true. I just hate news. used to look forward
to reading it. Now it is a demoralizing chore.