Whenever I see this kind of talk about young people being anxious, having mental illness "due to social media" all I can think about is how silent and efficient my students are when we have "stay in place" drills.
They move quickly turning off lights & ringers on their phones, closing curtains, barricading & locking doors ... just as we taught them because that's the BEST we *the adults* could come up with as a response.
The kids are alright. It's us that needs to do better.
@futurebird @bjc @jeffjarvis are these drills like fire drills where everyone is all "there might be a fire drill today" and "oh there's the fire drill", or are they just randomly pretending the place is actually being attacked on a regular basis and then sometimes saying "oh yeah we lied"
school drills
They are drills. They know it's not real. That's why it's striking to me how seriously they take it. They know it *could* be real.
A voice comes on the PA: "Please stay in place, Please stay in place." No one is to make a sound after that as we get the room closed & everyone out of "line of sight" with all windows & doors.
When I was still using a cane & could not easily sit on the floor they helped me. And I tear up a little thinking about that.
re: school drills
it feels like we're sacrificing children on the altar of guns to appease a god that knows only blood
re: school drills
@bjc @jeffjarvis @Forbearance @futurebird I really cannot stress enough how utterly, utterly bizarre it is to the rest of the world.
Australian schools don't have metal detectors, and active shooter drills, and armed security guards on staff.
As in, not even the worst public schools in the most disadvantaged suburbs do that.
Indoctrinating your kids to see that as normal is deeply, deeply weird to the rest of the world.
The countries where people feel the need to openly carry weapons when getting food includes the likes of Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan... And America.
Protection from authoritarian government? If anything, weak gun control makes the problem worse.
It's not the sole reason why America is so over-policed, but it's a contributing factor.
If you have a country where potentially everyone your law enforcement officers come into contact with are potentially carrying guns, they will be armed and trained accordingly.
So you have agents of the state more heavily armed as a direct consequence of the lax gun laws.
And before anyone comes at me about totally banning guns, well they're not totally banned here.
If you have a valid reason to carry a gun — if you're a sporting shooter, a farmer, and armed security guard, etc — then you can get a firearms licence.
But what you can't get is a fully automatic or semiautomatic weapon.
And the vast majority of the population don't carry them.
re: school drills
@ajsadauskas @bjc @jeffjarvis @Forbearance @futurebird
There's another point that comparisons between countries often miss. In many countries you can obtain a license to own a firearm but many, even most, countries required that your gun(s) are locked away in secure storage separate from the ammunition which also has to be in secure storage.
Very few people indeed have the legal right to actually carry a loaded firearm on their person in public!
