Apparently, kids around the country are staging a 17 minute or so collective protest around 10am against allowing teachers to arm themselves in response to recent shootings. It’s a pretty crazy thought that the best solution from the government to deter shootings is by arming teachers, which is the essence of this walkout. But the fact that students are doing this on their own with mixed reactions made me want to write this post.
I call myself a survivor of the LA Unified School district. That district, in my view, is probably the worst educational piece of bureaucracy that I could imagine. The system is plagued by inner city school kids being bused in while mixing with local students, teachers of questionable quality, career politicians who manage to vote themselves raises, almost zero budget for decent books and supplies and a vastness that pumped money back only to those bureaucrats’ pockets. To not go crazy or avoid being permanently broken or killed somehow by the various obstacles in that system are reasons why I call myself a survivor as opposed to a graduate.
Back in the day, even as far as elementary school, I never felt safe attending school. While kids always would be kids, the real fear that affected me was increasing gang violence. I would recall how a car or two would patrol around the school grounds just in elementary school itself, waiting for something or someone. In junior high, one idiot I knew threw gang signs at a car and ended up getting shot. In high school building up to the point of the LA Riots, there were fights on a daily basis. And walking home as a latch key kid along Sepulveda Blvd or Western Ave, I once saw some hispanics pretend as if they were shooting at me.
What was shocking and saddening is that I learned it wasn’t just my shitty hometown’s school that was affected. A friend of mine told me a similar story where he grew up when he walked home. Some supposed gangsters drove up with guns to his friend and him and were about to shoot him. For no good reason outside of the fact that they were there at the wrong time. How fucked up is that?
Once I got to UC Irvine, I thought I was safe. The campus was filled with intellectuals, people pursuing higher learning. Then I learned that one of the neighboring dormitories had a bullet hole from some moron who took out his gun and accidentally let out a bullet. There weren’t more incidents from that but it was shocking that it would happen (he got suspended apparently)
Now, in truth, I’m not entirely opposed to guns. Guns were created for a reason. It would be quite medieval if suddenly society swapped back to using armor and swords, which sounds far more violent. But the way guns are handled in the US is definitely an issue.
I had the opportunity to live in Japan/Tokyo for 5 1/2 years. I never felt endangered except for the occasional freak. But you can always run away from a freak or even a knife. You can’t easily run away from a bullet and most certainly you’ll have an impossible time dodging someone with an automatic.
And I was almost involved in a mass murder incident where some nutjob crashed his vehicle against a group of pedestrians in Akihabara years ago. I read arguments that if people were armed, they could’ve taken him down. That’s nonsense because most people wouldn’t have known he intended to kill people until it was too late. More realistically, the guy probably would’ve been someone who would’ve attempted to gain possession of a gun as he jumped out of the vehicle with a knife and went after people.
In the current situation, the idea of students walking out in protest of teachers arming themselves is perfectly reasonable. Obviously, the people who want teachers to be armed are the NRA and the gun manufacturers. But in reality, would an armed teacher really solve anything?
The answer is no because you can’t guarantee that the teachers themselves are sane. You can see how corrupt many teachers are with their students just in the various articles that have sprung up more often with regards to pedophilia. Imagine what could happen when you arm people of a certain mental disposition!
I’ve known crackjob teachers all my life. Just because they are a school teacher does not mean they should be put on a pedestal. They are normal humans just like everyone with the same propensities towards sin. Arming them only allows some to reach deeper with insecurities in how they handle students. And it won’t be long if such a law is put into place where the teacher might abuse their gun privilege and kill a student (or maybe the student finds the gun and kills the teacher). It’s not a solution at all.
The real problem lies at the two foundations where it starts: education and the family. The public education system in the US just sucks for the most part. Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated with low barriers to entry at the pre-college level. The result is that you have a mix of personalities that can cause students unnecessary stress because of the wrong environmental mix. Also, students are not allowed to question teachers prior to college. Teachers are viewed as deities in a very demonic manner. The result is that there’s a blend of god complexes that teachers get while students, who have good intuition, may tend to critique.
The second problem is something that almost never gets addressed which is the family. I see pre-college as a way for busy parents to hand off their responsibilities to someone else. Think about it. You’re essentially putting your children in the hands of strangers without oversight into their methods as well as putting them into a cesspool of other children with questionable backgrounds. If a kid goes to a public school, then it’s 13 years minimal of hell.
And of course a lot of the mental problems that may ensue with a child can and probably does result directly from how they are raised. Yet whenever an incident arises, it’s quick to point out the flaws of everything BUT the parents. The music did it. Violent video games did it. Horrible movies did it.
Yet let’s be real. You as the parent decided to have the kid. And if you didn’t want the kid, you could’ve gotten an abortion or set the kid up for adoption. No matter what though, the birth of a kid was absolutely in your control. And you have to take responsibility and admit that the failure to raise a kid properly was your fault.
If you believe violent video games are at fault, then why do you give them access to a computer or buy them a mobile device? If you think violent movies are the cause, then why do you allow them to watch them with you without supervision? And if your kids are having bad influence from those around you, then why not move?
Yes, it’s not easy to simply get up and do these things. But as a parent you have the hardest job in the world, which is to properly raise your kid. If all you wanted was sex, consider getting it chopped off in some form. Because the kid doesn’t deserve that. Society doesn’t deserve this. And I don’t want to deal with other people’s problems.
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