There have been about a million hot takes, tweets, Instagram stories, and “thoughts and prayers” about yesterday’s school shooting in Uvalde, TX. I want to avoid adding to what we all already know: that living in the US used to be thought of as a privilege, but it’s increasingly looking like a burden. Our elected officials can only think about getting reelected rather than solving real actual problems for us. Our media will tell us whatever wild fucked up story it can to drive clicks. It just feels so overwhelming sometimes. So today I want to talk quickly about school and why I think it’s a refuge for our kids and why we can’t give up on the promise of learning in peace.
My oldest is about 16 days away from finishing up Kindergarten. I’ve been responsible for taking her to school and picking her up maybe 70% of the time. By virtue (or vice?) of being born on August 31st, she is the youngest kid in the entire school (or very very near the youngest kid in the school) and it’s been really sweet to watch firsthand as she’s gone from struggling to go into school on her own at the beginning of the year to (mostly) jumping off our ebike at the carpool lane to head to her class as the year has gone on. Maybe she jumps off the ebike because she’s still not entirely sure how she feels being the only kid to be dropped off via bike. But I prefer to think it’s because she’s excited to be with her friends, play on the playground, enjoy “yogurt Tuesday lunch” (weird), and…honestly…be away from her parents.
Elementary school, at least in the early years, is the perfect ideal of what school should be. It’s when kids are old enough to start establishing an identity, to have friends, to want independence from mom and dad. Granted, there are principals, teachers, teacher assistants, recess teachers (which is a real job apparently), and a whole array of adults who are wandering campus to make sure kids are going where they should, when they should, and with whom they should. It’s also before school becomes intense with homework and expectations and college prep and sports that run their lives and all the things that make today’s kids a little more anxious than we were “in my day” (I’m that guy now).
I guess I’m saying that elementary school is fun. But it’s also a refuge from mom and dad, a place where they can establish a little bit of freedom and independence that is critical to their development (I think; I don’t actually know shit about childhood development).
Today my wife got to see it first hand. She was the “art docent” for Lily’s class which is just a fancy way of saying that Megan volunteered to go teach the kids some shit she had to google about 45 minutes before class.
As Megan walked in, Lil kinda froze up and turned bright red. "Mom is in my territory”. Lil didn’t say that but we’ve all been there. School is a special place for kids and while we love the idea of mom and dad coming to lunch with us or to teach us some about some 19th century artist, it’s still a shock to the system. The art class went well but Lil barely talked and barely acknowledged Megan. I remember doing the same to my parents when I was a kid. Now I would trip some serious balls if my parents spontaneously showed up to have lunch with me (or teach me some cool art).
All of this leads me to yesterday’s shooting. Nearly everyone I’ve talked to is just exasperated. Tired. At wit’s end. And while I am all of those, the thing that I find particularly egregious about the “solutions” I’ve heard is to arm the teachers. To bring more guns into the schools. To lock the doors. To assume that mass killings at schools are the norm.
Yesterday, Ted Cruz, a loathsome despicable motherfucker, suggested the answer is to station armed guards throughout schools to deter would-be attackers. Ken Paxton, the attorney general for the state of Texas and also a gigantic asshole, opined that maybe we should arm teachers. Great idea Ken! Let’s put more responsibility on teachers who already have an overwhelming burden. Let’s make them Army Rangers too!
The thing is that no one wants our children to go to school at SuperMax prisons. We want our kids to learn in peace, to be free to move around, to be with their friends without having to look over their shoulders wondering what the nice man or woman in uniform is going to do if they’re bum rushed by a psychopathic killer. School is a refuge for children. There are solutions to this national nightmare that don’t involve turning schools into armed encampments. Can we try to maintain a little bit of our children’s innocence?