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Every preventive or punitive action is an instructional method that teaches someone something. Because we do not think of safety measures as lesson plans, we seldom evaluate whether the intended consequence is achieved, and we are unaware of unintended results. After Columbine, the most common actions were patently ill-conceived and the unintended learning was more than schools can take in the present political climate.
Requiring staff and students to wear name badges totally ignored that the shooters would have had name badges. Unintentionally, the requirement taught students that school was even more jail-like than before, and we taught them to live in martial-law society. We also taught worried parents and an already nervous voting population that schools are dangerous places and the adults can not make them safe.
Installing surveillance cameras and hiring more security guards also proceeded as though no one remembered that the surveillance cameras at Columbine helped the world see the shootings, and a security guard exchanged fire with the shooters. Not only ineffective, these actions also teach students that they are in-mates. They teach parents that schools are not safe.
Two rural high schools we were studying when Columbine occurred were so poor they could not buy textbooks for every student, but each spent thousands for closed-circuit TV cameras. Now, they bragged, some administrator can sit in the office and see everything going on anywhere in the building. They apparently got the idea from a state workshop on “making schools safe.” Best their eyes were on better teaching and better learning.
Fortunately, few schools (about 4%) have installed metal detectors . Almost all of those are inner-city schools serving poor minority children, thereby teaching the general public that “those people” are violent – though most shootings have occurred in schools serving students with considerably more means. Who would want to send their children to a school where metal detectors were installed? Count the lost votes, the home schoolers, and the votes for vouchers. Think, too, of the impact upon poor children whose teachers think students deserve such treatment. Fear, lack of public confidence, and inferiority can be taught through mindless policy-making.
After Columbine, even small rural schools locked their doors, adopted punitive rules against backpacks and dark raincoats, passed zero-tolerance policies, and let staff’s fears run unchecked or uncorrected. Two principals with whom we were working at the time admitted that staff members were “harassing the kids they most fear or don’t like because those are the kids they think might kill them.” In most cases the students they selected were much poorer than those who shot up Columbine or Paducah.
Much can be done to prevent violent reactions to life in schools or to use schools as ways to vent reactions to life in or outside schools. But, we must analyze causes before installing preventions. We must take actions that teach lessons even when we don’t even know we are teaching.
Bill Wayson is president of Synergetic Development Inc. furnishing services to schools, government, and business. He is also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership at Ohio State University, where he served from 1970-1992.