We just had an active shooter drill. For my fellow old people, this is where you are instructed to cower in the dark until someone comes over the intercom to tell you to stop cowering in the dark. That's our solution. "run, hide, fight." Of course, the first thing they do is lock all the doors. Apparently this school had six months of meetings before coming up with the solution "leave all the doors locked all the time and put a magnet in the jamb so that it can be removed quickly when the monsters come." "Run, hide, fight." My daughter is going to grow up in an environment where a couple times a year she's going to be instructed to cower in the dark and hope the monsters don't see her. Because there are douchebags who vote who are so afraid of the unknown that they need an AR-15 to cuddle. Of course, this is a class full of rednecks so all of them were OUTRAGED that they weren't allowed to walk around with AR-15s themselves because a firefight is going to solve the problem. The same people who explain that they unwind by getting into bar fights. Run hide fight. I wonder what would happen if every stupid fucking redneck insisting on his unassailable right to pack heat every fucking where he goes would do if twice a year, he was required to cower in a darkened classroom for fifteen minutes behind ineffectually-locked doors.
The previous school my wife taught at was a tiny K-thru-8 Catholic school with an inexperienced principal with no leadership skills. Same drills every semester - lock the doors, close curtains, lights off, cower silently. A couple weeks after the drill while it was still fresh in everyone's mind a 5th grade boy acted out all day then snuck into the kindergarten bathroom to hide before the last period. Principal put the school on lockdown while they went through the school looking for him. Most everyone knew what was going on since gossip spreads faster when the student has already pissed off half the teachers that day, and someone had gone to most of the classrooms asking "is X in here" before the lockdown started. But at dismissal all of 6th grade and the art teacher were missing missing because nobody had called off lockdown, so they had been in their somewhat isolated classroom in the dark for 45 minutes, waiting their turn.
What is it then that makes the latter not see that there's something inherently wrong with the former? Is it really that hard to grasp the concept of powerlessness when you're in a position of unreasonably strong power?My daughter is going to grow up in an environment where a couple times a year she's going to be instructed to cower in the dark and hope the monsters don't see her. Because there are douchebags who vote who are so afraid of the unknown that they need an AR-15 to cuddle.