These incidents are horrifying, but perhaps before forcing school administrators to dramatically shift their attentions, it’s worth considering things in perspective, rather than reacting (once again) out of fear.

School safety is an issue, but I’d guess that internal threats (student on student violence) are a bigger issue than external threats. Even then, the overwhelming majority of kids in this country will go through their public school careers without major threat to life or limb.

Those most likely to be threatened with violence are likely in environments that also compromise their educational opportunities.

I’d rather administrators focus their attention on the pressing ongoing & everyday problems their schools and students face, rather than girding themselves against rare and random acts by madmen.

Are you the John Dodd that wrote an article in 2004 about
Kohie Minato, a Japanese inventor of a magnetic motor. If you are would you please email me and let me know where he is at the present time and how I might get in touch with him.

Thank you very much, I am interested in a home generator just like the one you wrote about in your article.

Stephen Merkley
Salt Lake City, Utah
801-755-3168

And its not just the media we distrust, but all institutions with a snotty, we-know-what-is-good-for-you voice, including public and other typical schools.

Join the two-percent of us who have truly jettisoned the institutional voice and hire human-voiced tutors for your kids.

I, too, live in Italy, where there is almost NO violence of any kind in schools – not even kids beating each other up in the playground. What the hell is wrong with American society that schools need White House-level security and kids have to be afraid every minute of the day? Though American by passport, I am SO thankful I don’t have to raise my daughter in the US.

Did anybody ask himself why suddendly we see so many armed people shooting and doing crazy things?

May be I am beginning to be too old, but I say, as the old people usually say, at my times children were safe at school and the managers could concentrate on something more educative than security…
And with it I do not mean it is not necessary, it was never so necessary…

Patrizia

lock the children in jail. it’s for their own good.

the school i went to (private rich school in a semi-bad neighborhood) had minimal security and no security cameras. and has no plans to install them even today, years later.

then again, the riskiest area to me was walking to school every day through worse parts of the neighborhood. then again, seems most people now drive their kids to school because of FEAR. BOOGEY MAN. BOO.

yes, it’s a tragedy and worth asking schools how they might respond. but it’s rare. you may want to ask how they respond to a metorite.

(oh, and the classic in a rural PA town a friend grew up in was for kids to call in bomb threats. sometimes even partly go through with them. but mostly to get a day off of school.)

Let’s try this out: Journalism has two parts — critical inquiry is one part, as long as you define the term in a way that embraces an ethic of verification. The other part? Publishing the results of your inquiry in a public forum.

So I guess I don’t see why Jeff’s exercise is not journalism.

What good are cameras? So we know who the shooter is? Locking doors? That’s a 15 second obstacle.

Teacher stationed at the door? Is she armed? Then she’s not an obstacle, is she?

Crisis Management? That’s more feelgood stuff. It won’t stop the loons from shooting, but Mommy and Daddy will feel better.

Then there’s the “unforeseen consequence”. You can see it coming already. Some harebrained school administrator will start locking exits, and then there will be a fire, and kids will die.

You know what could help? Responsible journalism. There’s a certain copycat element here, so if future incidents got 15 seconds of airtime and a page 7 article, the crazies probably wouldn’t notice.

Want to save schoolkids? Put them on schoolbuses rather than having them drive or walk. More kids die in car accidents on the way to/from school every week than these psychos kill in two years.

A trained teacher would carry a concealed weapon in school and traveling to and from school only. This would be beyond the authority of namby pamby school officials who are cutsey poo about guns..

When everyone’s a journalist, no one will be.

The possibility of school teachers “maybe” pulling iron will stop this plague.

When my child was in Pre-K and the Fulton County (GA) Courthouse shooter, Brian Nichols (later to hook-up out in the ‘burbs with, and be turned-in by, the infamous Ashley Smith) was on the loose in parts unknown around metro Atlanta, the school my kid attended at the time went into a “lockdown” mode.

I called the school when the news broke about Atlanta area schools going into “lockdown mode” and asked, “What does ‘lockdown mode’ mean at this particular school?” The person answering the school phone said, “I don’t know. Wait a minute, because I’ll have to go ask someone.”

Needless to say, as a parent, not a journalist, I want and need to know the answers.