Living in a World of Lock and Load

Hello all...

I must admit I was chewing on this week's blog entry all weekend.
It wasn't for lack of amusing anecdotes or pithy musings about my little Kyoto world.

I honestly didn't know how to put my thoughts into words.
(A first for me, no doubt)

As my Facebook update stated, I woke up Friday morning to Bob telling me about the shootings in Connecticut.  Half an hour later I read on-line about students being stabbed at a school in China.

And a little piece of me twisted a bit tighter.

This little piece of me continued to contort itself, twisting and tightening as I read people's Facebook postings in response to the Connecticut shootings.  The internet turned into a writhing cacophony of opinions and demands.

I know that most of these postings--as well as the newspaper comments, radio phone-ins and tweets--were no more or less than a cathartic scream.  People feeling angry and helpless, hollering into the void to try to feel better.

And after the hollering, came the battles.  The sides were drawn:  demands for increased mental health support and study squaring off against the demands for stricter gun-control.  Demands for stricter gun-control butting heads with the "meet force with force" folks.

But one posting in particular hit me with a special stab:

It suggested that the answer to school shootings was to arm the teachers, staff and administration.

Meet the force with force.

Uh....

No.

Call me a hippie.  Call me a sprout-eating liberal.  Call me whatever the heck you want.

But I believe that the ultimate shining goal of school, and even more importantly of education, is for it to be a sanctuary in every sense of the word.

A place of safety for those who feel threatened.
A place of learning when surrounded by ignorance.
A place of peace when surrounded by violence.
A place of hope in a swirl of pessimistic hate.

As a classroom teacher, I try to live this goal.
As a homeschooling parent now I try to instill this goal.

When a child comes to me hungry, I feed her.   Even if it means handing over my own lunch, I do it happily.  Her need trumps mine

When a child comes to me discouraged, I do whatever it takes to rebuild his belief in himself.

When a child comes to me hurt or abused, I take the steps to protect her.

When a child comes to me angry and defiant, I take the time to look inside him to find that spark of humor, or sadness, or fear....whatever spark I can grab on to....to begin breaking down the walls.

But the moment we turn schools and learning  into a battleground, we have destroyed this goal.  We have undermined what education  can and should be.

We live in a world where schools, where students, where teachers and where real learning  are being sacrificed on a daily basis.  Poor countries struggle to build and operate one single-room school while we squander our intelligence and resources, allowing what we could have to slip through our fingers.

And my insides twist ever tighter.

I not only mourn the victims of the shootings in Connecticut, the students stabbed in China.
I mourn the survivors.

For the surviving students and teachers, for the terrified parents who must watch their children go to school each day from now on......for them, school has turned into a battleground.

And I can tell you that  putting guns into the hands of teachers will not make it less of a battleground.

As the saying goes....

     "An eye for an eye will leave everyone blind."




Until next time....