I'll end school violence tonight
Or at least drastically reduce it. I'm a former teacher. I spent three school years substitute teaching as I was switching careers and getting my teaching degree, then six years teaching full time in an inner city school with 100% free and reduced school lunches. I can speak from a little experience and knowledge. Not as much as many, but more than some. I intend to enter the teaching world again when I can do it on my own terms and have multiple revenue streams so I don’t need to do a great thing for society while also struggling to pay my bills on time.
At the moment, I’m building a plan to enter schools as a career path consultant helping kids who aren’t going to college find professional success in the skilled trades, entrepreneurship, and other alternative routes that don’t entail taking on tremendous piles of debt or signing up for indefinite minimum wage and welfare. Or holding out hope they’ll become a famous influencer and be paid to make videos playing video games (shudders). I’ve argued in my book (link below) that the school-to-college pipeline and federally subsidized student loans are the longest con ever pulled on a willing mark. Asking the government to fix this problem is like asking a lion to un-kill a wildebeest it’s currently enjoying for breakfast.
I'm no republican and no democrat. I'm morally conservative and politically liberal. The political middle is full of peace-loving, intellectually honest, practical, and reasonable people who are frustrated by these ever-increasingly tribal times in which those who signed up for the cult of personality dogmatically support people instead of throwing their intellectual weight behind ideas. I find common ground in the middle of all our stupid debates and recognize the ability to negotiate and compromise on all these silly agendas we set up and petulantly argue as firm and immovable. Here are some things that need to happen but which absolutely won’t in order to stop school violence. Not only violence of the headline variety, but the run-of-the-mill stuff that happens every day in every community. None of these will happen because the one thing that people in power can’t abide is giving up power and admitting they were wrong. But a guy can dream. In no particular order:
Structural changes to schools:
These gargantuan schools have got to go. If you as a principle, counselor, teacher—even secretary for Chrissakes—don't and can't know the name and personal qualities of each and every student, your school is too big. Yes, it's a resume builder and prestige earner to be the leader of a school like this but it's also letting too many children fall through the cracks. Namely, anyone not brilliant in sports, not blessed with rich parents, those of average or mediocre academic ability, and kids of less than stellar physical attractiveness. You don't even need to build new schools. You can break a school into manageable pieces with their own staff of leaders, and keep the district umbrella number as large as you'd like it for sport talent pool and divisional placement purposes, if those are important to you.
These kids who aren't athletes, aren't scholars, aren't attractive, aren't rhetorically/musically/artistically/performatively inclined are being lost in the mix. They are the C and D kids who struggle at everything, keep their heads down, brood silently, and have a hard time making friends. What an intimidating and discouraging sight it must be to head out of the classroom to a sea of unfamiliar faces and not be able to find an ally or someone to talk to and lean on. It’s no wonder young people of this ilk become depressed, pull their hair down over their face, and wall themselves off.
Smaller schools will allow them to have time with leaders and teachers who can guide them to something that is their strength and running with that, along with addressing their ongoing mental state. The skilled trades would be a much better option for most of them than getting a Walmart job, signing up for welfare, and living a depressing life. Exposing and training them in the kinesthetic trades will work wonders in the emotions of those on the academic struggle bus who ain't known for readin' so good but can turn a wrench, style some hair, create tattoos, farm some crops, build some houses, and excel at these or any other trade which entails moving your body. Too often the kids (without much pushback by education professionals) group themselves off by who is “smart”. We should teach them (and practice ourselves) at finding out HOW kids are smart and developing that.
Instead of switching classes every hour and overwhelming kids with six to eight classes of informational overload (along with separation from their friends), have them broken into four semesters. Each morning of the 9 week semester is devoted to one of the four cores (English, Math, History, Science) and the afternoon to staying on track/study hall/electives/foreign language studies. This would be a slight variation on the elementary classrooms and allow the teachers to get to know the students much, much better. It would also reduce the workload of teachers (always a good thing) who could grade a higher volume of work from a smaller number of students, instead of constantly falling behind and grading a lower volume of work from a larger number of students.
Eliminate summer school and recovery programs (a joke, all of them) and make school year-round. Make an entire curriculum mandatory before moving on. Hand a child a textbook at the beginning of a grade and tell them they shall move ahead when they’ve finished it. Hold them to year-to-year accountability and enforce it. The brilliant ones who can guide themselves with minimal instruction and one-on-one time will finish their coursework early and move on to the next grade at their own pace, leaving precious time for teachers to instruct and guide those who are the same age but not on the same reading level. Schools have been paying lip service to holistic education that serves individual needs. This would be a leap forward in that area. Time to put up or shut up.
For students who don't care about learning and achievement, one-hundred-eighty school days is a war of attrition. If they can float by, put forth minimal effort, and disrupt learning as much as possible they can get away with ever so much tomfoolery and make up ten months of goofing off with six weeks of summer school. I ain’t a math teacher but those numbers don’t make no kind of sense. The high achievers also do nothing about disruptions because they know they'll only be tested on what's covered. They also don’t see policing the behavior of the knuckleheads as their job (and often are entertained by it). This is making everyone lose out, and stressing teachers out. Decreased responsibility on students/parents and increased responsibility on the already overburdened shoulders of underpaid teachers is leading to shortages of qualified adults all over the place, but anyone with half a brain and their eyes open could have told you that.
Ancillary benefit: These idiots who do copycat threats after a violent event just to get a day off would find no reason to do so anymore, knowing they're just giving their future selves more work and days in class. Keeping kids busy with profitable work tends to keep them from waking up and choosing violence. You could even knock down walls separating classrooms, station four teachers to a classroom in each corner, and have the students walking around from classroom to classroom, doing work independently as they are able, asking questions and getting guidance from multiple teacher options as they need. Some Montessori schools operate under this paradigm. Students like feeling in control and being given authority over small decisions. It’s amazing what they can accomplish on their own if given reasonable expectations within acceptable parameters. Teachers should get paid more and work less. This is a good way to start that process.
I know the idea of vouchers dries up the genitals of liberals faster than picturing a naked Donald Trump brandishing a dehumidifier but for the sake of all that is holy and good, they need to come into play. Vouchers would allow introverts, the anti-social, the socially stunted, and the knuckleheads who make a habit of disrupting the machine to find smaller schools or stay home with a laptop/parent teacher and guide themselves through a curriculum. It would allow Muslim, Jewish, and Christian students who can’t afford religious schools to not have to afford religious schools. Leftist progressives don’t really care for Christians in the schools as it is. Smart people understand religious instruction is indoctrination. So is liberal instruction. Why is it not time to allow people their own area of indoctrination and let them come back together when they are mature adults? I don’t buy for a second the socialization or academic standards of private and homeschools not being up to public school standards. When public school students know how to not bully on a corporate level and outstrip private/homeschooled kids in academic testing, we can talk.
Legal changes:
Give expulsion power to teachers and stop making attendance compulsory. Fixing broken people is something schools can help with, but it’s not their primary objective. Parents who raise anchors and loads should reap what they sow instead of getting free babysitting and a meal for their knuckleheads. They'd soon change their ways and get these idiots in line, or let them stay home and be angry video-gaming incels indefinitely. Either way, they're not the school's problem. Schools are not replacement parents and they need to protect the students who understand how to live peacefully and obey the law in a civilized, ordered society (of which schools are obviously a microcosm). They've taken too much responsibility from parents for too long that common sense things like critical thinking, problem solving, and life skills are given lower priority. It's obscene.
Kids who won't get with the program and are chronic behavioral problems can get away with murder before they're expelled by a disinterested board of persons not in the trenches because of the $ bills attached to the kid. That's just plain stupid. With teachers wielding expulsion power, powerful and autocratic boards become an afterthought and reduced in their importance and authority. I call that a win-win.
Teachers would have a core group of students whose scholastic and emotional needs they're expected to check up on (not fix as if they were replacement parents). It could be the kids that spend four hours a day each semester in their class. If a kid chronically stonewalls and refuses to engage, he gets to be expelled or go to another teacher more inclined to their liking on a personal level. Non-compliance with building a professional relationship with the teacher is not an option in this scenario. You don't want to enter this little society we're building? Deuces.
There is no upside or necessity to having kids on social media and there is a multitude of dangers and pitfalls. Social media usage should be relegated to legal adults with a state ID. My kids have no access to a cellphone or social media until they are eighteen and graduated as their friends are moving away and they have a job and a license. I've raised four well-adjusted teenagers who have never been bullied for a long time without me finding out. Only one of my kids succumbed to peer pressure to bully and he got a harsh lesson in the evil of bullying, then never bullied again. My kids also aren't subjected to the evils the world of social media has in store for them. No creep has ever made an attempt to lure and diddle my kids either. Seems like common sense, but you know what they say about common sense.
Pragmatic changes to schools:
Discard gun-free zones with all expediency. Obviously the bad guys have no respect for them. Someone, somewhere, at some point in time has said “When in doubt, do as the Jews do”. Know what? Israeli schools have adults walking around with guns. We need to do what the Israelis do. They are beset on all sides by enemies. They don't have the luxury of doing what's pretty or feels good. They do what works. Their teachers carry assault rifles. Swallow your squeamishness and allow teachers to carry, but by no means mandate it. Yes, there will be some snowflakes who will threaten to quit. Let them. Bye, Felicia. There are enough conservative and gun-trained teachers to ensure there are deadly weapons in full view of these pieces of garbage who dream about seeing blood gushing from the head of another. We don't know the statistics of crimes stopped by a good guy carrying a gun because criminals don't answer surveys on times they didn't commit a crime when they saw a person open-carrying. But we know that number exists. And when one of these demons in disguise smuggles a gun and opens fire, a trained teacher can pop him in the brain bucket before he's taken out another large number of humans.
There should be a liaison police officer of at least middling athleticism in every school. He/she should be able to reach any part of the school with a weapon drawn in 30 seconds or less. Non-negotiable.
National guard, retired military, or mildly disabled veteran patrolling the grounds and every point of egress. Shooters would have second thoughts and a harder time doing their business if we stock our schools with thick-necked bad-asses who already know what it means to sacrifice for the lives of others. We adults enjoy armed military and police protection at large sporting events, locations containing money and valuable items, and other mass gatherings of carbon units but we feel weird about protecting kids in the same manner. Get over it, buttercup. Guns are the great equalizer. Just ask any weak woman who fended off would-be muggers/home invaders/rapists with one. There are lives to save and vigilance against the wicked is the price of safety and freedom. It's not cliché or hyperbole to say children are our greatest national resource because they actually are.
Reframe the media narrative. Instead of debating the idea of taking guns away from good guys and blaming the manufacturers, turn it around on liberals. Tell them that any school where loss of life could have easily been avoided by armed presence is their fault and responsibility. They are steady saying blood is on the hands of Republicans and gunmakers. I say fie to that and I don’t even like guns, vote republican, or affiliate with the NRA. Blood is on their hands at the point where there is a pragmatic and populist option that works. Bet some leftist snowflakes would stop melting all over everyone and making their emotional issues everyone else’s problem if the tides of public opinion turned on them.
I come from a debate and forensics background. I debated in high school. I debated in college. My second major on my teaching degree is Speech. I have been through the court proceedings as regards a divorce. I know from experience that imparting intent is an invalid form of argumentation. But I have also argued that at a certain point of zeal, fervor, emotion, and frantic actions, people show their unspoken intent.
So the question that follows is, has the Left ever marshaled a reasonable and valid answer to the Right citing every oppressive dictatorship seizing guns from the people? Have they ever answered the fact that autocratic monarchies maintain a heavy police force and aren’t really all that into the commoners being armed? I think they’ve satisfactorily shown their intent in this matter.
Think about what guns do for our standing in the world. Can another empire like Rome seriously entertain the notion of conquering, seizing land, and taxing us as a people? They might defeat our armed forces but the resulting grassroots insurgency would be costly to the point of not being worth it. The point of conquering is harvesting resources, land, and wealth. To obliterate a would-be insurgency would mean bombing the daylights out of our land, thereby rendering it useless. Guns make the idea of conquering this country, seizing power from within, or occupying it once the armed forces are defeated a dreadful proposition.
They are often used for evil, but are a tool, and by definition can’t be evil in and of themselves. A gun is just a sophisticated projectile weapon meant to throw death from a distance; no different than the catapult or bow and arrow in their day. People get squeamish and are repulsed by them because the political leaders and celebrities they worship have sold them on their evilness. But they level the playing field. I’d wager next year’s pay that any liberal who values their life would rather be around a good guy with a gun when a bad guy with a gun starts some stuff.
Philosophical changes:
I've already mentioned the fact that schools are not parents. It bears repeating. Schools need to drop the Marxist/Socialist notion that children are the wards of the state and the state allows parents to raise them at its good pleasure. What an evil notion. They also need to stop with the equal opportunity=equal outcome nonsense. Not every kid is as smart in everything as every other kid, nor puts forth the same effort. Marx and his ilk have done a lot of damage in this world; schools being one of the territories where they’ve done the most.
Subject every 6th-12th grader to comparative worldview and religion courses. Emphasize the fact that almost every religion and even some atheist groups place human life on a sacred pedestal above that of beasts, then engage them in discussion as to why this could be. Refuse to take "IDK" as an answer. Really drive this point home. Atheism being taught as a foregone conclusion and not a hypothetical belief that doesn't satisfy the scientific method (just like deistic religion) has drastically reduced the importance human life holds in the minds of many. What are humans really if we are nothing more than a clump of cells randomly coagulated by an indifferent universe? An apex predator, worthy of killing and being killed. We don't need prayer brought back into schools or to violate separation of church and state to address the idea that you escaping the consequences of the law isn't the only reason to not kill others. Mental health sermonizers might one day be forced to admit that it is more important to acknowledge that we are sinful before we can discuss that we are sick. Coursework in comparative religions will open some children’s’ eyes about this.
Teach kids MMA, boxing, and other forms of self-defense. Having a controlled outlet for their violent thoughts, energy, and aggression (especially boys) will work miracles. Controlled matches are a better option than a bullied kid snapping and taking things too far in the restroom or classroom or hallway or lunchroom or hangout spot or parking lot or shopping mall or any other place they chance/patiently wait upon the bully.
Have a student-led team of enforcers who will give bullies (once ample and irrefutable evidence is gathered) the choice of expulsion or a little chin music. Make parents aware up front that if your kid is a bully, they have several ways their rear end can be rocked and maintain/regain their good standing in the school, or they can be expelled and punch holes in the walls at home while they search for a sucker school that will take a chance on them.
Give all kids drug tests and tell them to pound sand if they refuse or fail. Many kids with mental health problems experiment with horrible drugs. Not to mention those with disposable allowances from their folks. Legal adults should be allowed to do drugs. Young people whose brain concrete has not yet set need to be protected from their own stupidity. Tell them they and their pharmaceutical bloodstream can get clean and come back when they can function as a young adult. Do the same for kids who are known to be smokers and alcohol abusers. I've no problem making a fool who has an MUI take Antabuse tablets every morning on a probationary basis as his only option to remain in this ordered, law-abiding society we’re building or spend his time applying to others who will enable him in the name of love.
Send fat kids to fasting and exercise camps, thereby eliminating weight-based bullying and the accompanying drama and depression. Stop letting them absorb the self-worship fat public figures like Lizzo and other Michelin Man lookalikes are teaching them. Tell them their scholastic work can wait until they get their bodies under control. Tell them they will feel better and be welcomed and praised by teachers and friends when they return, along with feeling better, being able to work harder, being sick less often, and setting healthy habits which will have marvelous returns as adults. If kids and parents refuse, tell them their are home, online, charter, and school of choice options for them and their kid, just not your school. Stop telling kids they need to feel good about themselves at the expense of personal improvement and achievement. It’s leading to lowered expectations, lowered results, and multitudes of young adults not prepared to compete with their foreign counterparts. I can’t find any good in that.
Watch the number of violent incidents drop and thank me later. Oh yeah, these and other changes will never happen, so never mind.
Hey there, beloved reader! Don’t stop reading yet. I enjoy writing and creating content for you. Recently, I took on the Herculean task of fixing America and wrote a book on the subject; the very literal-titled “I’ll Fix America Tonight”. There is a a link where you can conveniently add the book to your Amazon cart (if you’re flush with about $20 in cash right now) or your wish list (if around $20 in cash is a little too much right now, but hypothetically not too much in the near future). Buy it, and help end poverty (namely my poverty). Thanks for reading!
Image taken from:
https://www.mlive.com/news/2021/12/four-dead-terrorism-charges-video-evidence-the-latest-on-the-oxford-high-school-shooting.html
