Schools teach the ‘victim’ mentality

By Jon Dougherty

The United States Supreme Court ruled long ago that police
departments do not “have a duty to protect” citizens against criminals.
There may come a day when the Supremes will have to hand down a similar
ruling for the nation’s public school administrators. After all, public
school officials — and to a lesser extent, parents — are already
acting like they have no such obligation. In fact, school
superintendents, school boards and many parents are teaching their
children how to become victims instead of fostering better ways to help
them protect themselves.

Wait a minute, you say — isn’t the entire debate about public
schools centering mostly on the issue of child safety right now?
Sure it is, but because of narrow-mindedness, people are just too afraid
to seriously examine new and better ideas, so none of the safety issues
being offered or implemented are either new or destined to be
successful.

Consider just a couple of cases taken from yesterday’s headlines:

  • In an Ohio public school case, a
    superintendent was recently forced to resign after hysterical parents
    went ballistic because he dared suggest that his teachers have access to
    their own firearms as a way to make the school safer.

  • In Rock Hill, S.C., a 16-year-old
    girl was suspended for an entire year because she had a tiny dispenser
    of pepper spray on her key chain. Her parents are appealing the decision
    because they gave her the spray — along with a cell phone and a AAA
    membership — to help protect her when she worked nights.

Both of these cases reflect the hysterical absurdity of the
modern public school system administrative mentality when it comes to
ensuring that little Johnny and Suzie are safe and sound while attending
class.

It’s no secret — and it is a darned shame — that some of the worst
public attacks recently have taken place in a few of the nation’s public
schools. But loading these schools up with metal detectors,
drug-sniffing dogs, police officers, and increased video surveillance
equipment — along with passing more ill-conceived anti-gun laws — has
not stopped this trend of violence. And it’s never going to.

So you’d think, after years of failed policy and shortsighted
thinking, somebody ought to be offering new suggestions and ideas
in terms of how to better protect our children from these senseless
attacks. But no — Americans, by and large, are still too easily duped
by the scare tactics of the left, tactics that continue to make their
children victims in the first place.

Regarding the Ohio example, there have been instances when teachers
— in violation of the school’s rules on firearms — have either stopped
or substantially thwarted armed attacks on schoolchildren by predators.
As usual these instances rarely make national headlines because after
all, the “conventional wisdom” is that guns are inherently evil and the
left has successfully planted the notion that they simply don’t belong
anywhere near public schools. In fact, there have been federal laws
passed (and later repealed by the Supreme Court because they were
unconstitutional) that have banned guns within 1000 yards of a school.
Yet there are many examples of how firearms in the hands of qualified
teacher-users have actually saved the lives of our children.

In the South Carolina example, school officials are in essence
telling the parents of this girl that they have no business teaching her
how to protect herself and providing her the means to do so. Let’s face
it: Despite the schools rules against weapons, I cannot recall one
single instance where a student entered a public school with a container
of “assault Mace” and killed a dozen kids. Pepper spray is now, and
always has been, a defensive weapon — and people have a right to
defend themselves, school “rules” or not.

The irony of both of these cases is that as the nation’s public
schools have become more dangerous, school officials and parents, in
their struggle to make them safe, have actually made them more
susceptible to violence. With each new


or “policy” prohibiting
an effective means of defense, predators with guns have been given an
open invitation to attack — because they know beforehand that nobody on
campus has anything on them resembling a defensive deterrent.

How many schools have been attacked that already had metal detectors
and armed police or security guards on campus? How many have been
attacked that already had rules against firearms or other defensive
weapons?

Alternately, how many kids have been suspended for carrying squirt
guns, pepper mace, or knives into school? Worse, how many kids have
repeatedly told authorities that despite the draconian anti-self defense
policies within these schools, there are still numerous weapons finding
their way onto campuses, thus forcing these honest students to find some
means to protect themselves?

Do kids need to be carrying weapons into school? No, of course not —
but it’s a disgrace that the parents of a 16-year-old girl cannot
provide her with her own relatively benign means of self-defense, or
that a qualified public school administrator would be shamed out of work
because he dared suggest a better (and different) approach to protecting
our own kids.

The very fact that this country of ours even has a violence problem
in our public schools is bad enough and ought to make all of us ashamed
of ourselves. This phenomenon alone suggests that whatever the leftist
educrats in Washington are advocating for our public schools, it isn’t
working.

But to follow Washington’s mistaken education policies with local
policies that teach our kids how to be better victims is a worse crime.
There’s got to be a better way to deal with all this school violence.

I have a couple of suggestions.

First of all, to public school administrators and state legislators
that whore after “federal education money,” I say, simply, “Stop taking
it.” You cannot get one single dime from the federal government without
strings attached; if you really want to regain “local control” of
your school, then wean yourselves off the federal teat.

Secondly, parents with children in the public schools need to stop
submitting to the “politics of hysteria” and listen to people who
have different (and ultimately better) ideas about how to protect them.
They are there with our kids everyday and probably know what does and
does not work in terms of policy and procedure. As parents we shouldn’t
assume we know better than school officials do; go to them and ask them
their ideas and consider them carefully before you simply reject them
out of hand as “foolish” or “impossible.”

The goal here is not to put a gun into every teacher’s hand. The
ultimate goal is to demilitarize our public schools; they’re
schools, not prisons or military training camps. But for goodness
sake, the lives of our children are literally at stake here — if
putting prayer back in the public schools or giving teachers access to a
weapon ultimately saves them, then we ought to consider it. We ought to
be considering better ways to protect our kids even as we change
policies and practices designed to teach kids the value of their lives
and respect for each other.

As a parent with school-aged children, I’d rather see the principal
packing heat than some punk who has no regard for his life or the life
of my kids. A school that took such drastic measures would at least be
teaching them, by example, that choosing to be a victim is senseless
stupidity. And it isn’t working.

Correction: In yesterday’s column
I wrote, “On the other hand, Israel has repeatedly done things like bomb
our naval ships (the USS Pueblo in 1967 comes to mind) … ” The correct
ship was the USS Liberty; the Pueblo was attacked by the North Koreans.
I had mistakenly included the Pueblo in the original story, corrected
it, and then neglected to send the corrected copy to WND. My mistake,
not theirs, and I apologize for it.

Jon Dougherty

Jon E. Dougherty is a Missouri-based political science major, author, writer and columnist. Follow him on Twitter. Read more of Jon Dougherty's articles here.