And more opinions

Yeah, I have 'em. And I'm done with what I "have" to have done during office hours for this week, so I can sit and think, and am not greatly motivated to read research stuff, even though I should be.

I am thinking about the "false alarm" things with school threats. There have been, I think, four, in my general area - and more in the state as a whole - this past week. All of them coming in the wake of the terrible Florida school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas* high school.

(* I knew that name sounded familiar - she was an early conservationist; she also wrote The Everglades: River of Grass which I think I may actually have READ at some point, or read excerpts from. When I was 10 or so, my family made a spring break trip that included the Everglades and I think my dad gave me some stuff to read because I was interested in it, and some selections from that book may have been in them. I also think I wrote a school paper on the Everglades at some point. Douglas was also a women's suffrage activist... and now THIS is what we're going to remember her name for, not her conservation or voting-rights work.)

But anyway. We hear about these more right now, and it's a combo platter of things.

First thing is a stupid thing, if it's happening: these threats actually happen on a regular basis, but the news media is playing them up now because everyone's on edge, and panicking parents gets eyeballs, so hey, let's report on the kid drawing a WWII scene in history class who put a gun in the hands of a soldier he drew, and let's treat it like he is a violent threat when he's probably just a history geek or maybe had a great-grandfather who told war stories...

Second thing seems fairly likely to me but aggravates me: schools are locking down on a hair-trigger now. The latest report, from a school in the town east of me, was because a student wrote a "play or a poem" (the news won't clarify) that "disturbed" a teacher, and so the whole school went on lockdown as a precaution....

I dunno. I think of some of the stuff I wrote as a kid, some of the stuff my brother wrote. Nothing ever really violent but you know? I was into fairy tales as a kid and fairy tales have violent stuff happening. And also, in the stories you write as a kid? Poofing away an evil witch or slaying a demon knight is kind of normal-for-a-normal-kid: it's how you deal with your fears, or how you fantasize solving big problems in your life. Granted, I don't know how "disturbing" this "play or poem" was but....if you're worried about the kid, you take the kid out of the class, to the school psychologist's office (if we even have those any more; budget cuts) and the problem is mostly solved. (Also, I will note: this was an elementary school. Most of the kids could probably still be physically picked up and removed from class by a teacher).

But yeah. The combination of "wow, all these kids are like little powder kegs now" mentality that the news seems to foster, coupled with the "what would the parents say if something bad happened" leads to things like lockdowns and drills and stuff.

And I admit: an active-shooter drill would have been unsettling to me as a kid. Fire drills, eh, meh - you went outside, single file, with your class, and stood there, and depending on how much of a disciplinarian/stickler-for-the-rules your teacher was, you either cracked jokes with the people next to you in line or stood there in silence until they rang the "all clear" bell and you filed back in to class. Tornado drills were scarier because even as a kid, I knew that getting down on your knees and shielding the back of your neck with your hands wasn't much of a protection, and so the prayerful posture was maybe mainly to give you a chance to make your peace with whatever your concept of God was before you were destroyed....

And so, I wonder, what is going to be the psychological impact on kids who are taught to file out of a building, with their hands up (to show they have no weapons) or to huddle under their desks (echoes of Duck and Cover, from a generation before me) on a regular basis, just to be prepared because "maybe someone is coming to kill you and there's nothing anyone can do to prevent it"

I don't know. I think I would have found Duck and Cover drills even worse than tornado drills. Fortunately, those were over by the time I was in school.

(Maybe I lived in sort of a golden era: after the real pretending and posturing of the Cold War was over, but before modern terrorism/random violence became so top of mind. Maybe that's the legacy of the older Gen-Xers? That we grew up in an era that felt a bit more safe than now?)

Similarly, I wonder what the new world of clear/mesh backpacks (so everyone can see if you're carrying contraband - or if you're a teen girl having your period) and metal detectors in school is going to do. And now the new thing: bulletproof backpacks. (Not sure how a school decides whether to mandate THOSE or the clear backpacks - I guess it's "are our kids more likely to be a threat or a victim" which is a terrible decision). (And also the veiled suggestion someplaces about teachers/professors being a sacrificial lamb in order to allow more time for the students to escape. They don't pay me remotely enough, the selfish part of me says....though I suspect my training would kick in in a pinch and I'd do it, figuring "Some of these students have small kids at home; I have no one who would miss me like that")

But the third reason is the one that really makes me angry:

Someone on the news proposed a lot of these false threats were "kids wanting to get attention."

Cue Nicolas Cage "You don't say!!!" face here.

Or, as Milhouse van Houten put it: "Trouble is a form of attention."

And here's why I get annoyed: this seems very typical human behavior for me. Do something, you think it will benefit you, but you don't give a flip how it might harm others. You don't care that your school goes on lockdown and maybe some of the Littluns are scared, but that doesn't matter to you. Or maybe you do it hoping school will be dismissed for the day (I have heard of that happening) and it's kind of like the dumb old "bomb threats" that got called in to my dad's largely-commuter campus back in the 70s and early 80s. And ironically, these "bomb threats" always came during midterms....

and in that more-relaxed era, I think a lot of the faculty rolled their eyes and held class anyway.

I do know my one "bomb threat" experience as an undergrad - one day, sitting in Dr. Beck's Paleobotany class, we were told we needed to leave the building, a bomb thread had been called in. We filed out of the building and stood around talking. One of the guys I knew from class turned to me and remarked, "If there's really a bomb and it goes off, we're too close to the building to be safe, we should probably move farther away" so we did. I don't remember what eventually happened, whether the rest of the class was scrubbed and we went home, or if we got called back in....no bomb was ever found.

But anyway. I do feel annoyed about these kinds of things as a cry for attention. Yes, yes, lots of kids don't get the attention they need. Guess what? Neither do a lot of adults. And yes, some of them act out in bad ways. But a lot of us have learned the control and also are reactive enough to peer-disapproval to not act out in bad ways. (Confession: I crave attention a lot and don't get it often, but I mostly restrict that by doing a lot of tweeting and then hoping someone responds to me. I'm too inhibited to do truly outre things like dying my hair wild colors, or saying really provocative things, or other kinds of minor social transgressions that might get attention, but that might bring negative attention). So I feel irritated when I'm sitting here, sometimes feeling invisible, and someone else, who is apparently feeling invisible, decides to screw up an entire school day and possibly scare fellow students and even teachers....it seems v. selfish to me, and I admit - as I said on Twitter - the somewhat-unChristian part of me says "I hope that kid gets plenty of attention going through the juvenile court system" but yeah - actions have consequences.