Greenbaypressgazette.com published an article describing the different views between parents and experts about school safety.
The recent reports of violent incidents at schools involving intruders causes many parents and others to suggest additional safety measures. Most schools – such as the Colorado high school where a gunman took hostages last month and killed a student – already have plenty of security features, including surveillance cameras, limited access, crisis plans, a security officer and a post-Columbine design that made spotting intruders easy. However, parents have suggested adding more extreme defense measures, such as metal detectors, armed guards, and a magnetic-card id system in which everyone must swipe a magnetic-id to enter the building.
Experts say schools remain among the safest places for children, citing a steady decline in reported school crime over the past decade.
In fact, students have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than harmed in a school-shooting. Besides the relative safety of schools, only one in five school-shootings actually takes place inside the school, and usually students commit the shootings themselves.
Even so, for a proper education environment, students require safety. Additionally, compulsory schooling makes this issue even more important, because the government forces these students into these allegedly unsafe schools.
Personally, I think the problem lies in the concept of government-run public schools itself. If the constitution separated education and state the same way it separated religion and state, then that would solve this problem. Without government-run public schools, students (or their parents/guardian, in the case of legal minors) can choose which school they want to attend. According to their own priorities, the students can attend schools based on the schools safety-rating and/or the schools lack of imposing security measures. For example, if a student wants to attend a school without armed guards, the school can attend such a school; If a student wants to attend a school with armed guards, the student can attend such a school.
At most, the government can offer students student-loans. However, I do not want the government to tell students where to go, or tell schools how to operate themselves.
What do you think?
Monday, June 4th 2007 at 12:27 am
“…the Tenth Amendment really means nothing anymore.” This should anger people into action.
“For anarchy to work at its best communities would need to be much smaller, I think.” Anarchy doesn’t need to work at its best in its infant stages, it just needs to be started.
“Of the people, for the people, by the people” is an obligation, not a suggestion.
Wednesday, November 29th 2006 at 5:55 pm
I don’t like the idea of school altogether… Although I see the importance of such a thing. But I do not think that a school really teaches too much anyhow. I think it would be best to homeschool, and second best to send your kids to another parents house who does homeschool. I would want me to teach my kids, next a friend or a neighbor… not some guy collecting a paycheck to force feed regulated standards of education. The problem with anarchy in this century or really just this past half century, is the magnitude of the masses. Just shear amounts of people make anarchy more and more impractical. For anarchy to work at its best communities would need to be much smaller, I think.
Wednesday, November 1st 2006 at 4:17 pm
It is pretty well established by every Constitutional expert that our federal government already has a seperation of school and state, its just that the federal government blatently ignores it, because the Tenth Amendment really means nothing anymore. Likewise, we would have to extend this state seperation from education to all state constitutions as well.
The federal government should neither be involved in education, nor should they have any say in setting “guidelines” for its safety.
I concur with you totally. I choose the free market solution. Let the schools decide the safety policy, and then let parents make the choice as to which is the safest school for their kid.