So it's been a while.
I was working on a School Choice series of posts prompted by an article in The New York Times, and then Uvalde happened. Suddenly charter schools didn't seem like the most important thing, but I couldn't find a way to write about the murders of those kids and their teachers, so I didn't.
There's little I can add to the frustration and anger others have expressed over our inability to stop or even try seriously to address the horror of heavily armed marauders entering schools and destroying children with weapons of war. Like many of you, I have participated in countless "live shooter" drills over the years and been part of more than a few incidents that were not drills. Fortunately, for the most part, nobody died, but that's just luck. I know that many of you have not been as lucky.
And every time it happens, especially when the massacre is big enough for other people to notice, we say "Help us! Please, do something!" And every time, all we hear is what we can't do. And whether the reason is mental illness or gun culture or politics or (a misreading of) the Second Amendment, teachers look at their students and each other, and we see dead people.
I think about the thousands of students I got to know over my twenty-five years in the business. I think about the books we read and the debates we had. The bad jokes. The perfect days and the times we kind of hated each other. I think of the fantasy futures they dreamed for themselves, and I think of their families and the plans they all made together. I think of secrets they shared because they knew I'd never tell. They knew I'd never hurt them on purpose.
Then I think about all the teachers and counselors and custodians I've known, including many friends still working in schools and wondering if they will be next. And I think of the deans and administrators and coaches and office techs and cafeteria workers I've met. And I put them all into a movie in my brain where I can picture their faces and hear their voices, and I wish I could think of an ending where everybody gets their fantasy future just like I did, but right now I can't. All I see is dead people.
What a society cares about is always right in front of us and it isn't what we say. For a long time teachers have known that in this country we don't care about most kids. If we did, schools would look like luxury boxes in brand new sports arenas and educators would get paid like hedge fund managers.
Instead, we shop for bargains. For an enormous number of us, school is provided grudgingly, not as a common good but as some kind of giveaway to somebody else's kids. It's run by people we don't understand and don't trust and our kids come home asking uncomfortable or unanswerable questions. We do not like school.
We pretend otherwise. We pretend to believe school is a great leveler, the gateway to opportunity. It's where we learn that we're all in this together, members of one nation. It's where we send "our babies" to learn to think, to grow, to laugh, cry, and make the memories they'll cherish the rest of their lives. Just like us. It's where we send them to be safe because we can't always be there.
But it's just pretend. Once the Big Shots and their progeny are safe in their well-appointed secure locations, we pit parents and schools against each other in a grim hunger games for what's left over. Crumbling schools. No counselors no nurses no music no art NO NEW TAXES! Failing schools. Test scores! Teachers union! Teachers are racists. Teachers are groomers. This is what we really think of schools. We hate them.
Every teacher knows this. What has shocked me is how little we care for the kids in them. I admit I shouldn't be surprised. I have seen kids come to school hungry and in tears. I have had to intervene when adults shamed their kids and screamed at them or called them names. I did not think we would stand back and let them get murdered.
That's what we're doing. The adults in this country have determined that guns are more important to us than our children. That's why, instead of addressing the easy availability of weapons of war, we'll try anything else. One door. Armed guards. Armed teachers, for fuck's sake. (You might want to ask a few principals about this first.) We will do anything except fix the problem because we have decided that these kids--these particular kids--are expendable. They are almost always somebody else's kids, anyway.
