Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 and others that followed later (i.e, Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; Santa Fe, Texas;), school districts started to address schools’ safety and protection of human life. In what seems like a desperate effort to “do something”, more than $2.7 billion have been allocated to a new industry marketing school campuses with trainings in safety measures.
These consist of lock down procedures, active shooter drills, and hiring Police Officers.
Robin Cogan, a school nurse in Camden, NJ., states that “While the incidence of school shootings is rare, now more than 95% of schools across the country have active shooter drills… We do not prepare our students for fire drills by making them walk through smoke and debris-filled hallways.” On a similar note, a 2018 Washington Post editorial reported that “The statistical likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun, in a school, on any given day since 1999 was roughly 1 in 614,000,000.” For a detailed analysis on the prevalence of school shootings and general impact on the emotional well-being of students and staff, see Mr. Hudson’s article “Police in the School Hallways”, here.
The attention given to these rare events seems largely incommensurate to the actual health risks school kids face nowadays. These risks are not related to school shootings, gangs, drugs, or even kidnappings. The biggest health risks facing school aged students nowadays vary according to the source, yet none of the sources examined for this article included school shootings. The most common health risks are accidental deaths and suicide, as well as bullying and obesity.
In addition, a vast majority of parents and school staff consider their biggest concern the fact that these active shooter drills seem to be so “needlessly over the top that they almost seem designed to traumatize students” (Forbes, September 2019). Examples abound about the terrifying ways in which these safety trainings are implemented. Some of the schools use the ALICE method (‘Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate’). Without citing evidence to support his position, Guilbault, ALICE’s chief executive, states that active shooter drills are effective when done appropriately and believes that simulating an event is the best way to prepare for one. Others think otherwise.
Lily Eskelten Garcia, president of the National Education Association, said “Everywhere I travel, I hear from parents and educators about active shooter drills terrifying students, leaving them unable to concentrate in the classroom and unable to sleep at night…so traumatizing students as we work to keep students safe from gun violence is not the answer.” Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, stated “In Indiana, they were shooting teachers with rubber pellets so they would feel the adrenaline of what a school shooting would feel like. In California recently, a superintendent hired a stranger to wear a mask to rattle the doors of classrooms without letting faculty and students know. We have seen students asked to pretend to be victims and lie down using fake blood in the hallway.”
Abbey Clements, an elementary school teacher who was teaching second grade at Sandy Hook school, believes a drill would have not saved lives there: “Our students knew what to do, we taught them what to do in an emergency. We knew evacuation routes and where a safe spot was in the room, where nobody would see inside. But frightening students with some type of active drill, I think that is barbaric.” (Associated Press, February 13, 2020)
One last and heartbreaking example of these drills appeared in the March, 2019 issue of The Atlantic: “At 10:21am on December 6, Lake Brantley High School, in Florida, initiated a “code red” lockdown. ‘This is not a drill’, a voice announced over the PA system. At the same time, teachers received a text message warning of an active shooter on campus. Fearful students took shelter in classrooms. Many sobbed hysterically, others vomited or fainted, and some sent farewell notes to parents. A later announcement prompted a stampede in the cafeteria, as students fled the building and jumped over fences to escape. Parents flooded 911 with frantic calls. Later it was revealed, to the fury of parents, teachers and students, that in fact this was a drill.
“Such highly realistic drills can do more harm than good, and traumatizing students is not the way to protect them. This perspective is what has led the nation’s two largest teachers unions, The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, to call for an end to unannounced active shooter drills that simulate gun violence. Such recommendation has received the full support of the National Association of School Psychologists and Everytown For Gun Safety.
Against Guilbault’s opinion concerning the effectiveness of these drills, Steven Schlozman, MD, child psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, also Harvard professor and co-founder of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds, noted that as far as solid research studies on the issue, “There aren’t any. It’s a very hard thing to investigate, the data, if it does exist, can’t be that good.” Even in studies that report anecdotal evidence that children take these drills in stride, Dr. Schlozman states that “Even in those studies, there are anecdotal descriptions… of kids who are already vulnerable to anxiety disorders, to developmental disorders, or who are cognitively delayed. And despite people being super careful to make this a more palatable exercise for them, they still get pretty, at best, unnerved, and at worst, pretty traumatized by it.” (Indiana Public Radio, August 30, 1019).
Dr. Williams, Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine and Chief of Psychiatry at Texas Children’s Hospital, discussed the psychological impact of these drills on schoolchildren: “People must keep in mind the developmental age and how that connects to young children’s emotional and cognitive abilities when considering and deploying these “preparedness drills.” (Baylor College of Medicine, August 19, 2019). Exactly right. At certain developmental stages, children have not yet mastered the difference between fantasy and reality, or the concept of time. Thus, children may not know or understand the concept of “not real”, or something happening “now” and something that could happen in the “future”. In addition, another critical concern comes to mind developmentally speaking. That involves the concept of one’s world’s view, or the idea each person creates about her/his world, as a generally benign, safe place, or all the way in the continuum as a frightening, overwhelming and dangerous one.
As a parent, educator, caretaker for children, I would like to consider this question: What impact do you really want to effect on children as they develop their own world’s view ? Do you want your child to grow and become “connected” with the world and others, or do you want him/her to believe from a young age that the world is terribly scary, unpredictable, violent, and that others or strangers are “bad”? As a parent or educator, what would you like for your children to experience in their growing up years?
Would you like for your children to grow feeling loved, safe and secure, or pervasively insecure, anxious and traumatized?