School as Prison
A blueprint for America's schools of the future?
W.J. Astore
Back in the 1970s, when I was in high school, smart aleck students used to joke about high school as "prison." Nowadays, American schools have metal detectors, school police, even armed teachers. And let's not forget reinforced doors and lockdown drills--just like real prisons! And all these guns and security devices and police presence is together touted as "the solution" to school violence.
I thought of this when I read this morning that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where seventeen students were murdered last February, is adding metal detectors to protect students. (Not that metal detectors would have kept out the former student/shooter, Nikolas Cruz, who murdered all those teenagers in cold blood.) Perhaps the school is doing this to reassure parents; or to deter copy-cats; or to preempt possible lawsuits in case of future attacks. Or maybe they really believe that having 3,200 students pass through metal detectors each and every morning is the cost of being "safe."
One thing is certain: We're raising our young people with a lockdown mentality. We're teaching them the best way to be safe is to submit passively to metal detectors and other forms of security screening. We're indoctrinating them with the idea that a guard with a gun is the very best form of security, and that even their teachers, charged with educating them, may be packing heat in the classroom -- to keep them safe, naturally. (These teachers may even be making a few extra bucks after completing gun training.)
Who says American students aren't learning anything in our schools? They're learning every day they pass through a metal detector, or see heavily armed police in school corridors, or their teachers toting firearms. Every day they have to submit to lockdown drills, they're learning.
I don't have a smart aleck observation here. Just a sad one: that old joke about school as prison isn't even worth a teenager's smirk anymore.