Put more guns into schools?
Didn't Archie Bunker have a similar recommendation?
Some readers may be old enough to remember watching the 1970s TV show, All in the Family. Carroll O’Connor played the lead character, Archie Bunker, who was a veteran, a blue-color worker who carried his lunch to work, and the father of a daughter who is married to a guy with long hair and liberal tendecies. Archie spoke dismissively, gruffly, and almost alway pratronizingly.
During a period of time when news often covered airplane hijackings, Archie had a chance to offer an editorial on a local television station. In the editorial he voiced his recommendation about how to address the problem of hijackings:
I may come back to the idea of arming teachers, but for now, the parallel to Archie Bunker’s proposal for how to fix airplane hijacking fits just fine.
Thanks to Tim Landrum for the reminder about this clip!
We have a school district in our area who prides itself on arming teachers and providing minimal training to those teachers. I have a conundrum of working at a Quaker-influenced institution who very much professes to prepare teachers for peaceful schools and potentially placing students in that area district where they are not necessarily espousing the idea of peaceful schools. I question what our institution's liability would be in the case of something bad happening, I question the ethics of placing students there, and I think about the scarcity of available placement spots for our students as we are in such a rural area. I don't know what the right answer is but I think the responsibility of those decisions is a very large burden to bear.