I do not know who came up with the cynical phrase “divided states of America,” but the latest notion we argue is whether or not young people have standing to campaign for legislation to reduce the probability that they may become victims of gunfire, particularly while attending school, which they are required by law to do.
Some say since grownups have failed to enact such protections, that students are right to lead the way; others claim that they lack sufficient experience to lead. I cannot keep up with the barrage of crazy commentary –one school district will post buckets of rocks for school staff and students to use for self-defense; someone says apply fire extinguishers to the face of armed school invaders.
The sanctimonious Rick Santorum says high schoolers should learn CPR. But an emergency room radiologist who was on duty when victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were brought in explains how this type of weaponry works compared to simpler guns: The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, and was bleeding extensively…. Nothing was left to repair — and utterly, devastatingly, nothing could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal. Most of them died on the spot; they had no fighting chance at life. CPR will not work on dead people.
I attended public schools for 12 years, university for four continuous years plus graduate coursework at least four more, and taught in public schools for 26 years. So, except for the dozen years between high school graduation and enrolling in teacher-training college, and until I retired a couple of years ago, much of my adult life has been in school.
Schools are like cities – people come and go, there are births and deaths, celebrations and sadness. In my childhood, we practiced the futilitarian atomic bomb drills; today’s kids rehearse what to do when a heavily armed nut enters the school hellbent on death and destruction. I knew girls who said they would never bear children because of the threat of nuclear destruction – is it possible that some girls today will make that vow because they wouldn’t want to see their kids blown to smithereens in kindergarten?
This is truly the meaning of terrorism – to inspire such terror in people that their lives are turned topsy-turvy. Some will argue that, in spite of airplane crashes, flying is still the safest mode of long-distance travel, and that the vast number of schools that have not been shot up signifies that schools are still overwhelmingly safe.
This is true, but try telling that to the parents of children shot to death, to students who saw their best friends dying next to them, or who owe their life to a teacher who jumped in front of the bullets. Recent articles visit with such people who lost family members, friends, and coworkers at Columbine, Jonesboro, Sandy Hook and elsewhere. We sympathize with soldiers who suffer post-traumatic stress, who understood going in that they would see death firsthand. We do not expect that in such places as schools, churches, movie theaters. Survivors are traumatized.
I was in first grade when President John F. Kennedy delivered his 1961 inaugural address: Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
More famously, he added: my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.
Let the children lead.
Kirk Ashworth
Grandview