But I did run across a very cogent post at Lawyers, Guns, and Money that I will share. It addressed the predictable conservative call for arming the nation's teachers as a measure to protect kids. This crazy idea fills me with revulsion and fear, and I think I'm giving it too much credit to only use go so far as to describe it using the word "crazy"...just so you know what side of the issue I'm on as you read this.
One of the especially sane comments to the basic post (from a teacher called Sly--you'll have to scroll down a ways) dealt with the absurdity of the whole arming notion, from a political theory standpoint:
So I’m a teacher. According to conservative orthodoxy, I’m a parasite on the public’s dime who is only interested in indoctrinating the precious children of America into communism or atheism or whatever. I can’t be trusted to have any control over the curriculum I teach. I can’t be trusted to fairly and impartially evaluate my students, let alone my colleagues. I can’t be trusted to have collective bargaining rights. I can’t be trusted to have an objective view of governmental policy when it comes to my own profession.
But they’ll trust me to keep a gun in a room filled with children.
Even the cynicism-producing neurons of my prefrontal cortex can’t wrap themselves around this kind of stupid bullshit.
I love irony and calling out of hypocrisy; thus I cannot improve on this gem of a thought.
Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure, my spouse is a public school teacher. She--as well as the overwhelming majority of her colleagues--agrees with the sentiments of the commenter, Sly, above--and cannot imagine how arming the nation's teachers is anything but a vigilante fantasy.
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