Comments on: Public school teachers and administrators are everything that’s wrong with education today.

By: cgeye

cgeye — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 19:53:08 +0000

A bunch of terrorists for Puerto Rican independence shooting Congressmen… said independence being the only thing they really killed…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol_shooting_incident_%281954%29

By: Katherine

Katherine — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:43:17 +0000

But I notice you can’t wear a gun when you visit Congress; what’s up with that?

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:03:37 +0000

And Chris: it’s not just CU-Boulder. The state Supreme Court has ruled that no campus can ban guns, so it’s an issue on my campus too. Now, unless and until they install metal detectors and frisk everyone before they’re permitted on campus, banning guns from campus is more a rhetorical than an effective policy maneuver. But, still: I know that a student of mine in at least one class was armed.

Here’s the even crazier thing: it’s illegal to bring pot onto college campuses or onto federal property (government buildings, national parks and forests, etc.), while carrying and brandishing guns is nice’n'legal in all of these places.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:01:37 +0000

cgeye--thanks for that link! The original post is a totally awesome rant the rest of you should read, too, by Dave Brockington. LGM liked the comment you quote above so much they made it their "comment of the day." It's totally amazing to live in a country that has tolerated and acted on the "rights" of non-smokers to live and work in smoke-free environments, but which can't have a conversation about the rights of the citizenry to be free of fear or gun-fueled violence at work, school, etc.

By: Gender, family life, and gun-fueled mass murder : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 18:57:33 +0000

[...] of them young, overwhelmingly white and also overwhelmingly socially isolated. Inspired by this comment from Susan, I wondered this morning how many mothers and fathers of hypothetical 20-year old daughters who 1) [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:12:27 +0000

I feel much the same way about armed teachers that I do about armed pilots – they have very specific and important jobs to do in a stressful environment full of innocent bystanders. If police officers and soldiers frequent miss their targets and hit innocent bystanders, why would you expect that someone whose job and training aren’t focused on combat to be able to effectively protect people? Given the statistics about how often people are injured by their own guns, why would we introduce that element into classrooms?

At the same time, the idea that I might have to teach in a college classroom with armed student makes me very unhappy. I can’t imagine teaching on a campus like CU-Boulder (or the state university system in Michigan) that allows students to have weapons at their disposal. Even the students who advocated for it at the University of Alabama by wearing empty holsters left me feeling uncomfortable. With the aggressive attitudes I’ve seen (mostly male) students take toward faculty and graduate students (usually young women), it seems like a recipe for disaster.

By: polisciprof

polisciprof — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:22:02 +0000

Even more amazing to me are the conversations about how all of these tragedies could have been prevented if teachers were ARMED. I’m embarrassed to say that at least one of my colleagues subscribes to this view (so much for the liberal academy).

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:01:43 +0000

To some extent, I think it has to happen in the cradle. Sometimes the old dinosaurs just need to become extinct. People used to feel about seatbelts the way many feel about gun safety, so widespread gun availability needs to be problematized and stigmatized like drunk driving and smoking. The murderer’s mother was killed by her own guns–why weren’t they locked up in a safe? I also wonder how the culture of manhood in this country works against troubled men seeking out the help they need–not just inside themselves, but also in terms of family and friends seeking out help on their behalf.

Funny thing about the stabbings in China: parents have hospitalized children, not children in the morgue. That’s the difference between knives and semi-automatic weapons–stabbing is potentially survivable, whereas few 6-year olds can survive 11 bullets each.

By: Susan

Susan — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 07:37:07 +0000

I’m with you on the teachers. What’s amazing is that they went on automatic pilot, without instructions, and did their best to protect children. This is taken for granted though: they are elementary teachers, women, just like mothers, not professionals.

Tonight I had dinner with a colleague, whose partner is a gun collector/ life member of the NRA (as well as otherwise left-libertarian). I didn’t know this when the conversation started. And it was interesting – needless to say he only wanted to talk about the cultural stuff. But if, as Historiann noted in a comment on the last post , “From my perspective, what’s wrong with this country is the fact that gun ownership has for 400 years been claimed as a privilege of white manhood. Overwhelmingly, it’s white men who believe they are entitled to use guns in these acts of terrible violence..”, then what do we do to change that. The gun laws are clearly only one piece of the puzzle. But also, how do we stop young men in trouble from thinking that killing lots of people is the way to solve anything? My dinner companion, having pooh-poohed gun laws (after all, a guy in China snapped, so that’s the problem) wanted to ban violence in movies and video games – for someone who is a hunter, the unthinking-ness of these was truly shocking. (and the irony of abandoning the first amendment while valorizing the second was not lost on me.) How *do* you change cultural models of manhood? Any ideas?

By: cgeye

cgeye — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 05:47:44 +0000

It’s from here:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/12/theres-a-reason-we-no-longer-live-in-the-fucking-medieval-age/comment-page-1#comment-408957

And I think this is the meme that takes hold:

“Hey hey NRA
How many kids did you kill today?”