Dee Chadwell – I have a 1956 Norman Rockwell print of a frumpy, sweet-faced teacher standing in front of a class of clean-scrubbed, straight-backed children. They had just written “Happy Birthday, Miss Jones!” on the blackboard for her. It’s a scene light-years away from a 21st-century school massacre, and it may take some time for the more Pollyanna-ish among us to readjust to what the 21st-century school really is. This may explain the freak-out over the idea of arming teachers: Miss Jones with a Ruger tucked into her belt is just too hard to swallow.
This worries me, because we can’t fix a problem we don’t have the courage to really acknowledge. Our schoolrooms are still full of great kids, sweet-natured and teacher-loving, but these days, every class has an ever increasing number of students carrying major psychological damage. I’ll never forget a class of freshmen I had one year. Of the 27 students in that section, nine were seriously mentally disturbed. I know a teacher who’s trying to deal with a student who has already thrown rocks through the principal’s office windows and is currently threatening to burn down the school with a flamethrower. He’s six years old. Continue reading