When I was a college freshman I
took a vocational test (Strong Interest Inventory) that offered a score of 0-60
or 70 on your compatibility for certain professions. Although it turns out that
teaching was a perfect fit for me (maybe not you, my student, but me, at least),
I don’t recall that career score as being spectacularly high. What I do recall
is that I was the only one of my friends with a NEGATIVE (below 0!) score on
not one, but three potential careers. Notably leading the pack: police officer.
(The other two were, not surprisingly to those who know me, minister and
industrial arts teacher.)
One of the reasons I have so
much respect for police officers is that I know full well it is a job I could never
do, even poorly, much less at all. We may not share many personality traits, but what teachers and police do share is an
under-appreciated, under-compensated, highly demanding job (that too many critics
think they can do). Policing and
protection take a certain personality type (and skills). And while there is no
such thing as a typical teacher (or police officer, for that matter), I would
suggest that in general the people best suited for teaching are poorly suited
for policing, and vice versa. When I think back on the many teachers I have
known, both as a professional and a student, the ones who seemed most focused
on crowd, sorry, classroom, control often were the least inspiring in the
classroom.
Which brings me to my main
point, if you haven’t already guessed: you generally don’t want
men and women best suited for policing teaching your children – it’s a poor fit. It may be well-intentioned, but “training” and arming teachers is a spectacularly bad idea; it has gained traction only out of a desperate sense of “We have to do
something (but not anything that might interfere with our ability to arm
ourselves with high capacity magazine weapons)!”
We all like to think we’d respond
like a hero under fire, but the Parkland shooting shows that isn’t true, even
for those armed and trained to respond. There’s a lot of macho bravado in this
country (we’re not alone there, of course), and I enjoy those books and movies
as much as the next person, but Stephen Crane (Red Badge of Courage)
gave a more realistic portrayal. I'm guessing that most military veterans who
have come under fire on our behalf (thank you for that) can provide examples of
fellow soldiers who, shall we say, "blinked" under that kind of
pressure.
And I am not criticizing them,
not even the armed deputies who stayed outside the school while the shooter
went on his rampage – disappointing, yes, but they wanted to go home to their
families, too. I’d like to think I’d be like the teachers in school shootings who
shielded their students and forfeited their lives in the process, but what I’d
like to think and what I would really do is a scenario I hope I never have to
encounter. However, as I head back for one more sub gig at Lindbergh HS in May,
what I really hope is that as a country we have started to move toward actions
that make such a life or death decision less likely. But pretending that
training and arming teachers will do that is nothing more than a convenient
fiction.
Remember the Law of Unintended
Consequences as you ask yourself, “What could possibly go wrong?” Feel free to
start the list below.
