Dear Jessica Brennan,
I don’t write on Tuesdays. On Tuesdays I go to yoga, but today I am making an exception.
I’m not an authority on what anyone should do or be. I think I’ve made that clear. However, I did have a gun-worried American friend today (in light of the most recent school-shooting first thing this morning) ask me what I would do if I had a child going to school in America right now. She then asked me to post my answer here. So here we go on this very volatile issue. Disclaimer: I’ve never held a handgun, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in real life.
In my opinion, every parent in America needs to take their kids out of school until the gun laws change. They need to get organized into groups of families and home-school their kids until further notice, even if it involves a number of clumsy, inconvenient teaching shifts and a few years. They have the right to home school and in this case, I think they should. They should start meeting in people’s living rooms tonight. This is quite literally a matter of life and death.
Arming teachers only puts more guns in schools so it is even more dangerous for children. Parents need to use the viable defense that under law they must do everything in their power to protect their children from harm and that’s what they would be doing. In 2018, it is simply unsafe to send kids to school. Think of what a 6 year old, 12 year old, 16 year old looks like. Little lambs waiting for the next shots to be fired? The risk is too great. Do we all remember children’s faces, and how they look in their little rubber boots and mittens? That’s who we’re talking about.
If parents took this course of action, teachers would get laid off (and could move to a safe private teaching practice), school boards would face the threat of crumbling, suppliers to schools would lose business, services like lunch room catering and custodians would lose work, unions would have to get involved which means money and votes from powerful people would start to be impacted. There would be pain, but nothing like the pain of losing another child or a loved one to guns. Rapid loss of money, brings about rapid change.
In any case, leave the politics to the politicians but take real steps to keep the children out of harm’s way until it is safe to return to school.
Regular families in regular communities could make this happen today if they had the will and the courage to do it. Children could then concentrate on tadpoles and rhyming words, cutting, pasting, spelling, community dances and football games, instead of what to do if they hear shots fired at recess.
It is only my opinion, but then again, this is my blog.
Namaste, Mum
xo
