I went to a high school on the larger side and one time some people 2 grades below me got into a fight. The next day one of them brought a gun to school. The security guards ended up catching him before anything happened but there was a solid hour where no one knew what the hell was going on and everyone was in full lockdown. The unfortunate reality is that those drills definitely save lives, even in a state with some of the strictest gun laws in the US (which I guess is a pretty low bar).
How did the active shooter drills for students help that? Tbh they may have helped cause the ideation.
Lockdown drills possibly for staff I can maybe get on board with, but for students? The universal trauma is IMHO not worth the off chance that it helps in a (still extremely rare) active shooter scenario
At least in my school the internal/external threat drills were normalized enough that they weren’t really traumatic. They were basically treated the same as fire drills. Looking back on it that fact is kind of messed up by itself.
I could actually see that being a good argument for why they shouldn’t happen though since it might make people take the real thing less seriously if it ever happened.
Do you have evidence of them being useful?
I went to a high school on the larger side and one time some people 2 grades below me got into a fight. The next day one of them brought a gun to school. The security guards ended up catching him before anything happened but there was a solid hour where no one knew what the hell was going on and everyone was in full lockdown. The unfortunate reality is that those drills definitely save lives, even in a state with some of the strictest gun laws in the US (which I guess is a pretty low bar).
How did the active shooter drills for students help that? Tbh they may have helped cause the ideation.
Lockdown drills possibly for staff I can maybe get on board with, but for students? The universal trauma is IMHO not worth the off chance that it helps in a (still extremely rare) active shooter scenario
At least in my school the internal/external threat drills were normalized enough that they weren’t really traumatic. They were basically treated the same as fire drills. Looking back on it that fact is kind of messed up by itself.
I could actually see that being a good argument for why they shouldn’t happen though since it might make people take the real thing less seriously if it ever happened.
The fact that they’re normalized is exactly the trauma I’m talking about, it IS incredibly messed up!