Comment by nsriv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nsriv | Hacker News Reader

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I teach on the second floor of a city school where budget issues mean we don't have metal doors to the classrooms (older building, first floor has them). Every room has a metal cabinet though, and so our barricade procedure for the room is to lock the door, slide the cabinet in front of it, then kick out the furniture sliders from underneath the cabinet. Today, us second floor teachers pooled our personal money (near end of the school year in the US, discretionary funds are low) to buy reams of printer paper to stack inside and fill the cabinet, so that it has stopping power for bullets. Office supply store was nice enough to give for cost when they found out what it was for.

I don't mean to set off an arms control debate here, especially since I have a particular viewpoint on this, but I've found among many tech workers there's a certain blindness to ground reality. If you have a teacher or educator in your life, please check in on them this week. If you're well-off, or even not as much, understand that your profession is (wrongly or rightly) valued more than ours, so if you organize and amplify the voices of other roles, it will help immensely.

I think it's extremely scary that in the world's richest country, writing stuff about schools like "we don't have metal doors", "our barricade procedure" and "stopping power for bullets" is considered perfectly normal.

I was reading your comment and I just WTF'ed 5 times in a row. As a European, it's hard to wrap my mind around how simultaneously awesome and terrible the US has become. I feel terrible for you, and I'm extremely happy my kids go to a school without guards, without metal doors, with multiple, unguarded entrances, and so on. I hope your countrymen get their shit together and that someday this stuff feels like scary shit from the past. All the best to you until then, this stuff isn't OK and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

It's both insane that we have so many school shootings, and insane that we've spent so much money fortifying schools and traumatizing teachers and kids (find some teachers and ask them how people react even to pre-announced active shooter drills—people break down shaking and crying, have actual fight-or-flight responses kick in, et c., when those fake gunshots start, and that's the adults) in response.

The former is part of a broader sickness with our country, and the latter is part of an entirely different sickness in our country (must "do something", even if it's not justifiable and is net-harmful)

I'm sorry, there are fake gun shots in active shooter drills? What the fucking fuck? That is insane. What possible benefit could there be to that bit of simulation that would outweigh the additional trauma that would cause?

Not to mention all the survivors of school shootings who presumably have the dubious pleasure of being retraumatised on an annual basis. Fuck.

You're right on "do something". But fuck. I never guessed anyone would make it deliberately more traumatic.

I will not argue the efficacy of the drills. I don't support them, I don't know the data, etc.

But, if you're going to do a drill, and it's known to be a drill, practice like you play the game; if loud gunshot sounds freeze your escapees or their teachers to the point where they're not preserving themselves, the drill was for nothing.

Different schools do it different ways, often in cooperation with local law enforcement. Some do things like playing gunshots over a speaker somewhere in the building, others do different things. Most are the kind of activity that can mess people up in perhaps-unexpected ways—and again, that's the adults, let alone kids. There have been some cases of schools & police going way overboard with these things and doing much worse than playing some fake gunshot noises, and those have gotten some press (I think some are on YouTube?) but I don't think that's common. Regardless, even the more "normal" versions are pretty bad.

I worked in a public school about 10 years ago.

They wouldn't tell any of us that the drills were coming. Everyone had to take cover in the classrooms and barricade the doors as the "Intruder Alert" message blared over the loudspeakers. Then someone would come through the halls and bang on every door. It's beyond insane.

This is not so alien to Europe as you seem to think. Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. A European nation was in a similar situation very recently.

What is maybe unique about the US is that nothing will be done, where as Germany added additional gun control laws, and probably will not ever have as deadly a decade for schools as the 2000s again.

I'm not attacking you, it's just a weird side effect of the US dominating discourse on the internet, but there is a certain habit of European HN posts exaggerating differences, one of favorites being something like: "I can't imagine living in the US, it only costs a few euros for my library card, in the US they charge per book, how dystopian" which is uh, just false, but also, Japan actually has a history of fee based lending libraries, and you would never see a similar comment about Japan, it would be celebrated as twee small business.

> Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. A European nation was in a similar situation very recently.

Wikipedia lists 90 deaths in "mass shootings" in Germany for the almost 32 years since 1990 [1]. I'm quite surprised its that high tbh.

Wikipedia also gives a total of 118 deaths in mass ahootings in the US for just the two years 2022 and 2021 [2]. There were no year totals and tbh I gave up counting at that point. But a crude extrapolation back to 1990 gives 1770 deaths.

The population of Germany is 84 million, and the population of the USA is 331 million - ie 4 times larger. So for Germany to have the same number of deaths in mass shootings over that period would have required 442 deaths - almost 5 times the actual number.

So I dont think this statement stands up to scrutiny.

Caveats: These numbers are mass shootings that include school shootings as well as other siruations. The data comes from different sources. Extrapolation of us numbers from two years data. And I did some of the adding-up in my head. I could try to get better data but its friday night and I'm tired.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Germ...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

My number for these murders in the US was 119, basically taking a similar wikipedia page as the one that you linked to and adding up mass shootings (I used 3 or more as criteria, chosen because of one definition used in one particular US law) at schools, which I defined as k-12, pretty arbitrarily, just what I thought of as "schools."

That gives more in killings in Germany than the US, really due to their particularly brutal 2000s decade, and which does not seem likely to recur, and the US might benefit from looking at the actions Germany took.

The page you linked to is mostly not school shootings, so I don't think it is a good way to examine my statement.

I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt if there's a lack of english-language reporting, and I don't want to trivialize as it's tragic wherever it occurs, but

- Wikipedia[1] has six events dating back to 1983 plus one from 1913, with a total of 46 deaths. - CNN[2] only covers 2009-2018, with one German school shooting (to 288 American) - Infoplease[3] lists mass shootings (not just schools) worldwide from '96 to 2021, with four German shootings and 36 deaths.

At 4x the population of Germany, the US (again, Wikipedia[4]) passed 180 deaths counting from Jan 2000 to June 2014 across 65 fatal shootings (there's many more with just injuries).

Looking at just "mass" incidents (5+ deaths) to filter out all the 1-2 casualty isolated incidents in the US that get overreported, those two wikipedia sources list two German shootings with 17 and 16 deaths since 2000 compared to the US with thirteen: 10, 6, 33, 6, 7, 27, 6, 5, 10, 6, 17, 10, 22, which is a ratio over 1:5. The math for your claim does add up per capita for just the decade 2000-2009 (both German @ 33, first four US @ 55).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:School_shootings_in_G...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-...

[3] https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/timeline-of-worldwide-sc...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...

I'm not suggesting under-reporting of German mass shootings in English (well, outside of the 1-2 casualty incidents which you also note), I just used a count from wikipedia. I suspect the difference in our numbers is whether you include shootings at University. I didn't, but that is a completely arbitrary call, maybe they should be included. I'm not trying to create a ranking or hierarchy, just emphasizing that not everywhere is say, the UK, which as far as I know has had 0 school shootings since 2000.

I actually think focussing on the mass casualty count aspect is misplaced. I don't spend my time at work worried about how wrong things went, I worry about how bad an incident of that sort could have been given a less favourable set of circumstances.

ie. Yes someone got onto the network, but they were dumb and got blocked having done no damage. Is it serious because of the potential or not because of the lack of impact? I claim the former!

As such, the only ratio I care about is frequency of people shooting other people at schools (per capita, sure). On that measure, I am expectant USA is a world leader?

I suspect if not the world leader, the world leader among wealthy countries (Some South American countries have shockingly high murder rates overall, so those would be the others to check I think, though those murders might have a different sort of etiology). It would require a little more work to determine, since lower impact incidents in other countries are less reported on English wikipedia than those in the US, and even in the US I suspect they're not comprehensively cataloged.

It is not “books are expensive”-dystopian.

It’s “My cousin who is studying video editing through YouTube because college was too expensive is helping us make a video for my daughter’s Gofunme cancer treatment“-dystopian.

> Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US.

This is absolutely not true and can be verified by a few minutes research on Wikipedia

> Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US.

Any stats to back that up? Seems completely counter-factual.

You can see the basic methodology in sibling comments, just some counting on wikipedia, really hinging on whether you include Universities (I did not).

But a less controversial way of putting it is that other countries, including European ones, have had comparable incidents, and we can compare what they did with the US.

Who says it's considered normal? It reads like unproductive catastrophizing to me. In the unlikely event of a school shooting, I doubt "metal doors" or "barricade procedures" will make any difference.

This is a thread about "how do you feel". GGP's comment started with metal doors, not with "we're freaked out about shootings". I might have been reading their tone wrong, but to me, the comment reads as if metal doors are a staple ingredient of any decent school, and not having them is a source for stress. That very much suggests that in the author's circles, such talk is commonplace.

For context, I've never seen a school with metal doors in my life and my only association with metal doors (until today) is prisons.

To be fair, part of my post was getting it off my chest. There's definitely a backlash to when these things happen that attempts to rationalize them i.e. "They don't happen that often!" and "The media seizes on these grandiose events to fear-monger!" Every school in America has devoted thought to this after Sandy Hook. Robb Elementary in Uvalde did too. Metal doors and barricading may have limited the loss of life to one or two classrooms.

I appreciate this, thank you. I have quite a few friends that went to Germany for graduate school and really cherish that lifestyle, to the point where they're hesitant to come back and are considering starting a family there.

Current day USA is the love child of South Park and GTA. You can't even parody it properly anymore, because it's become a continuous self-parody.

And best/worst of all, its inhabitants don't even notice.

The US education system is a patchwork of schools systems of wildly different quality based on the student population.

>how simultaneously awesome and terrible the US has become

It's still significantly better than it used to be.

> Today, us second floor teachers pooled our personal money..

> If you're well-off, or even not as much, understand that your profession is (wrongly or rightly) valued more than ours

It's some weird science fiction reality we live in where those responsible for raising the next generation of our race are compensated minimally and asked for so much. While a lot of us reel in 10x a teacher's salary to improve business processes which are mostly just selling non-essential goods.

I used to participate in reddit's teacher gift program. Are you on this?

First I'm hearing about this, but sounds wonderful. We were told we would be reimbursed, and they're generally good about that sort of thing, but thank you!

Please consider looking at places like DonorsChoose if you'd like to donate money, especially to towns away from large cities. It's my hope that we can get more active citizen participation in education reform, so if possible consider local activism. The scene can be messy and frustrating but it should offer you greater visibility in the ways money can change the paradigm and expectations of the system.

And to be fair, I've been looking at getting out of teaching and landing a job in data analysis myself, so I'm not as pure of motive as many think teachers are. This last week has just really pushed me to make this my last year of teaching.

It is so sad, and infuriating(!) that you have to do this. It seems that an immediate action the federal government could do is devote funding toward 'fortification' of schools. Others know better that I how best to do this but it seems like something realistic that could happen now (unlike almost any gun control measure, or even something foolhardy like arming teachers (IMO)).

When I came in as a new teacher, I had the same thoughts regarding school fortification. We have two armed guards at school and metal detectors. One guard at front door, the other roving. Our district actually got low 9 figures in stimulus to pay off decades of loan debt resulting from mismanagement and to make significant infrastructure improvements last year. We get metal doors next year, need the summer to install everything.

This is all to say that my opinion of fortifying schools has drifted closer to our shared opinion of arming teachers; it creates a prison atmosphere (one that I've seen at other schools, I'm lucky to teach in the best one in the city), and that low-trust environment is not conducive to learning.

At my most frustrated I am 100% "take everyone's guns away," then being pragmatic I'd rather the money go to mandatory buybacks and background checks and a registration system like the one we have for vehicles that puts pressure on manufacturers and sellers, as well as buyers to renew and recertify or else be in breach of regulation.

The Democrats are not interested in anything that isn't gun control, and the Republicans aren't interested in gun control.

$40b to Ukraine though? Full bipartisan support, passed in no time at all.

You do the math.

I think the answer to education is to break up large schools and have schools that are no larger than 100-150 kids in total. 10x the number of schools and have individual attention to kids and teachers both. Fire the bad teachers quickly. Have larger communal facilities for things like sports and more outdoor activities like a form of scouts.

I understand the impulse for smaller schools, trust me. I think you'd be surprised to look into city schools and the capacities they were originally built for, compared to the amount of students they serve today. Part of that is land value and construction costs, but many urban schools are in a version of just-in-time maintenance. Your solution for more smaller schools is at play in suburban areas, and result in some really high-quality private schools. In the US at least, most school expenses are funded through property tax, so higher land value and wealthier areas are able to support better schools.

IMO there's a lot of credentialism in education already, need a master's degree to be certified (I do not, so I am a beneficiary of the shortage of math teachers since they needed to relax requirements to get people in classrooms). You can imagine my views on teachers' unions differ from yours, but firing bad teachers presumes supply outstrips demand.

High schools in particular have already become those communal neighborhood facilities for sports with baseball, basketball, tennis courts.

I think a lot of people don't realize the class size disparity across the country: I certainly didn't.

A few years ago I had to write a software application for a non-profit running a program for schools in the Los Angeles (I think: somewhere in Southern CA) area. In our rural school district, a class with 30 students would be a lot. In her school district, there was no class that had fewer than 30 students. I was in shock; she probably already knew that.

And before anyone asks, yes, my kids go/went to public school.

Currently existing schools can't find enough teachers. There definitely wouldn't be enough teachers to make this work even half way.

Respectfully, nobody asked your opinion. Your reply is not responsive at best.

This is a discussion, and there was nothing disrespectful about what he said. Respectfully, nobody asked for to jump in and be an ass.

This is one of those issues that people have a myriad of solutions for that they want to share, and I've just learned to appreciate the mental effort as it's usually coming from a genuine place. Too often though it's like, "if we just changed urban zoning laws and new construction requirements and how society operates and the societal expectations of parents, children, and child-rearing, we could really solve this gun problem!"

Sure, but IMO let's get guns out of people's houses and harder to get period.

Hey, Keybase is owned by Zoom now, FYI..

I do value the teaching profession, I wish the pay was better. Despite the current events, I do not think they need more protection. I am in favor of gun control and I am in no way saying there are not issues.

If you look up professions with the highest death rates. Teacher's are fairly low on the list, if they show up at all. https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/15-professions-with-the-h...

The collective trauma to kids in the USA who don't feel safe at school is heart-breaking. Trauma doesn't evaporate, it warps you. Especially at that age.

The statistics of it being improbable to die at school are no salve.

For comparison, the Washington Post[0] says:

"The Education Department reports that roughly 50 million children attend public schools for roughly 180 days per year. ... That means the statistical likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun, in school, on any given day since 1999 was roughly 1 in 614,000,000."

So in a given (180 day) year, such a child has a 1 in 3.4 million chance of dying, which means the equivalent annual death rate out of 100,000 children is 0.029 children.

The article you link to says that the annual death rate per 100,000 "Police and sheriff’s patrol officers" is 14.6 which is a few orders of magnitudes bigger, although children don't have as much control over whether they go to public schools as cops have over which job they do.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-...

You appear to be conflating children with teachers. I was commenting on teacher risk, and linked deaths by profession. What you responded with was children, which are not teachers, or even a profession.

Forgive me if my statistic caused the topic to stray away from the issue of teacher safety. The recent tragedy in Uvalde did involve the deaths of more students than teachers, which I assume is typical for such events, but on the other hand there are probably more teachers than school students leaving comments on this topic, so you're right, it may be better to limit consideration to just professions for now.

Appreciate your wishes for better pay and stance on gun control. One of the subjects I teach is stats, and I wish I could draw comfort from that statistic myself.

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