Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

It was a really great essay on the absurdity of the drill, all up until the last two paragraphs. Next they'll be ducking and covering, and the teacher can conclude by quoting the model numbers of some Russian ICBMs. You know, the cold war seems to be amping up again after all...

My daughter was in JK ("Pre-K") last year. If the school pulled a stunt like this, she wouldn't be attending it anymore. It's offensive and pathetic... I really thought I was fully jaded enough with the public school system that nothing could surprise me anymore, but well I guess I was wrong.

Is this is some sort of Orwellian conditioning process to prepare these young minds for the friendly Homeland Security Officers that will be riding armored tanks around town in the not-to-distant future?

Do people think these drills are reasonable, proportionate, and beneficial? It's sounds completely toxic to me. There are innumerable ways you could help increase K-12 students likelihood of surviving a multitude of common disasters, or fatal accidents. Let's talk about what to do if you see a downed electric wire. Or how to recognize a stroke. Or teach them the the Heimlich maneuver. Or how to find people to talk to if you're feeling depressed. Or not to drink the shit under the kitchen sink, or eat anything in the medicine cabinet. Or how to safely cut with a kitchen knife. Or how to make a disaster readiness plan with your family. You know, shit that actually maims or kills more than 1 in 10,000,000.

Practicing hiding in the closet because a killer is roaming the halls with an assualt rifle... Either this is an "agenda" or someone needs to get a fucking clue. I guess in that sense, the last two paragraphs of the article clarified it for me.

> Let's talk about what to do if you see a downed electric wire [etc]

Absolutely! Isn't that taught?

> If the school pulled a stunt like this, she wouldn't be attending it anymore.

That's kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Would you really make such a binary choice about such a small part of the school? And what school would you choose instead?

> Either this is an "agenda" or someone needs to get a fucking clue.

Surely its a combination of small factors such as people being genuinely scared that their school will be next or that its dictated from above the school level?

No, these things are definitely not taught enough. For example, ask grade schoolers what the signs of a stroke are, and what to do if you see someone exhibiting those signs. What percent can answer? Google says strokes kill 130,000 Americans every year. So, I'm thinking... what's the "Expected ROI" of 15 minutes per year on stroke education? Somewhere between 10,000x and infinitely more than the Expected ROI of this drill. But that's just one random example, I think you would be hard pressed to find literally any use of 15 minutes of classroom time with a lower ROI than this drill.

To me, it reflects so poorly on the judgement of the school administrators that it should make people seriously question what's going on. Every school does fire drills, probably because there's some regulation requiring it, and the mental framework for the drill is that there's an accidental fire in the building. This is an entirely different league. This is a "terrorist loose in the hallways" training exercise for 5 year olds. I'm mad enough it happened to someone else's kids.

Just to give some context, my daughter's JK teacher brought her horse to school for show-and-tell, she gives my daughter riding lessons (and yes there's a lot of trust involved letting someone help your 5 year old ride a horse), she had my daughter over for dinner one night when we had to take my son to the ER. It's a parent-participation school so regularly I spend time in the classroom. I could not imagine a more nurturing, peaceful, and loving environment. The juxtaposition of that with this terror drill is hard for me to reconcile.

I totally agree this is a combination of fear and horrible policy-making by administrators. I in no way hold the teachers responsible/accountable for this.

Where does your daughter attend schooling? I live on the West Coast and I've had "lockdown" drills all my life. They aren't specifically for the situation of "a psycho killer is in the hallways" - they are usually enacted when a threat appears nearby the school. A loose dog wandering the campus, nearby robbery of a store, etc. The point of these exercises is not to increase a child's likelihood of survival in various dangerous situations, but instead to ensure that if a threat were to appear the staff will be able to handle it appropriately and keep the kids in a calm, docile state.

Yes, absolutely. I haven't personally been present during these drills but my wife has. No children were crammed in a closet. No teacher made the "mental shift, if only for a moment, from the routine to a pure, clear terror." I believe the context presented to the JK and K classes was that of taking attendance, but my wife is sleeping and if I wake her "because I need to comment on HN" I think I'll get in trouble. :-)

Drilling for fire alarms or an earthquake are entirely different in my mind than drilling for a terrorist roaming the halls. That's why I think it's toxic, because it's spreading fear, and to an extent it's conditioning children to expect such a thing.

Fire drills don't create an environment of fear because it's in the context of a passive/accidental/natural event. Fires happen all the time. When my daughter was in pre-school a couple firemen spent an hour in our daughter's classroom and then fully suited up, because apparently kids who have never seen a fully geared up fireman will often hide/run from them instead of going to them in a fire. She had a wonderful time playing dress up with them, but she also started to learn about how fire is serious and to stay away from it.

But, let's play the "Hide-from-my-terrorist-classmate" game... just I don't know.... I don't want to think about, "Daddy, why did we practice hiding in the closet at school today?"

Absolutely agreed. The undercurrent of "and if only the teacher could have a gun instead of those damned liberals trying to take them away from us, you child wouldn't have to die" is despicable.

On a tangent - there was, nearby, a bill motion that would not allow high school students to graduate without attending a CPR class. I like that.

Following Washington passing I-594 (removing the gun show background check loophole) with a vote of about 60% reared the ugly truth that at least 20% of Republican voters voted for this, something that is hard to reconcile with "Obama is coming for your guns". So, predictably, this aspect has been ignored.

As a pre k teacher, i agree whole heartedly with you.

(For the record we definatly dont do that, but im also in japan haha. )

Reply on news.ycombinator.com