A gun in my hand isn’t a solution for a school roof that leaks every time it rains; it doesn’t give students the books they need but can’t afford on their own; it doesn’t help us photocopy assignments to help them learn. And we already don’t have the number of teachers, counselors, nurses, librarians, Educational Support Personnel, administrators, community liaisons and countless other personnel that our students need and so that they can get the education they deserve. This is as true in the K-12 schools I used to work in as it is in the higher education environments where I teach now.
We already don’t have the kinds of meaningful training, support, coaching and evaluations that would foster professional growth and excellence for educators. We don’t all have school buildings that are adequately heated or cooled. We don’t have basic funding levels and formulas across the board to ensure that principals won’t have to choose one of these priorities over another each year as they complete budgets and action plans. We don’t have enough genuine community partnerships. We don’t come to agreements across communities to settle contracts ensuring the working conditions that are the learning conditions for the schools our kids deserve. We don’t even have agreement that every child deserves the same educational opportunities.
This country’s educators would be far better equipped with any — indeed all — of these things in the classroom than with the panacea of pistols.
This country’s educators would be far better equipped with any — indeed all — of these things in the classroom than with the panacea of pistols.
But, where there is an agenda, there is always an answer; I am not so naïve as to think that the money for this imagined teacher-arming wouldn’t materialize. After years of working in classrooms and for my union, watching school shootings in the news and gridlock in Washington, D.C., I am cynical enough to know that, given our military spending and our willingness to seek quick, easy cosmetic solutions to long-standing and complex issues, it will bloom quickly.
In a perfect world, I shouldn’t be so sure that funding for classroom cannons would speed through Washington and our statehouses and fair funding for all schools won’t. And I need everyone else to know how it feels to be an educator or a student, walking our halls and campuses armed with the knowledge that it’s easier to give teachers money for guns to shoot students than books to teach them.
Valerie Braman is a Labor and Employment Relations faculty member at Penn State University, and a former Philadelphia high school teacher and union representative. Her opinions do not necessarily reflect those of her employer.
