Not to mention that certain people might be good at teaching but bad at shooting. (Wild-ass speculation here—I’ve never fired a real gun and I have no idea if it’s something almost everyone could learn to do decently.)
My impression is that almost anyone can learn to do target range shooting decently, though even then you’d run up against disability issues if you made that level of skill a requirement for teachers.
The hard part is staying calm enough to do something useful (or perhaps anything at all) in a fast-moving violent situation. This can take a lot of training. On the other hand, I haven’t heard about any of the teachers freezing at Sandy Hook. On yet another hand, most people have powerful inhibitions against killing, so that might be harder to train than protecting children.
On yet another hand, most people have powerful inhibitions against killing, so that might be harder to train than protecting children.
It is very hard to teach people to kill—a fact that’s largely responsible for the lopsided casualty ratios in engagements between well-trained and poorly trained armies. Most of the research that has been done on this is in the context of police and military training, though, where the main motivating factor is not letting your buddies down; I’d expect the psychology to be somewhat different in the context of defending children. Given that teachers self-select for very different psychology than cops or soldiers, though, I’m not sure which way the statistics would end up running.
There are further implications along these lines, too. It’s isn’t just ability, but willingness: at least some prospective teachers would probably be put off by the prospect of being required to be armed in the classroom.
Not that the job market for teachers isn’t glutted, right now, but is “willingness to carry a gun and shoot to kill” really something that we want to select for, in teachers? It would compete with the ability to teach well in determining who actually teaches our children.
Not to mention that certain people might be good at teaching but bad at shooting. (Wild-ass speculation here—I’ve never fired a real gun and I have no idea if it’s something almost everyone could learn to do decently.)
My impression is that almost anyone can learn to do target range shooting decently, though even then you’d run up against disability issues if you made that level of skill a requirement for teachers.
The hard part is staying calm enough to do something useful (or perhaps anything at all) in a fast-moving violent situation. This can take a lot of training. On the other hand, I haven’t heard about any of the teachers freezing at Sandy Hook. On yet another hand, most people have powerful inhibitions against killing, so that might be harder to train than protecting children.
It is very hard to teach people to kill—a fact that’s largely responsible for the lopsided casualty ratios in engagements between well-trained and poorly trained armies. Most of the research that has been done on this is in the context of police and military training, though, where the main motivating factor is not letting your buddies down; I’d expect the psychology to be somewhat different in the context of defending children. Given that teachers self-select for very different psychology than cops or soldiers, though, I’m not sure which way the statistics would end up running.
There are further implications along these lines, too. It’s isn’t just ability, but willingness: at least some prospective teachers would probably be put off by the prospect of being required to be armed in the classroom.
Not that the job market for teachers isn’t glutted, right now, but is “willingness to carry a gun and shoot to kill” really something that we want to select for, in teachers? It would compete with the ability to teach well in determining who actually teaches our children.