I’m not convinced that it’s not possible to design a program of drills that teach a useful response to the every-6000-year problem of “your school is under attack”, without injuring the mental health of the students to the point where it isn’t worth doing. (Whether it’s then worth the time from the school day is another question, which depends on how or whether you value that time to begin with.)
Is there a similar problem with the mental health costs of fire, tornado, and earthquake drills being remarkably high? Having experienced those drills, and seeing the complaints about active shooter drills inflicting trauma, I’m left concluding that the active shooter drills are a fundamentally different kind of practice than other emergency drills. We could abolish them and book a net win, but maybe we could also make them like the other drills instead, and thus make them cost-effective to do, for an even greater benefit.
It could be the case that the other drills are similarly dangerous to mental health, but they have benefits that justify their costs, due to the other kinds of emergencies being more common. Or, it could be that none of the emergencies are worth the mental health costs of drilling for, but we just happen to be examining this one right now. Or, it could be that broadly comparable physical drill activities are much more damaging to one’s mental health when one is told one is practicing for being attacked by a human, rather than a tornado, and the kids will figure it out no matter what kind of drill you claim it is, and there’s no way to make an active shooter drill safe enough to do. Or it could be the case that nothing you could teach in a reasonably safe drill is going to be particularly effective in an actual attack.
But I don’t buy Zvi’s equivalence between anything one could describe as an “active shooter drill” and damaging children’s mental health. All we know is that current practice appears to be damaging children’s mental health.
I’m not convinced that it’s not possible to design a program of drills that teach a useful response to the every-6000-year problem of “your school is under attack”, without injuring the mental health of the students to the point where it isn’t worth doing. (Whether it’s then worth the time from the school day is another question, which depends on how or whether you value that time to begin with.)
Is there a similar problem with the mental health costs of fire, tornado, and earthquake drills being remarkably high? Having experienced those drills, and seeing the complaints about active shooter drills inflicting trauma, I’m left concluding that the active shooter drills are a fundamentally different kind of practice than other emergency drills. We could abolish them and book a net win, but maybe we could also make them like the other drills instead, and thus make them cost-effective to do, for an even greater benefit.
It could be the case that the other drills are similarly dangerous to mental health, but they have benefits that justify their costs, due to the other kinds of emergencies being more common. Or, it could be that none of the emergencies are worth the mental health costs of drilling for, but we just happen to be examining this one right now. Or, it could be that broadly comparable physical drill activities are much more damaging to one’s mental health when one is told one is practicing for being attacked by a human, rather than a tornado, and the kids will figure it out no matter what kind of drill you claim it is, and there’s no way to make an active shooter drill safe enough to do. Or it could be the case that nothing you could teach in a reasonably safe drill is going to be particularly effective in an actual attack.
But I don’t buy Zvi’s equivalence between anything one could describe as an “active shooter drill” and damaging children’s mental health. All we know is that current practice appears to be damaging children’s mental health.