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Topic: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's (Read 1075 times) |
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Donna_D.
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Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« on: Oct 14th, 2006, 10:29am » |
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This is happening very near where I live.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/10/13/defending.the.classroom.ap/index .html
I am interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.
I shall reserve mine for later... 
DD
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unsolved1
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #1 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 11:30am » |
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I have some mixed feelings about it. First of all, it would be great to see students/teachers take out an attacker before anyone got hurt. But how realistic is that?
I don't think I want my 13 yo, unarmed son taking on a man with a gun. I'd rather see him run his ass off if he could. It may sound a little cowardly, but he's just a kid with no weapons or special training. Throwing a book at a crazed gunman sounds like a bad idea to me.
Instead of putting the kids on the front lines, why doesn't the schools hire a couple of SWAT members to patrol the schools instead ? Woudn't the cost be worth it, if the situation arose ? Maybe even have a couple of trained dogs in the schools everyday. ??
Would you want your young children fighting unarmed against a crazed gunman unless it was absolutley neccessary? I would want that to be the very last resort!
My .02 worth
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BB
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #2 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 11:31am » |
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I believe it depends on the age of the children. Less than 10 years old should be taught to run away if possible, 10 and above could be taught to fight back. They need to be trained properly though.
I have 2 boys, aged 7 and 10 and both are training in various martial arts. They started with Tae Kwon Do and now has moved to Combat Training with weapons. They are both very gentle in nature but they are not afraid to fight back. They have been trained never to start a fight but will not hesitate to defend themselves and their loved ones.
I have trained in Karate myself so I guess my view is quite biased.
As a mother, I pray to God that my children will never have to face such an attacker, but if they ever were, I would prefer to see them fighting back with all they have got rather than just sitting there helplessly and be taken down.
This is my very personal view and I can understand the arguement for both sides.
Annette
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BMoneeTheMoneeMan
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #3 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 12:09pm » |
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I think it is a good idea to 'mob' a threat. If one kid tries to attack a gunman, they would have less than a 50% of success. If an entire class rushed and tackled a gunman, some kids might be shot, but the gunman would be taken down in seconds.
I dont like the idea of SWAT or police patroling schools, mainly because it is damn near impossible to be in the right place at the right time. I also dont like the idea of a shootout at a school. I think the first step is to have controlled access to schools. If we can keep guns out of schools in the first place, that is half the battle.
This is a tough situation, who the hell knows the right answer that will protect our kids?
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chewy
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #4 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 12:34pm » |
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Simple question.
Would you want your kid to be at the front of the pack?
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LeLimey
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #5 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 12:38pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2006, 12:34pm, chewy wrote:Simple question.
Would you want your kid to be at the front of the pack? |
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No I wouldn't. I don't know what to make of this at all but making commando's of children.. where did we learn this? Iraq?
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Racer1_NC
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #6 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 12:43pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2006, 12:09pm, BMoneeTheMoneeMan wrote:
I also dont like the idea of a shootout at a school. |
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I'd rather have that than a crazed gunman shooting up the place with no one there to take him out.
on Oct 14th, 2006, 12:34pm, chewy wrote:| Would you want your kid to be at the front of the pack? |
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Rather than cowering in a corner somewhere waiting to be shot? Yes.
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chewy
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #7 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 12:44pm » |
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Quote:Students are also instructed not to comply with a gunman's orders, and to take him down.
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First person to instruct my kid to do that is looking at a law suit.
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ClusterChuck
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #8 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 1:27pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2006, 12:34pm, chewy wrote:Simple question.
Would you want your kid to be at the front of the pack? |
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HELL NO!
I'm with Don on this one (I can't believe I am saying that!)
Chuck
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #9 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 1:42pm » |
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If I am amongst friends and family and a gunman turns up threatening to take us all down and we have nowhere to run, I will be at the front of the pack in a flash, without hesitation ! Not because I am suicidal or trying to be a hero, to me its the right thing to do.
I would not blame my sons if they decide to run in a similar situation but I would be damn proud of them if they decide to step up to the front also.
Annette
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chewy
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #10 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 1:45pm » |
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Quote:| Rather than cowering in a corner somewhere waiting to be shot? Yes. |
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Yup. Thats what we need. 12 year old dead heros with proud parents at the funerals.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2006, 1:46pm by chewy » |
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Racer1_NC
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #11 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 1:52pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2006, 1:45pm, chewy wrote:
Yup. Thats what we need. 12 year old dead heros with proud parents at the funerals. |
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As opposed to dead 12 year olds that waited patiently until the shooter got around killing them?
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chewy
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #12 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 1:57pm » |
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No. As opposed to a well thought out preventive security and lock down polcy insituted by trained ADULTS with in the school system that we pay to educate and PROTECT our children.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:00pm by chewy » |
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BB
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #13 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:05pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2006, 1:45pm, chewy wrote:
Yup. Thats what we need. 12 year old dead heros with proud parents at the funerals. |
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What have we got now?
Dead children with parents falling apart at funerals. Its already happening, sadly enough!
The current practice of telling children to get to the floor and to comply with whatever the attacker asks is not working. Thats why the authority needs to look at alternative and hopefully better approach.
Maybe we should ban all firearms, no personal license allowed? Metal detectors at the school gates? Security guard to patrol the school ground? Panic button and alarm in each classroom? A backdoor in every classroom so that the children can run out fast without having to get past the attacker? Teachers to be taught and armed with sprays ?
Its a very complicated matter and there is no quick/perfect solution.
Annette
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:12pm by BB » |
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LeLimey
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #14 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:10pm » |
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Okay this is a question not an accusation or whatever.
After we had a school massacre here in Dunblane all schools throughout the British Isles are now locked and have entryphones. You cannot get in during school hours without an appointment or being known to the staff but you still have to go in via the entryphone. At the schools my kids are at you then go into a secure area and have to be buzzed through to further area's as well but I wouldn't say that was the case for all schools.
I'm not saying thats foolproof as nothing ever is but could you not just have something similar and if not why wouldn't it work? This is a straightforward "I don't know" question not a trick one!
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Melissa
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #15 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:10pm » |
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How about funding mandatory parental education to recognize the warning signs & prevent children intending to massacre?
my  (just cause I had to say something...)
as for the adults that kill, well, that's a different question that I don't have the answer to at the moment.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:11pm by Melissa » |
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #16 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:10pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2006, 1:57pm, chewy wrote:| No. As opposed to a well thought out preventive security and lock down polcy insituted by trained ADULTS with in the school system that we pay to educate and PROTECT our children. |
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And when that fails (as most systems do), THEN they wait paiently? I agree, security and I might add armed protection should be the first line of defense. BUT teaching kids to defend themselves in various situations is NOT a bad idea.
No one in the country is better protected than a sitting President and that system fails on occasion. Think local school systems can do a better job than the Secret Service? You have more faith than I.
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LeLimey
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #17 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:11pm » |
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In answer to my own question.. I hadn't considered Mels point that sometimes its kids doing the shooting.. I was thinking only of an adult gaining entry.
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Lizzie2
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #18 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:21pm » |
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I read this story first over at a fellow medical blogger's website. Here were some of the comments from over there:
Quote:Comments
The passengers on Flight 93 have taught us how to approach terror wherever it occurs, even in the classroom.
October 14, 2006 09:22 AM
I think that one of the things that made 9/11 the "success" it was, was that, prior to that day, a hijacking meant going to some other country's airport, then some kind of demands made with the passengers as hostages. The passengers on Flight 93 eventually figured out that it was all about using the plane as a missile, at which point they literally had nothing to lose.
In these school shootings, the perpetrators no doubt are quite ready for an attack, so going at them with books or whatever only hastens the bloodshed, so encouraging schoolchildren to intervene is to ask them to sacrifice their lives.
October 14, 2006 09:31 AM
I gotta admit, just as you don't want to bring a knife to a gun fight, you don't want to bring a book to one, either...
The flight 93 situation was 43 grown adults going after three men with knives... a far cry from 30 kids going after an armed individual..
I, too, fear for my kids in this type of situation, but I really can't support asking young kids to attempt to rush an armed individual with a gun, armed with pencils and books...
October 14, 2006 09:54 AM
I go on record as being against using children as attack raids, law enforcement, or anything of the like.
I'm guessing the teachers are taught to hide under their desks while the children stab the intruder with pencils.
October 14, 2006 10:42 AM
I don't know what I think on this one. It's become such a crazy world... Although an organized attack on one individual makes sense, I'm not sure that children could pull it off. Maybe they need to have a secret button in teachers' desks, like they have at the bank, to call the cops. Kind of like that radio in the ER we used to have--where if we clicked it, the cops would call and if we answered "Everything's okay" they'd come with a Swat Team...
October 14, 2006 12:39 PM
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I dont' quite know what to make of this just yet. However, I like the last comment where they talk about having a button that teachers could push. We also had this at the crisis hotline where I worked because we could also take walk-ins. It was a blue button that went directly to the cops.
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deltadarlin
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #19 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 4:07pm » |
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If you're gonna go something like this, why not teach the teachers/kids hostage negotiating skill? Would that not serve them better?
This is all well and good in a *teaching* setting, but there is no guarantee that the kids would act as a team if the situation actually occured. You could very well be looking at a situation where one kid responds and the other kids don't, then what do you have? One dead kid very possibly.
I think there may be some merit in teaching kids how to react to a situation like this, but there has to be a better way.
Looking at the latest shooting in Colorado, it could have been prevented. Numerous students saw the man in the parking lot and saw him drinking (noone reported it) and then the man walked the halls asking about various students (noone reported it). Teach your kids to be hyperaware of their surroundings. Make them realize that *strange* may very well mean unsafe and needs to be reported immediately.
If this man had tried to get into the school where Helen's kids are, it wouldn't have happened. Of course, the problem there occurs is that there are some extremely large schools here that are sprawled out over rather large campuses.
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #20 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 7:27pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2006, 4:07pm, deltadarlin wrote:
I think there may be some merit in teaching kids how to react to a situation like this, but there has to be a better way. |
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Well said!!!!!
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #21 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 9:17pm » |
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The problem with the idea is that people do in a stressful situation what they have practiced. When I first went through the law enforcement academy, when we went to the firing range, we had to pick up our brass after each firing position. We would pick up brass several times during the course of a training session. It got to be such an automatic response, that some police officers who were killed in armed confrontations were found with spent brass in their hands/pockets. In the heat of a gun battle, they died doing what they had practiced. Fortunately, they changed the curriculum and officers lives were saved.
These were adults, trained to handle themselves under fire. How much better will a child fare?
Unless there are frequent "Scumbag Drills" in the classroom, kids are going to do what they are taught by their parents, teachers and society in general and what they practice daily - be non-confrontational. If a gunman enters and fires a shot, one or two kids (maybe three or four) might remember s/he is supposed to throw his books and stuff at the gunman, but most kids will sit there in fear trying not to draw attention to themselves. Personally, I don't want my grandkids leading an empty charge at a homicidal maniac. Bravely dead is still dead. Not what I want for my grand children.
How many people here have ever been shot at? It's a frightening experience that paralyzes some of the bravest adults in fear. Even some law enforcement people, after all the training and practice, freeze when they or their partner can least them afford to.
I just don't think it's a good idea. I'd rather see closed school campasses, school uniforms (harder to pick out a specific target and would solve some other problems that exist in the schools these days), training for teachers and administrators, and more and better security.
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Kevin_M
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #22 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 10:11pm » |
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Leading a charge against all odds. We've maybe read about the successes in history trying to prevent a massacre situation, done under orders or by leadership. Brave. Heroes. Many times the results are only slightly less tragic when even successful but the desparate persons are also armed, and many haven't succeeded.
But Unarmed?
This school situations are the unarmed leading a charge against the fully prepared, of which there may be more than one.
Mike makes some good points.
Going at a person who has an automatic or semi-automatic weapon who wants to kill people is offering a lot of opportunity to a lunatic who would be probably standing back a distance from people at first appearance. And each situation can be different for a single plan toward all.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2006, 10:28pm by Kevin_M » |
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Lizzie2
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #23 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 10:20pm » |
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I think this quote from the article is important:
Quote:Some students said they appreciate the training.
"It's harder to hit a moving target than a target that is standing still," said 14-year-old Jessica Justice, who received the training over the summer during freshman orientation at Burleson High. |
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OK so that is a good way to ensure they won't just crouch under their desks and wait to be shot. Or line up against the blackboard without saying one word in dissent like the Amish schoolgirls. Keeping moving or trying to run out of the room is important - especially if there's only one gunman and he or she has moved away from the door. Unfortunately, many will block access to the door, and if there's a second gunman, they may block the door while the other walks around the classroom.
The scenarios are endless. I do think it's important to note that it is much harder to hit a moving target. However, I still don't like the idea of children storming the attacker. I cannot get the image out of my head of a bunch of little 5 year olds running at the gunman with their blunt tipped, plastic scissors...
Furthermore, I think that if the drills are practiced as much as they would need to be in order to instill confidence and repetition in the kids (especially in smaller children), then some kids are going to be really traumatized - even by the worry that they may need to use these skills. Children have very vivid imaginations. When I was young, I remember being freaked out by the stories that students would pass around about someone murdering girls with long blonde hair and blue eyes. It was all myth. If they're going to do this, especially with the little ones, they had better have counselors available to make sure the kids are coping with this whole thing okay. And not just counselors to wait for the kids to come to them after nights of bad dreams and decreased performance in school. They'd need counselors to be proactive and hold small-group sessions or talk to children one on one to ensure that they were okay...
My mom is an elementary school secretary, and she tells me stories all the time... I've heard such a wide variety of things - from the funny, to the neat, to the sad, etc. I can't imagine instructing the kids of her stories to do this sort of thing. Can you all think of a child you know and imagine what the reaction of that child when you go to teach them how to ambush a guy with a gun?
Also, what if this makes the gunman really mad - and even more determined to kill and he just starts popping off people left and right even more than he might have otherwise? Some people bring the gun in simply to create a hostage situation until they get what they want and not with the intent of killing anyone. But how do you differentiate? These kids ambush a gunman like that, and people might die who wouldn't necessarily have been killed...
I just don't know about this.... I suppose Texas is the one place where this could be trialed for the first time. If they tried to do this around where I live, it would never fly - at least not right now!
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2006, 10:21pm by Lizzie2 » |
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Charlie
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Re: Teaching Kids to fight back...Pro's and Con's
« Reply #24 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 10:36pm » |
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I'm with Mike:
I can see something like this being turned on its head. Mis-identification, resulting in taking out a visiting substitute teacher, for example. Some schools are already full of nervous people. It would likely make things worse that way. Reactions of most adults in these situations are unpredictable, with children, certainly so.
I like the idea of something being done but looks like it's one more thing police would have to deal with. Things are bad enough in those situations. Still, just these discussions will likely have a little effect and perhaps just the right amount.
Charlie
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