Out of the Box: Protecting Our Schools

Thinking outside of the box requires a discarding of the status quo presumptions that we normally frame our solution and decision making in.  Currently, our public education system is struggling financially to educate our children--let alone having more than nominal funding to adequately protect those most vulnerable in our society's, our children's, presence within a frequently highly notable and scheduled establishment.   In other words, everyone knows where a school is located, that children will most likely be present there somewhere between the hours of 8 am to 4 pm every Monday through Friday.  This is the kind of information that, for the average person, can precipitate very little harm.  For someone like Adam Lanza, although very rare, it's all they need to know should they be looking for easy targets.   At my daughter's elementary school, the sole precaution for preventing unwarranted entry to the school is the windowed front office overlooking the front entry.  In other words, the front office staff would not know who was entering the building until they were already within the building.   Sandy Hook Elementary had a step higher in that entrants into the building had to be "buzzed" in.  However, even this additional precaution failed as Adam Lanza simply shattered the glass to gain entry to the building and proceed with his murderous rampage.  These simple security faults were based on the failing of society as a whole to consider that someone could, in fact, be so sick an individual as to enter an elementary school for the purpose of slaughtering children.  Despite a long history of having the "unthinkable" occur within our schools, we, as we are so prone to do, tend to forget the lessons of history and continue on with the status quo.    Worse yet, now that Adam Lanza has so successfully assaulted society to its very core, then there is a slightly increased risk of copy cat behavior.  The flaw within our rationale and our public education has been exposed.  It must be repaired.

One of the largest talking points within the media has been the ongoing discussion of mental health treatments, how they have failed, and what should be done in the future to prevent the formation of another Adam Lanza.  Such thinking is not so far off the mark but, regrettably, any changes in the mental health system now will not do anything for someone who may already be firmly established within their own form of psychosis.  It also would require society's growing nature of moving away from community thinking and sharing towards individualization and privatization of "family matters" to restore itself back to community thinking and sharing.  We are always loathe to share the personal trials that may exist within our families.  We'd rather be the Joneses than be the ones on the receiving end of assistance and pity.  Adam Lanza was 20 years old and an adult.  His mother, despite having a good deal of money and presumably more than adequate access to quality mental health assistance, was really "on her own" through perhaps her own mind and society, itself.  She didn't offer more than bits of information from a variety of reports of those who knew her and the subject of her son seemed to be a highly private matter.   If this is, presumably, the default response of a parent of a troubled child or adult child, then we can presume that this is what most likely occurs with the majority of families of deeply troubled children.  It is not necessarily a fault within the parent.  We all hope that our children turn out to be wonderful human beings--not cold blooded monsters.  Hence, whereas all the discourse about changes to the mental health system are still appropriate, it is still unlikely to prevent the formation of another Adam Lanza.  In this light, we must look to ourselves to think outside of the box to protect our children in a more immediate sense rather than take steps that would not take any notable effect for a generation. 

Teachers should be armed with guns.
One of the suggestions that I have seen has been to arm teachers and staff with guns.  Unfortunately, that is a suggestion that overlooks the examples that history has to offer us.  A number of school shootings, historically, have been at the hands of school staff with guns.  Guns shouldn't be allowed in schools for two primary reasons: 1. human error may allow unwarranted access to the gun and 2. the authorized holder of the gun can become the culprit.  Although we can safely presume that an extremely high majority of staff would never do such a thing, if we are looking to provide the greatest assurance of safety for our children within the schools, bringing a gun in is not a tenable solution.  It is basically bringing a weapon into the school that could be turned against the holder and the children themselves.  Even bringing in a stun gun still presents the same untenable issues.  Although the number of children that could be injured by the unauthorized use of a stun gun would be minimal compared to the same circumstance with a gun, it is unlikely that such a weapon would be calibrated to a child's body.  That is still an unsafe scenario. 

Preventing unwarranted access through front door entry.
How well schools are funded tend to be a localized matter.  Sandy Hook Elementary, located within an upscale neighborhood, had a security feature that my daughter's decidedly middle class elementary school did not--a buzzer and, most likely, a security camera with adequate resolution to assist in identifying the potential entrant to the school.  This is excellent for schools of upscale neighborhoods but horrific for the majority of schools within the United States.   This indicates a significant funding failure on a federal level in regards to promoting school safety within our public education system.  Worse yet, I can recollect several schools in even less financially secure areas that resorted to the usage of portables away from the main building of the school that would be of even higher risk than my daughter sitting in her 5th grade classroom in the main building of her own.  We will spend billions of dollars annually on national defense but apparently national defense does not apply to within our own national border in providing defense on a national level at our schools.  If some of that national defense spending were applied towards our schools, we would be seeing systems of even higher quality protection than simply a buzzer that can still be dependent on human error.  Every parent of a child knows that, at the beginning of each year, they must fill out a form that lists all individuals authorized to pick up their child.  How difficult would it be, considering that these children will most likely remain within the public education system from K-12, a total of 13 years, to establish a biometric database for those parents and family members authorized to pick up their child. A simple iris scan can nearly reduce human error down to null in assuring that unauthorized entry to a school does not occur without traipsing on concerns about fingerprinting (although many of the 24/7 health clubs utilize biometric fingerprint systems for access) or any RFID chipping.


Why not unbreakable glass? Despite the additional security at the front door of Sandy Hook Elementary, it did not stop Adam Lanza from gaining entry to the school.  All he had to do was break the glass.  One of the simplest ways of still preventing access would've been the placement of bars across the windows.  However, these are schools.  They are not prisons and, in our high tech society, we can certainly do far better than that.  Glass types exist that are both unbreakable and bullet stopping.  Why do we not have these types of glass installed within every school in the United States?  These are our children, after all--the loss of which is generally the worst thing that a parent could ever imagine. Having unbreakable glass does not increase the risk to fire death as windows can be made to open from the interior to allow safe and fast exit from each classroom during the new windows installation.  Now that we know that someone could do such a thing as Adam Lanza, it makes sense that we should, as a society, correct that loophole.

Metal detectors...the sad fact of our growing population.
Nearly every adult recollects the events of Columbine.  Not every adult recollects that there were, within a 10 year span in the 90's both preceding and following Columbine, a total of 240 homicides within our schools between 1992 to 1999.  The number of deaths and school shootings was so unprecedented that the U.S. Secret Service became involved in an attempt to form a profile for school shooters and during the 1998-1999 school year, over 3500 students were expelled for bringing a gun to school.  Although this figure is still a minute portion of the student population as a whole, that would still be a high number of schools as having a student that brought a gun to school.  Although elementary school shootings and gun presence is at the lowest frequency, it is not without historical providence.  The youngest school shooter was only 6 years old at Buell Elementary School.  Also, from as far as I can glean, discussed very little on any national level, has been the detainment or arrest of three different high school students since Friday for making statements or outright planning a school shooting of their own.  We find ourselves at the cusp of possibly entering yet another cycle of school shootings as copy cat behavior may again begin to arise.   As my daughter will be entering into junior high next year and, therefore, into a higher frequency of school shooting (by students themselves), I would rather the inconvenience of her walking through a metal detector than the risk of having the unthinkable as a parent happen.  As our population grows, so does the population of those who have the potential of doing the atrocious as it will remain a relatively static percentage of the total population.  This is a sad and grim fact that we must acknowledge as a society.  In a sense, we should be grateful for the fact that those who made these threats made them on the internet and were reported so quickly.  However, not every shooter is going to give such warnings.

Hot or "Panic" buttons.
When I was in college years ago, I worked for a bank.  One of the things that was installed within the bank at every teller's station was a hot button to notify the authorities of a robbery.  We have had this capacity in our banking system for decades.  Do we have this kind of system established within every classroom in the US?  It is quite possible, considering the fast response to Sandy Hook Elementary, that they may have had a panic button installed somewhere within the school but Sandy Hook also had features not found within other elementary schools in the United States.  Those buttons could provide even faster notification of an issue within a school and should be installed in every school and every classroom to provide the quickest notification to authorities that there is a problem.  Out of all of the above suggestions, considering how long this technology has been out there, it would most likely be the least expensive option for our schools.  It will, however, not prevent another Sandy Hook.

For some time now,  our discourse has been on how expensive our school system is and arguments about how much staff is being paid and educational performance.  This directly impacts the kind of funding that our schools receive and school safety should not be dependent on the economic status of a community or school performance.  As I said earlier, if we can spend billions or even trillions annually on national defense, then part of those proceeds should reasonably go to low key changes for the defense of our schools.  We have so much technology that could be used if we wished it to be.  We are simply too distracted and too cheap a society to actually do it.  School safety should be the one subject that we all can agree on as the lives of our children are priceless.

Lanza and Asperger's

The Newtown, Connecticut school shooting is one of those events that tend to grip the psyche in a stranglehold of questioning and a demanding of answers as to how such a thing could occur or how an individual can do something that the majority of society finds so utterly heinous.  It's frequently at these times that news agencies will grasp at whatever abnormality may have existed with the killer in order to be the first one to provide a simple answer to those questions.  In the case of Adam Lanza, the disorder that became the focus of potentially creating killers was Asperger's.  Many do not understand what Asperger's or autism is and, with the tendency towards what I call having a blank face, it's all too easy to view someone with autism as being totally deadened emotionally, rather like a sociopath.   However, the key difference between someone who is a sociopath and someone who is autistic is that there is a world of difference in feeling.  A sociopath may have little care or feelings.  An autistic child is deeply sensitive to all their feelings and senses. 

I am a mother of a teenaged son with Asperger's.  He permanently dislocated my jaw when he was just 2 years old and slightly damaged the tendons of my right knee when he was 11.  Now these injuries would immediately cause people to be concerned that there is a relationship between violence and autism that would readily explain Adam Lanza's gruesome act.  However, as the person who was injured in both of these events, I can readily say that that is still the wrong impression.  My son dislocated my jaw by repeatedly rocking while sitting on my lap.  All it took was his head forcefully snapping backward one time to crack it into my jawline.  He didn't even know what he had done.  The injury to my knee was the result of an argument about school and whether or not he was doing his homework.  He and I had been going round and round and, out of pure frustration and overload, my son kicked out at me, striking my right knee. He was nearly inconsolable and horrified at his response.  He has never done anything similar again.

It's easy to assume that, if a violent response to an argument can occur, it can very easily recur. Again, that would be a mistaken assumption as it does not take into consideration what it is like to have Asperger's.  Probably the most notable thing about Asperger's that I have witnessed with my son is his extraordinarily rigid adherence to society's rules and laws.  We lived on the Navajo Nation for 7 years, where the possession of alcohol on reservation lands was strictly illegal.  When my son's former stepfather was prescribed a glass of red wine each day to help control a cardiac issue, he was, every evening, confronted with my son, verbally recriminating him for engaging in an illegal activity and lecturing him, by rote, the dangers and evils of alcohol as instructed to him by his school.  My son could not perceive of any exception, not even the the prescription of an authority figure also living on the reservation, that would allow for the ownership and consumption of alcohol.  Most of us do not actively think of what society's rules and laws are.  For my son and many others with Asperger's, those rules and laws are the rigid frame of their existence.  Although my son broke one of society's rules when he kicked out at me in frustration, his shame at the act and the rule breaking was such that he is likely never to repeat it.  Furthermore, even his response at striking out is not an uncommon one with non-autistic boys who are going through the throes of hormonal changes.  I just had the misfortune of not being a wall. 

My son is 16 now and, no different from Adam Lanza as a highly intelligent kid, he just started college.  One of the major reasons why I allowed my son to start college early was that I saw potential dangers growing at his high school should he continue to attend there.  It was not fear for the other students that I felt.  On the contrary, my rigid 6 ft tall built-like-a-barn son had taken society's rules and laws in regard to assault to such a strict adherence that he was walking into fights that were occurring at the school and pulling them apart.  Once he had pulled them apart, he was lecturing the two "law breaking" classmates with all the decorum of a professor, calmly berating them for "behaving like children".  From my maternal eyes and my awareness of what society can be like, it was only a matter of time that the unthinkable, for a mom, could happen--my son was going to get punched in the face.  Worse yet, his view of society was getting abysmal as he was coming home frustrated and likening his peers at the school as being like "animals in a zoo".  I never once was worried that my son would somehow come to loathe society so much that he would lash out at it.  My concern was that instead, with his habit of forming rigid opinions on a variety of matters, he would form a rigid opinion of society as a whole that would leave him permanently isolated from the whole of humanity. 

An individual with Asperger's already has a hard enough time not feeling isolated from others.  A highly intelligent individual with Asperger's can so easily regard society, between their deep thinking, calm demeanor, and deep sensitivities, as being morally repugnant for we do things that defy reason, rationality, and explanation.  We break rules all the time whether it's going 60 mph on the highway or pushing it a little too far at a stop light.  We disregard human suffering as we walk by the homeless and hungry on the street.  We get excited over inanimate objects like the latest iPhone when, for my son, he gets excited over learning something new that inspires him to see the world in a completely different way.   Although those with Asperger's may not always be able to express either visually or verbally what it is that they feel, I would hazard that they are feeling and thinking on such a deep level as to deaden the expression.  It is not until you give my son pen and paper that you can see how deeply his humanity lies.  For these reasons, I do not see Asperger's as any sort of mental defect or disorder or something that could, on its own, produce a potential killer.  On the contrary, I see Asperger's as nature's doing for society requires that we have some individuals that can witness and describe our behaviors as a society in a manner that brings us to reflect on those aspects of ourselves that are irrational, law breaking and logic defying. 

As a mother of a highly intelligent son with Asperger's, I find it deeply confusing as to how Adam Lanza came to be if he did, in fact, have Asperger's.  It is not to say that it is impossible that, given a series of faults along the lines of his development, that Asperger's couldn't have potentially played a role.  His actions, however, absolutely contradict the severe tendency towards rigid rule adherence so common with Asperger's.  The only way that I could see it as possibly occurring is if Adam Lanza was, through society or perhaps through his mother, given an altered set of rules that do no exist within normal society.  However, attempting to change or adapt the rules of society is one of the most difficult things to do with someone who has Asperger's--even if it's as harmless as drinking red wine to save a life.  If Adam Lanza was, in fact, diagnosed as having Asperger's, then, contrary to all the news agencies who wish to point a finger at Asperger's and autism as being the simple answer, there is no simple answer.  If it did, in fact, play any role, then the circumstances to create Adam Lanza had to be so severe and profuse as to contradict Asperger's very nature and tendencies.