Lock-downs

[This did not post properly the first time, don't know why....]

In Southern California, students have been walking out of school by the tens of thousands on key days, to join protests against proposed immigration laws. These laws would (among other things) deport parents while leaving their children behind in the U.S., apparently in state custody. These students have met with scorn and sarcasm from the major media, who claim they just want a free day off from school. One student organizer I heard interviewed on the radio asked, "Why would we walk three miles to city hall in the rain if we just wanted to goof off?"

Schools have reacted to these walk-outs by instituting "lock-downs." I still can't get over it that they use the same term which is used in prisons, and without any chagrin or embarrassment. Anyway, one recent lock-down is being criticized:

[O]ne Inglewood elementary school imposed a lockdown so severe that some students were barred from using the restroom. Instead, they used buckets placed in classroom corners or behind teachers' desks.

Appalled by the school's action, Worthington Elementary School parents have complained to the school board and plan to attend another board meeting next week.

Principal Angie Marquez imposed the lockdown March 27 when nearly 40,000 middle and high school students across Southern California staged walkouts.

Apparently these lock-downs are also used during locker searches, in which police enter the school using dogs to hunt down drugs. They are ordered at the drop of a hat because of student fights or reports of a student making threats. To give you an idea of the sorts of threats which throw administrators into a panic, consider this case:

In Ponchatoula, Louisiana, a 12-year-old who had been diagnosed with a hyperactive disorder warned the kids in the lunch line not to eat all the potatoes, or "I'm going to get you." The student, turned in by the lunch monitor, was expelled for two days. He was then referred to police by the principal, and the police charged the boy with making "terroristic threats." He was incarcerated for two weeks while awaiting trial.

There are other absurd examples at the above link. I presume that lock-downs would be similarly misused during frequent over-reactions by principals.

Naturally, they are touted as being for the students' protection:

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. Across the country, many schools hold lockdown drills because of terrorism fears and school shootings like the Columbine High bloodbath in Colorado in 1999 that left 15 people dead.

But Minnesota could apparently become the first state to require such exercises. A proposal before the Minnesota Legislature would mandate at least five lockdown drills a year while reducing the required number of fire drills.

Legislatures in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and South Dakota are among those weighing laws that would require schools to update safety plans periodically and practice them regularly.

The increased use of this prison tactic isn't really about safety, though, because schools are actually becoming safer. According to a Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice report (somewhat out of date, from 2000):

• During the 1998-1999 school year, the year that included the Columbine shooting, the National School Safety Center reported that there were 26 school associated violent deaths-- a 40% decline from the previous year. Since there are 52 million students in America's schools, the odds of dying a violent death in a school in America last year was one in two million.

• A joint study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics found that between 1993 and 1997, the number of school crimes declined 29%, the number of serious violent crimes declined 34%, the number of violent crimes (including fighting) declined 27%, and the number of thefts declined 29%.

• A study by researchers from the Department of Special Education at the University of Maryland found that students at schools which employed "secure building" strategies to combat crime (including metal detectors and locker searches) were more likely to be afraid and be victimized than those attending schools which used less restrictive school safety measures.

It's not even about school board members trying to address community fears, albeit unfounded fears. The above report also found that 86% of teachers, 89% of students and 89% of law enforcement officers felt that their local schools were safe.

The lock-down policies are coming from places like Homeland Security and state legislatures, not from parents and teachers. This idea is being pushed by those in power, and I don't mean on the school boards. Practicing lock-downs is seen as a homeland security exercise, something which might protect us somehow from terrorism (completely ridiculous, of course). I guess politicians like to look like they're doing something, and this is easier than (say) assisting in the clean-up of nukes in the former USSR, or checking the cargo coming into our ports, or providing economic relief to certain countries with angry unemployed men who provide the reservoir of terrorists. Or, just to toss out an idea here, not bombing the bejeezus out of the Middle East.

But the larger benefit to those in power may be that the next generation of adults will be far less resistant to the use of temporary martial law, curfews, enforced quarantines, or whatever else the government has in mind. They'll feel just like they're back in first grade, peeing in a bucket.