arming teachers argumentative

Why Teachers Should Not be Armed
Introduction
Often in recent years, school shootings have been followed by public, political debates about guns. One of the arguments from the pro-gun side is that teachers should be armed, in order to help prevent school shootings. Their argument is essentially that teachers are in position already, there in the school, and that they will have opportunities to stop a school shooter long before law enforcement can arrive on the scene and do the same. Their arguments, on the surface, do not sound unreasonable, but when examined more carefully, there are issues with these arguments. Arguments both for and against arming teachers have been examined, and the conclusion is that teachers should not be armed.
The Case for Arming Teachers
The case for arming teachers typically rests on the logic that teachers are in position in the schools, and therefore are a de facto first responder in the event of a school shooting. Their roles as protectors for students should, therefore, extend to being armed so that they can theoretically stop a shooter. These arguments are elaborated on by Sheriff Grady Judd, a member of the school safety commission that investigated the Parkland shooting. Judd points out that the average school shooting is between two and five minutes, and that law enforcement response time is typically over five minutes. As such, law enforcement alone cannot be relied upon to defend students against shooters (Fox, 2019).
There are a few caveats to this argument. The first is that proponents of arming teachers prefer that teachers should be trained. On the surface, this is reasonable and logical – training for all people who handle firearms makes sense. The lack of formal definition for what this training actually entails, and what standards should exist, is part of the problem with this line of argument. Schools, by and large, are run at local levels. In a country where there are no federal standards for law enforcement training, the idea that there would be reliable federal standards for teacher firearm training is implausible. Thus, trained teachers would in practice have a wide range of training, ranging from basic firearms handling to more advanced training.
Faster Saves Lives is a group that trains teachers to shoot to kill. However, even with that sort of training, there are other barriers to assuming that this will move the needle in defending students. First, training and real life experience are two entirely different things. When faced with automatic gunfire, and a rapidly evolving situation, people without experience in combat or law enforcement are unlikely to respond the same way. Indeed, the data shows that even law enforcement officers, with a much higher degree of training and experience, do not shoot accurately in a crisis encounter (Kirk, 2018).
Second, there are some fundamental problems with this model. First, there is a shortage of such training, and funding for it. Most teachers make little money and yet would have to cover the cost of this training, or the cost of acquiring a firearm and any relevant permits, themselves, which would create a barrier to implementation of the plan (Willis, 2019). Many districts have rejected the idea on purely practical grounds (Newkirk, 2018).
If these points are conceded – say, that even if teachers have variable training and would perform inconsistently under crisis situations. Or we ignore the anecdotes about accidental discharges in the classroom, which are the equivalent of the good guy with a good stories used to support arming teachers arguments but equally fallacious, there are still compelling reasons not to arm teachers.
The Case Against Arming Teachers
The first argument against arming teachers is that they are educators, and their role is to provide education. Teachers are often poorly-paid in America, this despite often having a college education. Districts are frequently squeezed on funding. Thus, teachers in many instances already struggle just to provide the basic elements of an education. Adding the provision of security services to their roles makes little sense – it takes away from their primary function for which they are trained. If security is needed at schools, it should be provided by those who are trained for the role, and whose duty it is to perform this role. A teacher in front of class should be focused on teaching, and the security personnel should be the ones patrolling the halls and campus to deal with potential threats. For a poorly-paid teacher who is untrained or barely trained in firearms handling to split focus in this way makes little sense – if security is needed that role should fall to a trained security professional.
The reality is that most teachers support this view. They got into teaching to educate children, not to play the role of armed security forces. 82% of educators in a recent survey indicated that they would not carry a firearm in the classroom even if they were allowed to do so, and had received firearms training (Education Week, 2018). Not everybody wants to play that role, or is even well-suited for it.
Another view that many in education hold is that schools are actually quite safe, and arming teachers creates a negative environment, both for educating and for working. Schools likened to prisons are poor environments, and students respond negatively to the visual cues such as guns and metal detectors and shooter drills that they are under a state of constant threat. Being prepared is one thing, but making this security and militarization of the education system a constant is another matter entirely, one that undermines the entire purpose of the education system. Good teachers may leave the system and it will become harder to replace them. Students, for their part, will not have the same openness that they would in an environment in which they feel safe.
Alternatives
One of the issues that tends to arise in the course of this debate is the lack of viable alternatives. Arming teachers is by no means a binary option. Indeed, when one steps back and examines the core problem – providing a secure educational environment in a world where people shoot up schools – there are a number of different components to the problem. To determine that arming teachers is the solution means that it would have to contribute to this end goal. Taking a quick examination of some of the other issues at play, this is not necessarily a conclusion that a reasonable person would reach.
First, teachers are in a position to respond more quickly than law enforcement. While true, most teachers do not want to be put into this position, and asking teachers to perform a role for which they are unsuited, and which is otherwise not related to their job duties, creates a role conflict that could make recruiting teachers more difficult. Mandatory arming of teachers is going to be off the table because of this. However, the ease with which school shooters kill – the high numbers of people shot in a very short span of time – is also related to the weapons to which they have access. If such weapons were unavailable, there would potentially still be school shooters, but they would be able to kill and injure fewer people.
Furthermore, slower weapons would provide much more opportunity for the proverbial good guy with a gun – teacher or otherwise – to handle the situation. An armed teacher with no experience in combat, is going to struggle to shoot accurately when coming under fire from an AR-15. Forms of gun control that reduce the ability of shooters to kill large numbers of people in a short period of time would be the clearest pathway to safer schools.
The other factor is whether teachers should be viewed as this first line of defense. Trained security personnel, who specialize in sharp-shooting, and have tactical training, would be much better suited to the role. If districts cannot fund such personnel, then that is a matter for voters to increase district funding. Labor specialization makes sense in situations where the roles are dramatically different, and this is one of those situations. This is not to say that teachers cannot be armed, just that they should not be armed as if they are responsible for keeping the school safe. That is a job of trained security professionals.
Conclusions
Teachers should not be armed in response to school shootings. Most teachers neither want this responsibility nor are equipped to bear it. They are not soldiers or police and should not be treated as such. Even with firearms training, there is no evidence to support the idea that teachers will be effective deterrants, or be able to shoot accurately enough to actually stop a shooter. Even if we conceded the point that occasionally a teacher can perform this role, and therefore there would be some reduction in school shooting deaths as a result of arming teachers, there are other, better solutions, and there are costs related to reduction in the quality of education, which is the primary objective of schools.
Schools should focus on educating students, and that should be the role of teachers as well. If security needs to be enhanced, trained security personnel should be utilized, rather than ill-equipped and ill-prepared teachers, most of whom want nothing to do with playing the security role. Measures to reduce the ability of shooters to do mass harm will be more effective than arming teachers at reducing death and injury due to school shootings. Thus, arming teachers probably will not solve the problem posed by school shooters, will definitely have negative effects, and is basically a political red herring used to distract from the more effective solution alternatives, which just happen to be opposed by proponents of arming teachers.


References

Education Week (2018) Should teachers carry guns? The debate, explained. Education Week. Retrieved April 28, 2019 from https://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/arming-teachers.html

Fox 13 News Staff (2019) Arming teachers: A sheriff’s perspective. Fox 5. Retrieved April 28, 2019 from http://www.fox5ny.com/news/arming-teachers-sheriffs-perspective

Kirk, M. (2018) What research says about arming teachers. CityLab. Retrieved April 28, 2019 from https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/03/what-the-research-says-about-arming-teachers/555545/

Newkirk, V. (2018) Arming educators violates the spirit of the second amendment. The Atlantic. Retrieved April 28, 2019 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/the-absurdity-of-armed-educators/553961/

Willis, J. (2019) When you give a teacher a gun. GQ.com. Retrieved April 28, 2019 from https://www.gq.com/story/when-you-give-a-teacher-a-gun