Teachers Should Not Have Guns

On March 14, 2018, students nation-wide staged walkouts to draw attention to gun-safety. (Photo: Reuters)

Part One: Introduction

I’ve really been proud of the teenagers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and all the others around the country who have demanded sensible gun-safety legislation. They still are not likely to have any success with the Republican-controlled Congress, which is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the National Rifle Association, the lobbying arm of the munitions industry. Nevertheless, there seems to be hope for reasonable policies by retailers, large corporations, and incremental steps by some state legislatures.

Discontinuing the sales of assault weapons is a no-brainer. Their sole purpose is to kill as many people as possible in the shortest length of time. I had a two-hour ride in a tow truck several weeks ago with a driver who bragged about how the police always came to his house every time his neighbors complained that he fired one of his guns. He then bragged about owning 40 assault rifles and insisted over and over that he didn’t have them to kill people. I spoke as little as possible. This guy didn’t seem to be playing with a full deck, and I wanted to get home alive.

However, our raising the age of purchasing guns from 18 to 21 is problematic: How do you deny anyone who can vote and who can fight and be willing to die in the military from being able to purchase a hunting rifle. Universal background checks is also a no-brainer and might resolve the age issue.

The worst suggestion on how to limit mass shootings in the schools is the one about arming teachers. Not surprisingly, President Donald J. Trump has endorsed this proposal, and that ought to sound alarm bells. You certainly don’t want students to bring guns to school. As a teacher of history for 20 years in public and private high schools and a teacher in adult education for an additional 20 years, I only took a gun – a pistol – away from a student one time. I saw it and asked for it, and he handed it to me. That was in a high school near Austin, Tex., in 1990, but I don’t know how that would work out today.

The very last thing anyone should want is for a teacher to have a weapon in a classroom. Teaching can be fun and a very rewarding personal experience, and I can personally attest to that.  However, it is also a very exhausting, stressful, underpaid, and underappreciated profession. Much of the work a teacher does is done at home and without pay.

One goes into teaching because one enjoys it, wants to make a difference, and wants to instill knowledge in the nation’s youth. One does not go into education to accumulate great wealth.  This means that most public and private school teachers work for modest salaries in return for Social Security, Medicare, and state teacher pensions in their retirement. According to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, an icon of the old Republican Party and of the current Trumpistas, that means that teachers are “losers, leeches, and moochers” who take from the “worthy” people to survive.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – On February 14, 2018, 17 people were killed and 17 more were wounded.  (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Part Two: The Situation

Let me tell you about the worst school where I ever tried to teach and endured the most miserable single semester of my life.  This should give you a good idea why you do not want any teacher to have a gun in the classroom.

I won’t identify the town or high school because this was in the mid-1970s and things may not be the same there now. But I will say that I lived in Fayetteville, Ark., and the one-way commute with heavy two-lane traffic took about 30 minutes. The superintendent and principal hired me because they wanted an experienced history teacher to build a viable social studies program, which the school was conspicuously lacking. There was some selfishness involved because each of them had homes in the community and their own children were approaching the high school level.  They wanted a school that could provide a good college preparatory education. I was really impressed and took the job. Sadly, neither the superintendent nor the principal had consulted the powers-that-be in the community, so I was in for a rude awakening.

In fairness, I should point out that the only mean-spirited class was my first period, 11^th grade U.S. history class. The obvious problem was that I was put in a bad mood for the rest of the day. My 9^th grade civics class, my 10^th grade world history class, and my other 11^th grade U.S. history class were all fine, with students who not only didn’t mind learning but most were glad for the opportunity. There was one other 12^th grade current events class, but I have no memories of it at all.

I also will admit that my subconscious has successfully suppressed all the destructive and nerve-wrecking antics that those first period juniors displayed, and I have no intention of undergoing psychoanalysis to restore those memories. What follows may give you an idea.

My carpool from Fayetteville to the school consisted of me and two other teachers. I will call the English teacher Edna and the math teacher Mike. Edna had already taught two or three years there – the first one being really bad with the students who were now in my first period; Mike had taught somewhere else before, but, like me, this was his first year here, and he hit the same obstructionism that I did.

I pointed out to Edna and Mike that my first period class was openly hostile and contemptuous and was planning as a group to get failing grades so as to blame me. Edna confessed that those same students had treated her in a similar way, but it had taken most of that year for her to realize what was going on. She said she went home every day and cried because she believed she was such a bad teacher. She had no previous teaching experience and didn’t pick up on what they doing as quickly as I did. Once those students moved on, her experience at the school improved immensely.

Mike, on the other hand, would hardly speak to us on our daily road trips. He silently dreaded each day, held his anger inside him, and really fumed on the way back home. He rarely spoke to us when he got out of the car. Occasionally he talked about how they needed to get rid of the bad students so he could teach the good ones, but no one in the administration would help him – but, as I said, he rarely spoke at all. Edna and I worried that he might own a gun. Every day we feared that he might very well get out of the car, go into his apartment, and blow his brains out. Even though he was not good company, we were relieved to see him each morning.

That was in the mid-1970s. Today, we would fear that Mike would do something else. If he had pistol, as soon as the tormentors started in on him, he’d go berserk, an pull out that gun and start blowing away as many of them as he could – the good kids would be unintended casualties as well. If he brought in an assault weapon, the carnage would be greater.

Fortunately, about six weeks into the school year, Mike simply gave the school a week’s notice that he was resigning and relieved our fears of his suicide. As I recall, the school never could find a replacement for him. All of his substitutes were offered a permanent job if they wanted it. All of them declined, saying that it was “impossible to teach those people.” That math position was a revolving door for the rest of the semester.

Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut – On December 14, 2012, 20 children between 6 and 7 years old and 6 adult staff members were killed. This led to a sensible gun-safety bill to be proposed on the national level, but the Republican-led Congress refused to pass it. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Part Three: The Debacle

In my case, after the mid-term grades went out, the school librarian stuck her head into my classroom before the first bell and said, “You didn’t check the social register before you recorded grades, did you?” It turned out that my troublemakers had been placed together whenever possible since elementary school, and the local teachers knew not to waste energy trying to teach them. They just recorded good grades and passed them on. The hostile students were the offspring of the powers-that-be in the community, and no one wanted to upset them. The librarian was right. Edna had told me part of the story, but nobody warned me about the parents. It’s what I call Offutt’s Law: the more important it is for you to know something, the less likely that information will be volunteered to you.

The principal approached me and said that “these people are coming up here, and we’re going to have to make some concessions to them.” He and the superintendent wanted to tell the parents that it was my suggestion that we wipe their mid-semester grades off the books and determine the fall semester grades solely on the second half. I agreed to let them say and do whatever they wanted because I realized that their jobs depended on placating the community leaders. I presumed that since this was something that should never be considered, let alone suggested, that they also understood that once they were off the hook I would resign and get the hell out of there.

When we met with the irate parents, I was confronted with one screwball accusation after another. The students apparently correctly believed that their parents would believe anything they told them. There was one parent who didn’t seem to belong there. Every time a false accusation was made, she would say, “Now do you really believe that?” When the kangaroo court ended, she introduced herself to me. She was the mother of the one student who never participated in the hostility: he never took notes, but always concentrated on my every word and made very good grades. She told me: “I asked my son, ‘What’s that man doing up there (in the classroom)?’ He said that you were very interesting and were trying to do a good job. But he told me, ‘Mother, they won’t let him.’ So I thought I should come up here and present another side to the story.” I thought that was pretty brave of her.

The other absurd concession we made to those parents was that I would no longer attempt to teach the class but would give them textbook assignments to do in class and as homework. One of the many problems with that was that the coach who had previously been the social studies teacher had picked a readings book instead of a textbook. It was intended to supplement some other textbook. That was fine with me because I didn’t need a textbook, but, now, the readings book wasn’t going to be supplementing anything. Anyway, the idea was that I would give them busy work to do and give them A grades on each assignment they turned in. That would be the basis of their course grades. I apologized to that one concerned parent and suggested her son transfer to the good U.S. history class. However, both of us agreed that because of peer pressure, that probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

What if I had broken down under the pressure of dealing with unruly students and unfriendly parents? What if I had been in possession of any firearm during any of these student/parent shenanigans? Any armed teacher could very well have blown away that first period class with a concealed assault weapon or shot selected students with a pistol. The same is true in a roomful of parents who clearly do not mean that teacher well. Considering any of the outrageous things and people that teachers have to endure, it’s hard to imagine anything involving gun-safety that’s stupider than deliberately putting armed weapons in their hands.

Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado – On April 20, 1999, 12 students and 1 teacher were killed and 24 others were injured. (Photo: Reuters)

Part Four: Epilogue

The principal came to see me early in December to ask how things were going. I handed him my letter of resignation. He admitted, “I didn’t come in here to get this, but I’m not surprised.” I was the one who was surprised. I presumed that he expected to get that letter immediately after that parental meeting. After giving him notice, all the physical illnesses that I had mentally contracted since the first day of school vanished. I was suddenly healthy again, and I was fine for the rest of the semester.

Remember that Mike, the math teacher, had given the principal only a week’s notice, and I don’t recall his ever finding a permanent replacement for him. I gave him a month’s notice and a possible replacement. I had a friend at the University of Arkansas whom I had met in one or two of my history classes in 1974-75. He was in his fall, senior semester, had a wife and young daughter, and had uncertain employment prospects upon graduation in the spring. I told the principal that I had given my friend detailed information about the situation at the school and he’s still interested in taking my job. I asked, “Do you want his name?” The principal pulled out his pen and responded emphatically, “Yes. What is it?” My friend was hired for the spring semester, with the understanding that he would complete his degree during the summer.

I continued to prepare my friend. He, of course, knew not to hit a brick wall with that first period class, but I also wanted him to know what kind of community he would be dealing with. I told him about the girl in the civics class who was not allowed to take her books home from school. Her father insisted that boys did not want to marry girls who were smarter than they. He beat her for earning an A in a class, so the guidance counselor kept two sets of records for her: the report card that was sent home with Bs and Cs and the official record with her straight As.

I also told him about the father, the president of the largest bank in town, who spoke with me about his two daughters. One was earning an A in the good U.S. history class, but the younger one was a D student in my civics class – the only one in the class who wasn’t doing well. The father told me that he didn’t care about the A student because she was adopted. But he did care about the other one because she was his own flesh and blood. I don’t recall what I said to him, but I do remember that I held my tongue and did not tell him what I really thought: the problem was clearly genetics.

The school’s office manager eventually let me know something that I had not been told. She said that when the 4-weeks progress reports had been mailed to the parents, mine had not been sent. The office had sent a student to the post office to mail the letters, and he removed all of the ones that were addressed to the parents of my first period class. I let my friend and replacement know about this as well.

On my last day, the faculty and administrative staff gave me a going away party during the lunch period. They thanked me for what I did and for what I attempted do. They realized that I had been up against a stacked deck. My good U.S. history class also gave me a farewell party. They brought a cake that was decorated with a map of the 48 contiguous states.

I loved teaching and devoted 40 years to it, retiring in May 2014. Most teachers quit after only 3 years. There are many, many reasons why they leave the profession. If your state is among those that are thinking about arming teachers, please ask your state representatives to be rational and vote No.