Today is Wednesday, but my grandson isn\u2019t at school this morning, and neither are 350 or so out of the 1000 kids at his school. How come? It seems that yesterday there was an anonymous school-shooter threat sent out over Instagram or Snapchat. Fortunately some of the kids broke ranks and reported it. According to the school district, police are investigating the incident. When my daughter heard about the incident, she attempted to call the district\u2019s threat assessment number. Her call went directly to voice mail\u2014no living breathing human was available. Last night the school sent out a platitude filled e-mail explaining how they would be doing everything possible to keep students and staff safe. Well obviously at least a third of the parental units involved didn\u2019t quite believe those words were \u2026 well \u2026 mightier than the sword, as it were.<\/p>\n
They also may have looked at what was on the docket for today\u2019s half day of \u201cschool,\u201d and decided five classes of twenty minute duration plus an hour long district-mandated \u201cAdvisory\u201d class which is actually something purported to teach the students so called life skills like etiquette and empathy.<\/p>\n
Etiquette? Isn\u2019t that something you\u2019re supposed to learn at home? Doesn\u2019t that include things like opening doors for little old ladies or saying excuse me when you burp or saying please and thank you or sharing? I learned all of those things at my mother\u2019s knee. Or in Sunday school. And I certainly didn\u2019t need to have a sixty- minute class every week of eighth grade in order to have those \u201clife skills\u201d drummed into my head. They were already there.<\/p>\n
If you are a person of a certain age, you are most likely smacking your forehead right now and saying, \u201cWhat in the world is going on here?\u201d You might even be tempted to include a few un-grandmotherly words while you\u2019re at it. It seems to me that those are all things that ought to be taught in the home rather than at school! Whatever happened to the three R\u2019s\u2014reading, writing, and \u201crithmetic? My daughter is more than capable of teaching her son good manners, and she has done a remarkable job of same. She is definitely not qualified to teach him geometry or algebra. (Ditto for me. I couldn\u2019t teach those, either!)<\/p>\n
Back in the Ancient Eighties, one of the bestselling books on the lists for weeks on end was Robert Fulgham\u2019s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten<\/em>. From what I can tell, the current 8th grade version of Life Skills includes learning to greet classmates in the hallway with eye contact\u2014no electronic devices needed. But, if students happen to do do a good job of cleaning up after themselves in the cafeteria, they get extra device time one day a week. Right. In my book that would be called a mixed message. What about cleaning up after themselves in the cafeteria because it\u2019s the right thing to do or even BECAUSE I SAID SO!!! Wouldn\u2019t that qualify as one of your basic life skills?<\/p>\n And what about the kid who sent out that anonymous message? As of tonight law enforcement has determined that the author of the threat was indeed a student at the school. Obviously when it comes to living by the Golden Rule and treating others as you would like to be treated, s\/he missed the memo. (I\u2019m sure there\u2019s some newly-mandated pronoun usage that is more inclusive than that, but I digress!)<\/p>\n Back in the old days, troublesome kids who wanted an unauthorized afternoon break from some tiresome teacher or other would set off the school\u2019s fire alarm. Everyone went through an unscheduled fire drill and then returned to class. These days I suppose a few \u201cschool shooter\u201d days need to be built into the school calendar right along with \u201csnow days\u201d By the way, in all my years of attending public schools in Bisbee, Arizona, I never remember a single snow day.<\/p>\n As for the source of the \u201canonymous\u201d threat? Now that police investigators have tracked it back to its source, with the person who sent it be held accountable for terrifying kids, parents, and teachers? Will that person end up being unmasked or expelled? Not bloody likely. That person has Federally mandated \u201cprivacy protections. By next Wednesday, the culprit may well be right back in school, just in time for that week’s advisory class. After all, common sense seems to have gone out of fashion long ago.<\/p>\n I doubt attending life skill advisory classes will make one whit of difference for the author of those threats. By eighth grade, I\u2019m pretty sure that ship has sailed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is Wednesday, but my grandson isn\u2019t at school this morning, and neither are 350 or so out of the 1000 kids at his school. How come? It seems that yesterday there was an anonymous school-shooter threat sent out over Instagram or Snapchat. Fortunately some of the kids broke ranks and reported it. According to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants-and-raves"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-vw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1955,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions\/1955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}