News reports repeat that the staff and students at Sandy Hook Elementary School were trained to confront a threatening situation like a man with a gun. This is true to the point that drills had been practiced which involved locking doors and sheltering in safe places. It appears that these actions learned through repetition saved lives. Beyond that, the adults in the building were indeed well trained, but not to defend against a man with an assault weapon. They were educators. Education is the antithesis of violence and, in many ways, it is the route to preventing its repetition.
Imparting facts is only a small portion of the myriad tasks that teachers undertake with perhaps the most important being to help people to understand what it means to think critically and to do so for themselves. Indeed, abdication of one’s critical capacity is also something that works against education.
Society increasingly asks more of its teachers. Often they perform as surrogate parents, imparting manners and humanizing the world for their students. The finger of blame quickly shines its accusatory gaze in their direction when a pupil or a school is thought to underperform. Few educators could afford a home in the higher rated districts and fewer still feel that salaries for their profession reflect what communities expect of them. Budget axes fall resulting in the need to do more with scarcer resources and unions are often depicted as obstacles. Despite not really being trained for much of this, they teach.
They teach because of their students. They stand before classrooms because they see that by giving lessons and sparking thought that they better pupils’ lives. Those precious lives are the future and the more effectively teachers do their work, the more likely the future will be more educated and therefore less violent. To teach is to believe and invest in the future. To teach is to make the world a better place.
The fact that those teachers in Connecticut confronted bravely and effectively something difficult that they were not really trained for should not be surprising. They do this all the time. The fact that they did this with humanity, compassion, and love is also unsurprising because these are the tools of their trade. The extreme nature of what they had to meet is the surprising part.
Society asks a lot of its educators. Will the politicians echo a small part of their bravery and learn the lesson of these very human teachers?
Imparting facts is only a small portion of the myriad tasks that teachers undertake with perhaps the most important being to help people to understand what it means to think critically and to do so for themselves. Indeed, abdication of one’s critical capacity is also something that works against education.
Society increasingly asks more of its teachers. Often they perform as surrogate parents, imparting manners and humanizing the world for their students. The finger of blame quickly shines its accusatory gaze in their direction when a pupil or a school is thought to underperform. Few educators could afford a home in the higher rated districts and fewer still feel that salaries for their profession reflect what communities expect of them. Budget axes fall resulting in the need to do more with scarcer resources and unions are often depicted as obstacles. Despite not really being trained for much of this, they teach.
They teach because of their students. They stand before classrooms because they see that by giving lessons and sparking thought that they better pupils’ lives. Those precious lives are the future and the more effectively teachers do their work, the more likely the future will be more educated and therefore less violent. To teach is to believe and invest in the future. To teach is to make the world a better place.
The fact that those teachers in Connecticut confronted bravely and effectively something difficult that they were not really trained for should not be surprising. They do this all the time. The fact that they did this with humanity, compassion, and love is also unsurprising because these are the tools of their trade. The extreme nature of what they had to meet is the surprising part.
Society asks a lot of its educators. Will the politicians echo a small part of their bravery and learn the lesson of these very human teachers?
