School Safety Controversy

I am not sure how I feel about this story. The Georgetown, MA school district is considering a proposal to teach children as young as 10 years old how to fight back if gunmen were to enter their school.

What is this Red Dawn? Okay so Red Dawn was about High school kids fighting Soviet gunmen, but are 10 year old children emotionally equipped to fight back gunmen? More importantly do you want children fighting back, which could lead to their harm?

Would your opinion change if schools taught children where to go in the case of a Columbine like attack. Schools have tornado drills, why can they have a "safe shelter" drill?

I work for a University and we have a plan like this in place. Additionally, we even practice this drill to hopefully avoid/prepare the employees for any possible attacks. I would like to point out that there is a huge age gap between us (my colleagues at work) and some of the children of the proposal at Georgetown. Not to mention the emotional developmental differences between youth and adults.

As Kenneth Trump, the president of National School Safety and Security Services, states "We’re asking them (the children) to make some quite serious judgments that even trained adults are challenged to make". "I think that’s an unrealistic and highly risky expectation and burden to put on kids".

What are your thoughts? Should children be taught this in schools? If so, should there be an age restriction, say high school and above? What are your thoughts?

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Picture Courtesy of: http://www.catholicregister.org/content/view/799/855/