Why isn't our Society Safe?

In the wake of the shooting and hostage situation in Bailey, Colorado this week, and the subsequent murder of a principal in Wisconsin, media stories have been flooding networks and newspapers with the basic question: Why aren't our schools safe? and What can we do to improve school safety? Unfortunately, they miss the target.

Schools, we need constant reminding, are embedded in society. They are a social institution connected in complicated and numerous ways to other organizations, social institutions, and people. Schools are not some lucky isolated Pacific island where we can fix all the world's problems with a little more homework and another lockdown drill.

Until we can face and discuss the violence in our society, and then how that violence seeps into the schools, we won't get much traction on making schools safe. Many students are angry and disfunctional, and that, combined with easy access to weapons springing from at late 18th century mentality, and a misreading of the Constitution, turns those students into impulsive revenge killers.

We have them, and will continue to have them, until we are willing to secure our right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness through aggressive social control of dangerous weapons.

We have them, and will continue to have them until we are willing to confront our how our culture has broken communities from unhappiness and anomie generated by gross materialism.

"Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total... Man (sic) has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his own creations, and has lost ownership of himself."
--Erich Fromm

We will have them and continue to have them until schools can shed their misguided attempts to keep the world and its problems barricaded outside of the main doors and begin to advocate in the community for social change beyond the schoolyard. Any less is attempting to do the impossible while simultaneously shirking responsibility.

Auto-B-cautious

In the scheme of things, cars are one of the biggest killers we face. In this country alone about 50,000 people every year are killed in automobile accidents. How have we come to live with that? How do we find that acceptable?

Worldwide over a million people are killed in automobile accidents every year. There are few that don't recognize and acknowledge the problem. There are also many programs and attempts at educating drivers to help get that absurd number down. But, to me, now, that just doesn't seem enough.

It's very personal today. This afternoon is the viewing and tomorrow the funeral for a former student, just graduated last year, who was killed in an accident. The statistic is that about 40% of deaths of kids 15-19 years old are from auto accidents (the number one killer in the age group). But he wasn't just a statistic.

Most teachers who have several years under their belt have dealt with the death of students. All are tragic, but some, like auto accidents, seem such a needless loss. They are. Not even accounting for the economic costs, the permanent injuries and broken bodies and families, it is simply unacceptable. Few of us will be directly touched by terrorism. Most of us will be touched by car accidents. Where does our real security lie? and where are we willing to prioritize our efforts, money, and time to make change. There *are* ways to make cars and driving safer.

Safety
Both men agree that further major breakthroughs in passive safety — the ability to further lessen the degree of injury in an accident — are now unlikely. More emphasis in the future will be placed on avoiding accidents (active safety). "A bird doesn't have armor. We need to develop the intelligence of a bird to avoid an accident," says Multhaupt.

The key to this technology will be to develop a means by which cars communicate with each other. Several manufacturers have already signed an agreement to this end, and BMW is testing methods of intervehicle communication using wireless LAN networks. This technology would not only be used to help cars detect and respond to threatening situations, it could also be used to improve traffic management by automatically directing a car around a jam. "This is the big vision of the future," says Multhaupt.*

Especially for young people. It will cost. But GM, Honda, Kia and others will have to hear us, that we are willing to pay that cost for radical change and personal safety.

Sometimes you just have to throw open the shutters and say that you are mad as hell.

"You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis."
--Network (1976)