Educational Prison

The news these days seems to be saturated with headlines about the Parkland school kids and the social movement they've engineered against gun violence. While politicians try to figure out how to keep kids safe in school, I've been reminded of my own school days in Detroit. I remember when metal detectors were installed at my high school in the 1980's. You had to go through a metal detector in order to get into the school. There were also buckets where you could dump anything that might get you flagged (like a knife) before you entered so the powers that be gave you a chance to get rid of any contraband. I don't recall there being any guns dumped in these buckets. In the mid to late 80's when I was in high school, guns weren't a huge problem at school even in Detroit. (Well, they weren't a problem at the high school I went to.) Making students go through metal detectors might seem harsh to people who didn't grow up in a city like Detroit, but I didn't have a problem with it. You do what you have to do to keep violence at bay and maybe that's what needs to be done at these suburban schools like Parkland. No one wants to feel like they're going to school in a prison, but if that's the only way to keep guns out of schools, then maybe metal detectors are the way to go.