I try to avoid some touchy issues here, but I can’t sit this one out.
The NRA posted it’s plan to “make schools safer.”
It’s just what they’d hinted at- they want an armed officer at every school, and they want laws changed so teachers can be armed in their buildings as well. To qualify as one of the armed officers, you’d need to go through their 40-60 hour training. Then we’d be safer.
Right.
Besides that I don’t think guns belong in school, I’ve got a more pressing issue. Where I teach, you must have at minimum a Master’s Degree to continue teaching beyond the first few years. It’s law. The wording the federal laws talk about “highly qualified” teachers. What they’re trying to do, between the two things, is to mandate that teachers be experts at what they do. In fact, you’re not even eligible for a professional license until you’ve taught full time for three years (that’s 2970 hours in the classroom, minimum).
If you read about the qualities of “expert,” you’ll find much about the amount of time related to becoming an expert- the number most often kicked around is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. In my line of work, that’s about 10 years of teaching full time. That said, every teacher I know worth their salt will say you’re never an expert at teacher. But I digress.
We’ve established that we want to only allow experts to teach (or work) at our schools. We’ve established that there is federal legislation aimed at this. And we’ve established that it can take (nominally) 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert.
So here comes the NRA saying that a “40-60 hour” course of study makes someone fit to carry a gun in a school and be able to defend that school. It defies logic.