Doug van Gorder works as a math teacher at Brockton High School, Brockton Massachusetts. He makes a living educating children. He is paid to be reasonably knowledgeable and to pass that knowledge on to the children in his care.
Mr. van Gorder also writes the occasional letter to the Boston Globe. His letter of December 28, 2009 was particularly interesting. I quote, in full:
I am a math teacher at Brockton High School, the site of a school shooting earlier this month.
Current school security procedures lock down school populations in the event of armed assault. Some advocate abandoning this practice as it holds everyone in place, allowing a shooter easily to find victims.
An alternative to lockdown is immediate exodus via announcement. Although this removes potential hostages and makes it nearly impossible for the shooter to acquire preselected targets, it unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others.
Schools should level playing fields, not intrinsically reward those more resourceful. A level barrel is fair to all fish.
Some propose overturning laws that made schools gun-free zones even for teachers who may be licensed to securely carry concealed firearms elsewhere. They argue that barring licensed-carry only ensures a defenseless, target-rich environment.
But as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime.
. . . and you could have heard a pin drop.
I see two 'problems' (for lack of a better word that is also printable) here. The first is that Mr. van Gorder values equality so much that he would prevent the children in his care from fleeing to safety because some may be better at fleeing than others. Although he admits to believing that evacuating a school in cases of armed assault may be advantageous, he opposes this protective response because it "unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others."
The second 'problem' is even more surprising. To quote again, ". . . as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime." Mr. van Gorder here equates the act of defending his child's life against an attacker with the act of the person attacking his child. He makes a statement of moral equivalence between attacking a child with lethal force, and defending that child with lethal force.
It is possible to explain the second 'problem' as a case of pacificism, but what about the first? Think about the implications of this for a moment. Picture a group of children, under Mr. van Gorder's care, and picture them being attacked. Picture Mr. van Gorder preventing any of them from fleeing the attacker to safety, because he fears that some may flee more efficiently than others. Picture Mr. van Gorder in his classroom, grasping his students, preventing them from fleeing an attacker, even as they are being killed. Picture Mr. van Gorder explaining to them, as they die, that he couldn't let them flee because some of them might have succeeded in escaping.
One can only hope that Mr. van Gorder is childless and remains so. One can only hope that Mr. van Gorder never has an opportunity to restrain his students to their deaths. It would, however, be unreasonable to hope that Mr. van Gorder might be removed from his position as a threat to his students; after all, it's Massachusetts.
