To think it's very depressing that school children need to learn this

[Eastie77Returns]

DD's school is producing a video showing children what to do in the event there is an intruder in the school and they need to go into 'lockdown'. I found out as she has been asked to take part in the video production.She is in Y7.

DS is in Y4 and he told me they did a practice drill at his primary school where they followed the steps they needed to take in a similar situation.

Honestly it makes me feel very sad. I understand in the current climate it's necessary and in countries like the US it's standard but I never thought I'd see something like this here.

Someone who doesn't work in schools should perhaps listen to those people who do work in schools about what the risks are that might necessitate kids being kept in classrooms instead of googling 'kids murdered at school'.

I really don't know what your problem is. It would be just as silly to say "defer to the risk management professional". As far as I'm concerned, I've been trying to have a careful discussion with you, where I've clearly explained what I'm claiming, what I'm not claiming, and why. You seem to want to continue that, but only if you get to be generally abusive, dismissive, and straw-mannish. It is just fine to disagree with someone online, without all that.

@TheMissingLinkHasBeenFound But you haven't really said what you think is going to happen or what you're basing that on?

I really have, by now. My two points are about: i) prioritising time in a way that doesn't reflect the data on which the really serious risks to children are, ii) risks of normalisation of school attacks, drawing on what we know about the highly-contagious nature of such attacks in countries where they occur, plus what we know about the highly contagious nature (including from the UK) of other types of response to mental distress.

If you think my claim is that more drills are bad because they increase the likelihood of liquid spills or animal attacks, I suggest you haven't read my posts. If you don't think it's that, but you are portraying it as that, then I think you are arguing in bad faith.

I certainly wouldn't defer to a risk management professional who claims that kids sitting in classrooms with the door locked raises the risk of school attacks.

But as the majority of invacuations don’t involve a shooter or knife wielding maniac or indeed hiding under tables, what do you think schools should do to teach children about the more likely invacuation scenarios @GeneralPeter? Especially when the schools carrying out these drills don’t call them shooter drills

So, I think I'd say: firstly, if we are trying to keep children safe, is this the best use of time, or are there other better ones? And I'd be hesitant to have such drills at all given the concerns I've stated. But if we are accepting that they should happen then it's totally right to avoid linking it to shooting-type or attack-type scenarios (even by adults), and to be carefully aware of whether they are being described as such by the children (as anecdotally seems to happen).

Do you have any register other than abuse? Debating someone who pugnaciously makes good points can be a lot of fun (that's why I asked you why you said my original post was stupid). But someone pugnaciously making bad points is really tiresome, on the receiving end. I can't really see what you get out of it either.

I don't know what you get out of coming onto a thread and trying to tell other people their jobs when you don't know what you're talking about and make daft claims like lockdown drills increase the risk of school shootings and then pretend that it's everyone else that's at fault when they point this out.

@GeneralPeter do you think children, especially younger ones, who see these as shooter drills are actually getting that from their parents. Let’s face it the posters on here who work in schools are telling you the reasons why the majority of these drills/invacuations take place. The ones who are up in arms about them (excuse the pun) are people who don’t work in schools and purely see them as shooter drills.

Yes, it could well be that children who see these as attack drills are getting this mainly from outside the school.

And I'm not dogmatic that these drills should never happen in any form. If there are lots of dangerous animals or angry parents breaking in to a particular school, then perhaps it's right for those schools.

But for most schools, I'd be surprised if overall time devoted to such drills wouldn't be better spent on more mundane but more deadly threats. And for very unlikely scenarios like the air ambulance might need to land.... well, yes it might. But the numbers make me suspect a child is much more likely to be seriously harmed because of poor water sense or road sense or accident awareness, and I think that should get the attention proportionate to the risks.

@crumblingschools Also, sorry for being a rude in replying to you earlier on fire drills. I actually mistook you in the moment for a different poster, who I felt was being unnecessarily antagonistic. I had already written about fire drills vs 'arson drills', but there's no reason to think you should have read all my posts. Apologies.

I had a bet with myself that you would try to get another dig in while pretending that you weren’t replying to my post.

So predictable.

Sorry, pretending to not reply to your post by.... not replying to your post?

And my apology to crumblingschools was sincere. I really did mistake her for you, and when I realised my mistake wanted to apologise because I don't generally like being rude on here. I find it unproductive.

I'm not at all concerned about being rude to you at this point (directly or indirectly... happy to do direct if you like) because that seems to be your register.

The true reason I didn't reply to your final post was because at that point I judged that you are either genuinely very stupid, or (more likely) pretending to be for the purpose of being argumentative, and in either case I have better things to do than engage.

But it's rich of you to spend an afternoon going round and round mis-characterising my points and calling them stupid, daft, bollocks, etc etc. and then turn around and be hurt about tone. You seem very thin-skinned for someone with such a style of discussion.

Nobody I. The school will link it to shooter type attacks.

The children will not have heard that in the school from staff

It would be parents like you going "whyyyyy do we need to protect against shooters???!!".

Yes, possibly it would be primarily from parents and amongst children. I still think that creates a risk of normalisation we shouldn't entirely ignore. I also don't think we can say no-one in a school would ever link to attacker risk.

I haven't said the main purpose is to deter shooters (not sure how you read that into my posts), so wouldn't personally be saying that, but I take your broader point that these things will get characterised partly beyond the control of the school.

Normalisation of what?

Normalisation of getting somewhere safe in an orderly manner when there's risk of harm?

I'm really not sure I'm getting your point?

My DS is 12 and has done a few of these drills in both primary and now secondary school, he said they were told it's in case someone gets in the school with a weapon. He's not phased by it. Although they are also told it's in case a dangerous animal is on the loose but we live near a wildlife park so not that random.

Normalisation the idea of attacking schools as a response to distress.

We know that in the US school attacks have a large social-contagion component. We know (including from the UK) that other responses to mental distress, such as suicide, anorexia and cutting do too.

Of course, the fraction of children who act on this will always be small, but it doesn't take very many to cause real harm.

It's not that it becomes 'normal' to attack a school, it's that it becomes thought of as normal that if you are deeply distressed, you might do that. Because we will always have deeply distressed children, we don't want that idea to be common.

I'm not saying this means we definitely should not do drills, just that we should be concerned if this gets thought of, and talked about, as being about attacks, and especially if it gets talked about as 'of course we need it, because of the risk of attack is so high', which is at least a fairly common view judging from this thread.

Oh mate, calling me stupid, have you not noticed that no one agrees with you that lockdown drills could trigger school attacks?

Nor did anyone agree with your point that lockdown drills divert school time away from road safety.

And yet you persist.

Nobody is normalising attacking schools as a response to distress...

doing invacuation drills will not increase the prevalence of attack.

What drives it, is the attacks themselves, not the response to the attack (or prevention of any attacks)

Otherwise you would say, that... security guards in football grounds increase the amount of people who are causing issues. Or... The more lollipop ladies there are, the more likely someone is going to want to hit pedestrians.

It's a bizarre train of thought.

Nobody is normalising attacking schools as a response to distress...

doing invacuation drills will not increase the prevalence of attack.

What drives it, is the attacks themselves, not the response to the attack (or prevention of any attacks)

Otherwise you would say, that... security guards in football grounds increase the amount of people who are causing issues. Or... The more lollipop ladies there are, the more likely someone is going to want to hit pedestrians.

It's a bizarre train of thought.

I continued to explain carefully, concede points were I could, go over things again from earlier posts.

Nope, you continued to patronise people who actually work in schools by trying to tell them their job and continued to make unevidenced assertions.

As I said, you'll note that no one agrees with you.

I agree no adult is doing it on purpose.

I think parallels can be useful, but we need to consider which ones are likely to be the most instructive.

i) is school attack the type of thing (in principle) that is susceptible to social contagion? I think the answer to this is unarguably yes.

ii) can doing drills lead to normalisation? That's harder to know for certain. But we know that in other cases promoting remedies and awareness can increase the problem. I think anorexia, suicide, cutting are more similar (as responses to extreme distress, especially amongst teens, who are the main risk group for school attacks), which is why I'd suggest they probably tell us more than lollypop ladies. And there is pretty clear evidence that poorly-communicated or poorly-targeted campaigns against those things does in fact often lead to increaded prevalence.

iii) but what if school drills are always well-communicated and well-targeted, so they don't raise awareness of school attacks, then surely it's fine? That seems unlikely, as we've seen on this board lots of talk of them as attack drills, including cases where the school itself has said that. Even if the school does not, students and parents do.

iv) does doing drills prevent attacks even if they are attempted? (Maybe the above is irrelevant, if these drills foil 100% of attempted attacks). Again, I wouldn't like to bet on anything being 100% effective.

I'm not saying that drills definitely will increase attacks. But you do seem to be saying they definitely won't, but without very much reasoning.

I'm also not saying that drills are definitely not justifiable in any case, just that the above is a concern worth taking seriously.

You've come back again and again to combinations of:

i) "this is daft/stupid/bollocks" (but not why, other than where you have taken the silliest version of what I might be claiming, like that it's locked doors that cause attacks).
ii) "this is insulting" (but not really why teachers should be insulted by me airing a possible concern)
iii) "this is unevidenced" (but I've given significantly more data and rationale in support of my concern than you have in your dismissals, and because it's a concern about how this might evolve in future, it's unsurprising there isn't lots of past data from the UK. But there is from adjacent and relevant things).
iv) "this is unpopular" (basically just a 'you're smelly' argument, repeated twice in case I didn't get it the first time. I'm happy to share a view that might be a minority one on a MN board, and you should be too).
v) "you're bad at your job" (huh?)
vi) "you ran away" (come on... we're discussing schools here, not re-enacting our playground greatest hits).

I don't know whether you are a teacher or not, but I've never met a teacher so unable to rebut an argument that's made in good faith fairly and persuasively, so I'm guessing not.