Doblin: Our children no longer have time to be young
Columnist Alfred P. Doblin laments that as these mass shootings multiply in schools, our children are losing the ability to be children
Doblin: Our children no longer have time to be young Columnist Alfred P. Doblin laments that as these mass shootings multiply in schools, our children are losing the ability to be children Check out this story on northjersey.com: https://njersy.co/2ofOvXj
Alfred P. Doblin, Editorial Editor, @AlfredPDoblin Published 6:00 a.m. ET Feb. 18, 2018 | Updated 10:01 a.m. ET Feb. 18, 2018
Teachers from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School continued to express shock at Wednesday's shooting rampage that left 17 people dead and more than a dozen others wounded. AP
Mourners grieve Friday, Feb. 16, 2018, at the Parkland amphitheater for victims of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.(Photo: Andrew West/The News-Press)
As boy in the early 60s, civil defense drills in school were the norm. This was the height of the Cold War, when the Russians were expected to drop the bomb at any time. There were two variations to the "CD" drill. One involved crouching under your desk. Presumably, the pool-liner blue paint on the body of the desk would repel all radiation. The second variation sent us out into the hallway where we crouched against the wall, hands over our heads.
In my elementary school, the corridors were lined with reproductions of famous paintings. I fully expected to meet my maker after being beaned by a fake Picasso. I can't recall any of us in those low grades taking it too seriously. The idea of a nuclear attack was too abstract for a second-grader to absorb.
Wednesday's mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., has got me to thinking how hard this all must be on children. Instead of "CD" drills they are instructed to respond to lockdowns and reports of active shooters. Their parents supply them with smartphones so they can quickly text what is happening. As much as I hate the intrusiveness of these devices, I realize mobile phones afford so many – too many – victims of horrible crimes the ability to say "I love you" to the person who matters most to them.
South Broward High School students protest in front of their school on Friday, Feb. 16, 2018 in response to a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. on Wednesday that took 17 lives. (Photo: Dorothy Edwards/Naples Daily News)
We heard those poignant calls after 9/11. We hear them now.
As America refuses to grapple with the severity of gun violence, it is our children who are being shaped in a culture that I would not wish on anyone. Danger is ever-present in the sleepiest of communities. It is no longer restricted to inner cities, as it was in the 60s. It is everywhere. And most horrible to note, it has come to our classrooms.
I offer no solutions for stepping back from the abyss because I am old enough to know that America does not want to step back. Some people do. But not nearly enough. I read the tweets about how black people thought much the same in the South before the Montgomery bus boycott, before sit-ins at Woolworth lunch counters, before the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Two people comfort each other as they sit and mourn at one of seventeen crosses, after a candlelight vigil for the victims of the Wednesday shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018. Nikolas Cruz, a former student, was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder on Thursday. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) (Photo: Gerald Herbert, AP)
But I do not see enough people willing to make those sacrifices to change gun laws. They write letters. They go on television. They tweet until their thumbs are swollen. But there is no national urgency, no national outcry to the Creator to change anything.
So I think about our children growing up in this kind of world, what it must do to them to see images of frightened children and parents. Of not knowing if today is the day someone crosses over to a very dark place. Our societal inaction is robbing our children of the greatest thing about growing up in America: a sense of freedom and security.
There is no turning back. No air traveler will ever be able to walk through a terminal without passing through detectors and having bags searched. Families can't wait together to see a loved one off on a plane, staying at the gate to the very last minute. The wrong sized deodorant could get you bumped from a flight.
South Broward High School senior Gabriela Bargas protests with her classmates in front of their school on Friday, Feb. 16, 2018 in response to a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. on Wednesday that took 17 lives. (Photo: Dorothy Edwards/Naples Daily News)
Yet somehow, restrictions on planes seemed a reasonable accommodation after years of hijacking and then 9/11. But going to elementary school is not the same thing. Little children should be allowed to be little, to not think that their world could end in a spray of bullets.
There are people who want more armed personnel in schools, perhaps even arming every teacher. I fail to see how that makes anyone safer. And it changes the very character of our schools from a place of learning to a secure location. If arming every man and woman in America is the only way to keep Americans safe, exactly what is the function of our government? Security is the fundamental – some would say only – responsibility of government.
We cannot get back lost innocence. For those of us well into middle age, that is how it is supposed to be. That is not how it should be for school children. There is time enough to be old.
But after Wednesday's mass shooting inside a high school, I wonder, maybe there is not.
Alfred P. Doblin is the editorial page editor of The Record. Contact him at doblin@northjersey.com Follow AlfredPDoblin on Twitter.
The FBI admitted Friday that it received a detailed tip about accused Florida school shooter Nikloas Cruz in January but failed to follow up and investigate. Time
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