LET TERS
GUNS FOR TEACHERS?
In the wake of the recent school
massacre it seems one response [Letters,
12/20] proposes letting teachers bring guns
to school.
I am a teacher in Eugene, and I would
never consider carrying a gun to school!
First of all, I have no desire to use a gun and
don’t personally know any teachers who
like to shoot guns, although I’m sure they
exist. I would be much more worried about
how the teachers would be expected to keep
guns secure and simultaneously available in
an emergency. Do we want to ensure there
are guns in the school that a troubled student
could possibly get hold of in a moment of
heated passion?
My daughter’s high school went into
lockdown on Monday [12/17] as a rumor
surfaced about a couple kids who planned
to bring guns to school. I feel the Eugene
Police Department was extremely proactive
and dispensed trained offi cers to deal with
the threat immediately. I strongly feel we
should let the trained security professional
deal with security and let teachers deal with
teaching and creating relationships with
students and perhaps provide more training
in how to keep kids as safe as possible
VIEWPOINT
during a lockdown situation.
On an aside, with all the budget cuts
to education, attacks on teachers by the
right, increased workloads and reduced
support, we may want to think about the
psychological effects that might infl ict
on teachers. Remember the term “going
postal”? Just saying.
Teachers don’t need guns. They need
more support with smaller class sizes and
more time for each student in order to
help them succeed emotionally as well as
academically.
So my solution is: more teachers/smaller
class size plus schedules that allow for
relationship and community building equal
safer, more successful schools.
Michele Renee
Eugene
WRONG LESSONS
Schools are the fi rst “public”
socialization that our children receive [see
“Seclusion Rooms” story 12/20]. If students
with disabilities are treated differently
(including seclusion), what lesson is that
teaching our children?
Beverley Mowery
Eugene
RAGING MALES
Taking the Second Amendment folks
at their word, sure, a well-armed populace
might be a good safeguard against tyranny,
but how would a 15-day waiting period
interfere with that? How would more
rigorous background checks designed to
eliminate criminals AND the mentally ill
interfere with the Second Amendment?
What about a requirement that all gun
owners provide the means to keep their guns
reasonably secure from theft? None of these
suggestions are terribly onerous.
But what I really want to address is male
rage. On Dec. 16, 2001, an Oregon man
named Christian Longo murdered his wife
and three children, dumped their bodies
in a lagoon and fl ed the state. Responding
dutifully to a heinous Oregon crime, The
Register-Guard reported on the murders,
the manhunt, Longo’s Jan. 12 arrest in
Mexico, Longo’s extradition, trial and
sentencing. But never once did the R-G
report or editorialize on the elephant-in-the-
room question: What would drive a man to
murder his wife and children?
I speak from direct personal experience
when I state that male rage churns away
in the psychology of countless millions
of men. They’re in the bars, they’re at the
sporting events and they’re at the gun stores.
The sooner our society begins to address
this extremely widespread public mental
health problem, the sooner we’ll address the
true root cause of mass-shooting tragedies.
Robert Bolman
Eugene
TASTELESS CRITICS
Usually I just bite my tongue when I
read a misinformed and snarky article in
your publication but I am blown away by
the ignorance expressed by Alex Notman
and Elliot Martinez last week [Gift Guide,
12/20]. Evidently these two professionals
would rather roll on the ground giggling
than discuss the true merits of vodka.
I don’t know if the idea behind the
comment was to suggest there isn’t “good”
vodka or the neophyte belief that all vodkas
taste the same but there couldn’t be a
more foolish view. Unfortunately, it’s an
amateur assumption that vodka is tasteless
as it happens to be an enlightening and
exceptional distillate to taste and compare
when conducted in the proper manner.
Some “good” vodkas that enthusiasts
might want to try include Tito’s, Zubrowka,
Karlsson’s Gold, Russian Standard Imperia
BY DARREN REILEY
An Uncomfortable Truth
WE LIVE IN A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE
I
t’s time we face some uncomfortable truths. Last Friday, as the news poured in
about Sandy Hook, I was teaching my peace studies class with my high-schoolers.
It’s a class that investigates the roots of violence and war on personal as well as
international levels. If that doesn’t sound important to you this week, I’ve got
some questions for you.
When I heard that those gunned down were largely fi rst graders, I lost it. I’m a
dad. All children are my children. And while those with the nationwide microphones
begin clamoring for answers and causes, responses and policies, oversimplifying the
problem to gun control, or mental illness, I say we need to look with broader eyes at
our culture.
In America, we have the blissful luxury of pretending we’re somehow different
from the rest of the world. Call it American exceptionalism if you like, the notion
that somehow we don’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else; call it a sort
of national Peter Pan Syndrome; or perhaps you prefer Jean Baudrillard’s simulacra
— the idea that our simulations of reality have more meaning than reality itself.
Whatever we call it, it’s time we face some uncomfortable truths.
CHILDREN DIE. Around the world, kids get gunned down every day. They get
killed during drone attacks on wedding parties in Pakistan. They get hit by Israeli
airstrikes taking out Palestinian batteries that were set up
in schools. They get forced at gunpoint to shoot family
members to make them child soldiers. It’s brutal, it sucks,
and most Americans, if they hear about these things at
all, don’t take the time to put themselves in the place of
those parents, or get pictures of the children’s faces to
make it real. And if we can ignore that reality, we will.
OUR CULTURE IS OBSESSED WITH VIOLENCE.
Consider cage matches, Call of Duty, snuff footage on
the internet and a century-long foreign policy that thinks
it appropriate to bully other countries with military
force. As the poet Briathar Kinesi wrote: “We are a nation
of children with guns, given only the tool and driven by a
foolish fuse to use it for a powder-fl ash of power that ignores
4
December 27, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com
the hour of consequence.” People like this guy in Newtown, or that guy in Aurora, or
those boys at Columbine, or this kid in Thurston. Feeling powerless, they’re trying to
fi nd power in the only way our culture appears to respect. And until we can evolve our
cultural defi nition of power, we’re stuck in what Gandhi called the “law of the brute.”
IT’S A MALE THING. It’s not women who do these things. Overwhelmingly it’s
men who respond to confl ict with brute force, who launch the missiles or pick up
the assault rifl es and go for a shooting spree. I refuse to believe there’s something
inherently violent about testosterone. I do think we’re facing an epic crisis in
masculinity. If we cannot fi gure out, as men, how to evolve past the middle-school
mentality of “meet you at the fl ag pole after school with our patriot missiles,” then
putting an armed security guard at the door of every school in America will not
prevent the next Sandy Hook. The problem is not a lack of adequate defenses, it’s a
lack of adequate consciousness.
I wish I had better answers, any answers. I’ve spent the last 10 years trying to
create educational models that reduce violence and teach kids peaceful ways of being,
and all I have are suggestions:
• Pay attention to how you speak to other people, especially your kids. Do you use
your words to dominate, manipulate or belittle?
• Pay attention to what you and your kids watch on TV or play on their Xboxes.
There are clear relationships between violent video games, saturation of violent
images and a desensitization to violence in life. What entertains us reveals a lot about
what’s going on inside of us.
• Pay attention to how we create culture. About 75 percent of our state standards
for teaching history in high school highlight some war or another. Is this because war
really is the dominant force in history or because that’s what we’re taught to focus
on? Eisenhower didn’t coin the term “military-industrial complex” to be cute.
If human beings really are conscious creatures, then we are responsible for living
and developing consciously. That’s why I work in education, which is not about
teaching stuff, but in helping kids fi gure out how to ask the right questions. And
asking the right questions invariably requires us to face uncomfortable truths.
Darren Reiley is an educational consultant at Peace Village, a nonprofi t charter school in Eugene. See peacevil-
lageinc.org