I thought I was done thinking about Sandy Hook for a while.
I know that sounds callous about an issue — gun violence in our schools — that is so serious, so important, and so unresolved. But sometime after the holidays, I mentally “checked out” of the whole debate. The arguments about how to protect our schools, how to make sure that dangerous people don’t have access to guns, how to prepare schools and students for these types of horrible tragedies… It was too much for me. Every time I heard even a political story on the radio mentioning gun violence, my mind would flash to that image of those poor children fleeing for their lives from that Connecticut school, and I was instantly back to that Friday afternoon, weeping over my computer as I thought about those babies lying in blood on a classroom floor. It was self-protection; I couldn’t think about it anymore.
Last night my self-imposed ban was lifted. I was drawn into a story in this week’s New Yorker about Newtown’s community newspaper’s coverage of the tragedy. Intrigued by the angle of how small-town reporters and editors negotiate their personal and professional obligations because I was a reporter for a local newspaper for a few summers during college, I kept reading. And what I thought was going to be a story about a community paper was really about trauma. The emotional trauma of the reporters covering the story. The trauma of the town that had experienced these deaths from among their own children.
In this article, the newspaper staff refuse to be sucked into their town’s and the national debates about gun control or about school protection.
After a tragedy like this, there are so different ways that people respond. There are those — the brave ones — that confront the issue directly, using the unspeakable as a motivating force to save future lives. And then there are those like me, the less brave, the ones whose daily lives have never been directly impacted by gun violence and can afford to put this entire issue out of their minds because it’s simply too difficult and too painful.
And this made me think about the children who can’t tuck this tragedy away to think about at a different time. The children all across this country who heard about the Sandy Hook massacre from afar, just like me, and now will continue to be retraumatized by school shooting drills, or “violent intruder drills,” and other types of emergency preparation at school.
In a school near my hometown, in Hudson Falls, New York, police in body armor use unloaded weapons and act out a hostage situation in front of students. At another school in Illinois, blanks are fired from a pistol during a drill to simulate what would happen if a school shooter entered the building. During lockdown drills all across the country, small children are asked to sit in darkened closets or bathrooms on the floor while police officers patrol the halls.
Research evidence suggests that these extreme forms of emergency preparedness may do more harm than good, instilling a sense of fear rather than feelings of security. A study in the School Psychology Review demonstrates that it’s possible to increase children’s knowledge about what to do during an emergency and reassure them and parents that they would know how to react in a difficult situation — without also increasing fear, panic, and anxiety levels in children. These types of effective drills would not include guns or props, since the study’s lead author stated that this form of “extreme realism” only serves to “raise people’s anxiety unnecessarily.”
Because if I — as an adult — find reliving this tragedy again and again through reading about it and seeing the images repeatedly too traumatic to integrate into my daily life, why would children be any different? Don’t they deserve the chance to feel safety and security, without instilling fear and anxiety, while we let the braver ones in our society confront this issue head-on?
How should we balance security and safety in schools? Do you know of any schools who do a good job?
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Very much enjoyed your article Jessica. Great points and great questions. What a trap we’ve fallen into!
This is such a hard question. I remember as a child watching a video about fire safety and, instead of making me feel prepared, it made me completely terrified of the possibility of a fire in my home for years. Of course it was probably knowledge that would have saved my life if we had in fact had a house fire. Still, I was kind of traumatized and that was just from a video.
I don’t know what the right answer is. Children need to know what to do in all sorts of emergencies. How to do it without causing trauma though? I have no idea.
I felt the same way about fire safety drills as a kid! I never thought about that similarity. I had nightmares about fires as a kid. Do schools still talk about fire safety all the time like they did in the 1970s and 1980s?
I really enjoyed seeing you write about this. I read the same article you are referring too, and met two reporters from the Newtown Bee a couple of days after the tragedy. They were standing out on the street talking to people for a weekly column as they do every week and they were offering hugs to people also! I live two miles from where this tragedy happened. My girls are homeschooled, but many of their classes and friends are in Newtown. Our music teacher lost her 6 year old son.
I too try to block it out and go about my life, but it keeps coming back. I hate reliving it, but I know that everyone involved will never be the same. And maybe we owe it to them to continue to mourn over their losses.
Oh, Amy. I didn’t realize you had such a personal connection to the tragedy. Even in a small state like Connecticut, the ripple effects of something like this must spread so far. Yes, and I think you pose the ultimate question about this tragedy (and others like it): do we owe it to the victims to continue to try to make sense of this tragedy — even if it’s hard for us personally — or do we continue to retraumatize ourselves for little purpose, if we don’t take action, whatever that is?
I wish I had something insightful to contribute, but I don’t. I struggle with this balance as well, and I think you made some excellent points. I am looking forward to reading the article you linked to. Thanks again for thoughtful, articulate post as always…
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