Arming school personnel: A curriculum issue? by Logan Rutten

In the wake of the rampage shooting of seventeen students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida this past February, both houses of the Florida legislature passed bipartisan legislation that raised the minimum age to purchase a gun to twenty-one and instituted a three-day waiting period for purchasing firearms. In addition to these new regulations on access to guns, the bill included an option for school district superintendents to train some school personnel to use firearms in new roles as “school marshals” (Scherer, 2018). Governor Scott’s own gun control proposal did not include a provision to arm school employees (Mazzei, 2018a), but this provision was part of the legislation that reached Scott’s desk and which he ultimately signed (Mazzei, 2018b). As a result, some school districts in Florida may now arm certain employees and train them to respond to threats in their communities.

In their recent piece for the AJE Forum, Samantha Deane and Katie Bateman considered the Parkland and other rampage school shootings in terms of their desensitizing effects and the ineffective “get tough” policies that too frequently result. This essay builds on that work, providing context for policy conversations about the idea of arming school personnel through a perspective of curriculum for public schools in a democracy.

The concept of curriculum may be conceptualized narrowly or broadly. On the narrow end of the continuum, curriculum is, simply, the content taught in schools or “the series of consciously directed training experiences that the schools use for completing and perfecting the unfoldment [of the abilities of the individual]” (Bobbitt, 1918, p. 13). From this perspective, the issue of arming school personnel is not one with which educators and curriculum theorists should concern themselves in the course of their professional responsibilities. This kind of question might be properly left either to school boards and local administrators, who set and enforce district policies, or to the branches of government at the state and federal levels.

At a significant moment of state and federal decision making about the role of firearms in our society, we would do well to consider the impact of a curriculum that includes firearms upon the preparation of citizens for our democracy.

However, on the other end of the continuum of definitions, curriculum includes the “series of things which children and youth must do and experience by way of developing abilities to do the things well that make up the affairs of adult life; and to be in all respects what adults should be” (Bobbitt, 1918, p. 13). From this perspective, schools are about much more than content knowledge or technical skills. Instead, they have a mission that is profoundly moral in character: that of preparing children “to be in all respects what adults should be.” Under this understanding of what curriculum entails, arming school personnel is most definitely an issue of curriculum. It would affect the experiences children have within schools and shape the nature of the interactions they have with adults in authority during their preparation for their own entry into adulthood. In other words, when contemplating legislation that makes firearms a visible part of children’s experiences in school — that is, when considering whether guns should be part of the curriculum — we make not merely a policy decision but a statement of values about how we want future citizens to live and relate to one another in society.

The work of the educator John Goodlad and his colleagues provides a means of analyzing the option to arm school personnel through the lens of curriculum in terms of its implications for the preparation of citizens. Goodlad, Mantle-Bromley, & Goodlad (2004) situate the curriculum for public schools in relationship to the formation of a public within the context of a social democracy. For Goodlad et al., democracy is about much more than a way of making decisions and passing legislation. Although they acknowledge the significance of this concept of political democracy, Goodlad et al. remind us that democracy is also a social phenomenon. That is, democracy is a way of living, of relating to other human beings in a public context and “shar[ing] in the responsibilities of governance, both with respect to their own individual behaviors and to the extent necessary to ensure the well-being of others and the common good” (Goodlad et al., 2004, p. 49). Public schools, then, are public not just because they rely on public dollars but because they mold the public that will make decisions and live in communities across the country. In an autocracy, Goodlad et al. argue, the role for public schools would be profoundly different from a democracy. At a significant moment of state and federal decision making about the role of firearms in our society, we would do well to consider the impact of a curriculum that includes firearms upon the preparation of citizens for our democracy.

Goodlad et al. (2004) propose four components of a mission for schools within the context of democracy, which are encapsulated in the acronym SANE: responsible stewardship of the public schools, equitable access to knowledge and the human conversation, a nurturing pedagogy, and, most importantly for the consideration of firearms in schools, enculturating the young into a social and political democracy (pp. 29-32). The four components of this agenda for education in a democracy provide criteria for assessing whether a proposed policy advances or hinders a healthy social democracy in which citizens concern themselves both with their own interests and the wellbeing of others.

Amid the policy conversations about how to make schools safer, the curriculum questions raised by the components of the SANE agenda proposed by Goodlad et al. (2004) have gone mostly unasked in the media: What experiences are created for children by a policy arming school personnel? Does such a policy engender a nurturing pedagogy that models democratic modes of interaction and decision making? Does arming school personnel lead to greater equity of access to the curriculum for all learners? Is such a policy responsible governance?

As with most curricular issues, there is no singular acceptable set of answers to these questions. Indeed, taking a curricular perspective allows the possibility for communities to differ in their responses to rampage shootings. Some states or districts may choose to arm school personnel, while others may decide that seeing guns in school is not part of the curriculum they want children to experience on a daily basis. The value of framing the proposal to arm school personnel in terms of a curricular question, however, lies in the thoughtful, democratic conversations that can follow. By framing the issue primarily as one of attempting to link policy solutions with the problem of rampage shootings, we may miss the forest for the trees, tallying political victories at the expense of a grander vision for our public schools and our democracy. If, as Goodlad et al. (2004) argue, good public schools enable a healthy democratic society, before we arm school personnel, we must take the time to ask and seriously consider whether the schools we are creating model a society in which we actually want to live.

References

Bobbitt, F. (1918). Scientific method in curriculum-making. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (4th ed.) (pp. 11-18). New York: Routledge.

Goodlad, J. I., Mantle-Bromley, C., & Goodlad, S. J. (2004). Education for everyone: Agenda for education in a democracy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mazzei, P. (2018a, March 7). Florida house passes gun control bill, defying N.R.A. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/us/florida-shooting-gunman-indicted.html

Mazzei, P. (2018b, March 9). Florida governor signs gun limits into law, breaking with the N.R.A. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/us/florida-governor-gun-limits.html

Scherer, M. (2018, March 7). Florida legislature backs new gun restrictions after Parkland school shooting. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/florida-legislature-backs-new-gun-restrictions-after-parkland-school-shooting/2018/03/07/f97057ea-2229-11e8-badd-7c9f29a55815_story.html?utm_term=.4e2514c70c42

Logan Rutten is a Ph.D. student in Curriculum and Supervision at Penn State University. A classicist and musician, he has taught grades K-12 in public, charter, and cyber schools. He has also worked as an assessment coordinator for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Logan’s current research interests include supervision as a form of inquiry, instructional coaching, teacher evaluation systems, and charter school finance. He earned a B.A. at Concordia College and the M.Ed. from Penn State.