I Pipe Up on WNYC, Talking About Lockdown Drills

About an hour ago, I was on the Leonard Lopate show on WYNC*. He was interviewing Cevin Soling, the producer of the documentary "The War on Kids." I haven't seen it yet, but I've read Soling's views, and think he's onto something. (More, below.)

Anyway, at the moment I turned on my radio, Lopate, Soling, and another guest, Dan Losen (author of The School to Prison Pipeline), happened to be talking about the zero tolerance policy of many schools--how students can be (and have been) suspended for bringing squirt guns and Advil to schools, etc. (This has happened here in Montclair...yet was unable to prevent the huge fights that broke out at the high school in the past few months.)

I picked up the phone right away. I just had to pipe up about our district's recent "lockdown drills," wherein students practice getting under their desks in the eventuality a "guy with a gun" comes in and shoots them.

Apparently, these drills have been taking place over the last few years. I either have never heard about it, or didn't realize what, exactly, they were. Nor do I understand their purpose. If I had, I would have been duly alarmed. As I am now. As my son and a classmate pointed out casually, "What happens if we're NOT in our classrooms when the guy with the gun starts shooting? We didn't practice anywhere else! What if we were in the bathroom."

(I wrote a letter two days ago to Dr. Alvarez asking for more info. Haven't heard back yet.)

Anyway, the irony seemed too rich NOT to call. Apparently, the screeners agreed.

But I am going to look into, and hopefully write about, Mr. Soling's work. He posits (and you'll hear on the podcast) that it's not about these sort of ridiculous overreactions regarding weapons and drugs. It's ABOUT THE KIDS, the fact that children have so little say in their schooling, how, in many schools, obedience and control take the place of learning, critical thinking, democracy, collaboration, etc. etc.. Soling believes (and said as much on the show, though he was rather dismissed by Lopate) that it's about "civil rights"--CHILDRENS' civil rights.

* You can go to the web site, but I don't think the podcast's been downloaded yet. Let me know if you're able to get it! The show was on between 12 and 12:30 PM.