I remember it like it was yesterday. In my second year of teaching, the entire country was rocked by the events at Columbine. Obviously, it wasn’t the first school shooting we had ever seen, but it was likely the precursor for the kind of events we are now seeing on a daily basis. The shooting came on April 20th. We ended up having three different bomb threats between that shooting and the end of school. During one of them, one of the teachers heard that they were going to send us in to look for the bomb. “Cut the green wire, no cut the red one. Cut both? Oh damn…”

Of course, the next big event was 9/11. We had parents roaming the entire school grounds looking for their child to take them home. There were rumors that day that the terrorists would actually try to fly a plane into the neighboring refineries close to the school. If that had happened it would have been game over. Considering the crisis, the school capitulated and allowed students to carry cellphones from that moment on.

What do these events have in common? Well, they involved the same sentiment as the jackass in Tennessee that  decided that mass shootings weren’t going to be solved. We’ve tried nothing and we are all out of ideas. Following Columbine we were constantly on the lookout for students that were disenfranchised or possibly unstable. I remember one of them being suspended for a book that he had in his locker. Somehow, we do everything but what actually makes sense.

In order to illustrate this, I’m going to walk us through the cellphone portion of the discussion. It started simply enough. Students could have cellphones in case of an emergency. They shouldn’t be out and before the invention of the iPhone, there really was no sense in having it out. Then, they became little mini-computers so we allowed them to be used on occasion for academic purposes. Naturally, as you might suspect, it became harder and harder to police that. So, schools began to use a system where we could confiscate phones if they were clearly becoming a distraction.

A few years ago, our district surrendered. They decided that we couldn’t confiscate phones because the parents would complain too much. Sure. Our district really doesn’t have a huge problem with helicopter parents. My daughter’s school is ten times worse in that regard, but they can still confiscate phones. They have a coherent policy on how to deal with them. Individual teachers still have some freedom within that framework, but it is understood that if you are misusing your phone it will be taken up. Peer in any room in our building and you will see the vast majority of students staring at their phone and not paying attention to what is going on. We lost the battle without firing a single shot.

What is truly galling is the apathy of it all. Each of us individually hate the distraction of cellphones but feel powerless to do anything because administration chose to give up. It’s almost like there is a parallel here to the problem of mass shootings. Some bloviate about doors. The latest shooting didn’t involve an open door. Some bloviate over transgender this that or the other. 99 percent of shootings aren’t done by transgender people. There is one thing each of these events have in common. If those in government choose to give up before even trying anything then we are truly lost and we have collectively failed our children. May they have mercy on us all.