An elementary school in the Dallas Independent School District sent students home last week with a faux “Winnie the Pooh” book titled “Stay Safe.” “If danger is near, do not fear,” the book reads in part. “Hide like Pooh does until the police appear.” The distribution of the book, which came with no warning to parents or instruction or explanation from the school district, coincided with the May 24 anniversary of the Uvalde school shooting (where it was the police who hid like Winnie).
In a statement last week, the school district explained that the book was sent to student homes “so parents could discuss with their children how to stay safe” in dangerous situations at schools, such as a shooting. The district admitted that it should have given parents guidance about the book. “We work every day to prevent school shootings by dealing with online threats and by hardening our schools,” the email stated. “Recently a booklet was sent home so parents could discuss with their children how to stay safe in such cases. Unfortunately, we did not provide parents any guide or context. We apologize for the confusion and are thankful to parents who reached out to assist us in being better partners.”
Here is some context: the statistical likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun in school on any given day since 1999 is in the vicinity of 1 in 614,000,000. No child should be made to worry about such a rare tragedy. The odds of a child dying in an auto accident are much, much higher, but schools don’t attempt to terrify kids about riding in cars. In addition, the advice in “Stay Safe” is useless in an actual active shooting situation, because we don’t want children thinking for themselves about how to “run, hide, fight” (as Winnie puts it). We want them to follow the instructions of trained teachers.
Nonetheless, the New York Times story about the book tells us that the parent they interviewed capitulated and read the terrifying book to her child anyway. “We shouldn’t have to talk to them about [gun violence] and it’s so hard as a parent,” she said. She doesn’t have to talk to them about gun violence, other than to assure them that they don’t need to worry about it (unless they are black and live in Chicago). But, the Times tells us, she relented and read the book to her youngest son, who is 5.
And, as a predictable and nauseating related development, California Governor Gavin Newsom of California, who is neck and neck in the race for most unethical and irresponsible governor in the U.S., tweeted that “Winnie the Pooh is now teaching Texas kids about active shooters because the elected officials do not have the courage to keep our kids safe and pass common sense gun safety laws.”
No, Winnie the Pooh is teaching Texas kids about active shooters because Praetorian Consulting, the Houston-based firm that published “Stay Safe,” saw a chance to make a profit exploiting anti-gun hysteria and media hype by providing incompetent educators with one more thing to do other than educate, and to mislead trusting and gullible parents into traumatizing their own kids.
Ethics Alarms 
This whole “safe” thing is really annoying. My least favorite: “Fly safe.” Right. What am I supposed to do? Get in the cockpit and watch the pilots and make sure they’re not screwing up? Give me a break. Life is a heck of a lot safer than it ever was when I was a kid. We rode around in massive, belching cars without seat belts, sitting in metal interiors with all sorts of sharp objects protruding from them. Kids who didn’t know how to swim drowned in canals and rock pits. Stay safe, my ass. Go out and play unsupervised.
Not to mention riding unrestrained in the back of pick-up trucks.
Down the interstate, at least once.
A young friend of mine was killed two blocks from my home doing just that in a 25mph speed zone. If I recall (45 years later), his dad had a minor collision with a car at the intersection and my friend was thrown out and hit his head on the curb.
Leather seats in shorts. Heck, my dad had a station wagon and we would sit in the back with the seat down on that flat surface while he drove down hills quickly so we would slide all over the back of the thing.
Those were the days…
That is a nationwide average.
Now try limiting the sample to schools in high-crime neighborhoods.
If you remove from the sample those students who regularly interact with gangs or drug dealers, probably still less likely than being struck by lightning.
Why is the advice ‘Run, hide, fight’ when in many cases one or a few individuals who decide to take option three first (even unarmed) drastically reduce the body count?
I don’t advise that for children though. Even before the news of the Broward County Cowards, I’ve told my kids that if there’s a lockdown and they can tell where the danger is, they’re better off running than waiting to see if it’ll be taken care of by others.
Even 4th grade students can do a lot. If every person in the classroom picks up items like chairs, books and anything else and hurls them in an unending barrage, it is effective. Yes, it is possible for 30 on 1 to defeat someone with an AR15. He can’t shoot them all, and no one can stand tall, take aim and continue to shoot people when there are dozens of heavy objects inbound.
Am I the only one that noted that the booklet was produced by PDST – Professional Development Service for Teachers – happens to be an anagram of PTSD. Ironically that’s what they did for the kids. Intentional or not?
My daughter is in her senior year of college. She is well aware of the odds, but is bothered by the university dwelling on each event. Every single event at any school gets a lengthy email detailing the event, and “lessons you should learn.” There is no opt out. She tells me that there is just so much volume of details around each one that it bothers her, even though she grasps the odds being so low. Again, intentional or not?
Do they focus on school shootings, or murders in high-crime, inner city neoghborhoods in general?