Growing Up in America.

To those of us on this side of the Atlantic, it appears that American schools are not the safest of places to be. And so I have a question. Are schools over there really as scary as they seem? And if they are, does it mean that kids are scared to go to school every day, or at least a little apprehensive? If the answer to these questions is ‘yes’, I wonder what effect it’s having on the emotional development of America’s children.

As I understand it, the response by the Republicans and the gun lobby is not to address the nation’s gun culture at source, but to take steps to make access to schools more secure. Presumably this would mean fences, locked gates, maybe razor wire, and armed guards. In short, turning schools into high security establishments. So what effect would that have on the emotional development of America’s children?

I just wonder, you see, whether the children’s emotional development is being taken into consideration as part of the dialogue between liberals and conservatives over how to handle the gun problem. Maybe it is; maybe I’m getting it wrong. It’s just that America’s obsession with allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to walk around carrying instruments of fast and violent death is a bit of a mystery to us Europeans.

This post could have gone a lot further into other areas, but I have things to do so enough said for now.