People Who Shouldn’t Be Educating Children

Last updated on: March 14, 2018 at 4:32 pm By Jennifer Fitz

One more to file under “This is not a gun blog, but . . .” a public school teacher in California pulled the trigger on his firearm and was surprised to discover a bullet came out.

Guys, this is how guns are designed to work: Pull trigger => Series of deadly events ensues.

What happened in this classroom was not an “accident.” What happened is that the weapon did exactly what it was supposed to do.

For those of you who have no experience with firearms, allow me to clear up some things that may have you confused if your gun safety education consists of “things I saw on TV.” From the news report:

The teacher had just told the class that he wanted to make sure his gun wasn’t loaded, when the gun fired, according to Gonzales.

No no no. If you want to make sure your weapon is unloaded, then unload your weapon. If you aren’t sure how to do this, the much-maligned NRA offers a “basic pistol” course where you can learn what you need to know and practice your skills under the supervision of an instructor whose idea of “unloading” does not involved firing a weapon into a room full of teenagers.

The gist of it is that you remove the ammunition the same way you put it in (only backward) kinda like the way you turn off your car by doing the opposite of what you did to turn it on. Yes, you could instead stop your car by running it out of gas or by ramming it into a concrete wall, but that’s not how you wanna do it. If you want to be sure your car isn’t going anywhere, you check the brake and you check the gear shift and you check where the key is . . . you don’t lay on the gas “just to make sure.”

Guns are machines. You can learn to operate machines safely. Even we who are not all that mechanically-inclined can learn basic things like “not shooting teenagers.”

The second major sign this teacher was completely clueless about gun safety:

The teacher was about to use the gun for a demonstration about how to disarm someone, according to Gonzales.

That would be a big fat no. If you are taking a self-defense course and the instructor is using live weapons pointed at real people, get away.

There are a variety of options for force-on-force training, but all of them involve variations on pretend guns. (Some of the pretend guns require a good bit of safety equipment for training sessions, because they do fire projectiles that could seriously injure you.) Do you know what responsible instructors do when they have a class learning realistic scenarios through re-enactments? They make sure there are no live weapons in the room.

Not only do they not use real firearms, they check for things like making sure no one’s left a pocket knife in a jacket or what have you, because if you’re doing a drill that simulates an attack scenario, it’s possible the student (or instructor) will instinctively reach for his or her real weapon without even realizing it.

This teacher was incompetent and should not be armed.

People Who Should Have Their Licenses Taken Away

Chances are you have seen a scenario like the one at Seaside High School, and chances are you saw it on TV. The “accidental” shooting is a common plot point. Now good fiction involves inevitable foibles of human weakness, and rank stupidity is fair game. What is not fair is screenwriters and directors who treat “accidents” like the one at Seaside as if they are unavoidable, rather than the gross act of negligence that actually occurred. Would you tolerate a crime drama where a good-guy police officer ran over a student with his patrol car because he was being Mr. Expert “confirming the vehicle was turned off” by laying on the gas?

I hope not. That’s murder. Don’t give cars to officers who don’t know how they work. Don’t give firearms to officers who don’t know how they work. And don’t give teaching credentials to people who haven’t mastered even the rudiments of their subject area.

The Law That Really Needs to Change

People of good will are free to hold any number of opinions on what laws we should or should not have concerning matters of prudential judgement, so let me indulge an observation: The students in that classroom were required by law to be there. Like this student:

One 17-year-old boy suffered moderate injuries when fragments from the bullet ricocheted off the ceiling and lodged into his neck, the student’s father, Fermin Gonzales, told KSBW.

. . . The 17-year-old boy’s parents were shocked when he returned home with blood on his shirt and bullet fragments in his neck. The student’s parents rushed him to a hospital for X-rays.

“He’s shaken up, but he’s going to be OK,” Gonzales told KSBW. “I’m just pretty upset that no one told us anything and we had to call the police ourselves to report it.”

His teacher was incompetent to the point of firing a weapon in the classroom. The administration was incompetent to the point of neither seeking medical attention nor notifying the parents their child had been shot. And yet if that boy’s parents decide to keep their son home from school out of fear for his safety — a fear that has been proven to be grounded in reality — they could lose custody of their child.

This is the law of the land across most of the United States: No matter how dangerously incompetent your local public school is, you don’t have the option to simply not attend.

Do lawmakers care? No, because it doesn’t affect them. People in power have the money to afford private school, and they have the education and resources to comply with local homeschooling regulations, so their kids aren’t forced to attend the local public school. Meanwhile, if you try to say that maybe compulsory education laws should be revisited, heads start to spin. Don’t you care about kids?? Education is important! This affects all of society!!!

Yes it does. I’m strongly in favor of providing good education to all children. But here’s something else I’m in favor of: Poor parents not being required to send their children into schools where the teachers are firing weapons.

Yes, education is important. But you have to be not-dead in order to be educated. I think that an awful lot of parents who don’t know much about school do at least understand that “not getting shot” is a good first requirement for choosing a school. Quit pretending school administrators are all-wise and all-good. Anyplace where your kid gets sent home with bullet fragments in his neck is not a place you should be required by law to send your child.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia, Public Domain

What’s the Difference Between Abortion and Capital Murder?

Last updated on: March 1, 2018 at 12:13 pm By Jennifer Fitz

A seventeen year old girl in Texas gave birth at home alone, stabbed the baby, and stowed it the neighbor’s shed. She faces possible charges of capital murder. But really? Just practicing medicine without a license.

If, say, Congress passed the Born Alive Abortion Survivor’s Protection Act, things might be different. Then we’d have a law saying that you absolutely must finish stabbing your baby before it comes out of the womb. But for the moment? What this girl did is no different than what they teach in medical school. You meet people every day who do this. You may well go to church with people who do this for a living, or at least offer it in their array of services.

She should not have killed her baby. But she isn’t doing anything different than what the adults do, what our government approves and regulates, and what our Supreme Court has declared a fundamental right. Don’t be shocked by the teenager. Be shocked by the grown-ups.

Photo via Wikimedia, Public Domain

Government Oversight and Preventing Child Abuse

Last updated on: January 23, 2018 at 12:32 pm By Jennifer Fitz

One of the knee-jerk reactions to the Turpin family child abuse case is to call for closer scrutiny of homeschoolers. Otherwise, how will anyone be able to know if these children are being neglected or abused? Let’s see what the Washington Post has to contribute:

Not long after the family arrived in Fort Worth, an older girl tried to run away but was returned by a local resident, Vinyard, the Turpins’ former neighbor, told the L.A. Times. He said he and his wife thought about reporting the Turpins to the authorities but feared the repercussions, in part because David Turpin was armed.

The Turpin family moved to California in 2010. So neighbors were noticing abuse and not reporting it . . . seven years ago. After the family moved away, the neighbors still declined to contact the authorities, despite ample physical evidence that an investigation was in order:

Once the family moved, their house was foreclosed. The man who bought the house, Billy Baldwin, found a stack of Polaroids from when the Turpins lived there. One showed a bed with a rope tied to its metal rail, he told the L.A. Times.

Vinyard recalls walking through the family’s trailer, which was “waist-deep in filth. There were dead dogs and cats in there,” he said.

He also remembers a feces-littered living room that looked almost like a classroom, with eight small desks and a chalkboard, he told the L.A. Times. Many things — the closet and the refrigerator, for example — had locks on them.

“There were no beds, just mattresses,” Vinyard told the L.A. Times. “There wasn’t a place in that house that wasn’t filthy.”

Adults knew. Adults declined to help these children.

Ah, but what if government adults knew these children were being abused? Wouldn’t they step in? Let’s check in with the Pentagon:

A government watchdog suggested that Congress might want to prohibit the Defense Department from spending money on Afghan military units whose members sexually abuse children or commit other human rights violations. But the Pentagon disagreed with that idea, saying such incidents must be weighed against U.S. national security interests.

The suggestion was made by the office of the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in a previously classified report released Tuesday. It highlights the challenges the U.S. military faces in partnering with forces abroad that do not always adhere to the same codes of conduct. U.S. troops have long complained that some Afghan commanders sexually abuse boys.

Ninety-three members of Congress requested that SIGAR investigate the issue after a 2015 New York Times report alleged that sexual abuse of children was “rampant” in Afghan units, putting U.S. troops in emotionally charged and challenging situations. The review focused on the implementation of the Leahy law, which restricts the U.S. government from assisting a foreign security unit found to be in gross violation of human rights.

Ah, but the schools are different! Schools are much safer than home, because . . .

1/10 students surveyed report having experienced lewd conduct by a teacher.
Teachers who are suspected of abusing students are quietly moved to other school districts.
Teachers who report abuse may face repercussions from administrators.
The NEA observes that student-on-student abuse is an even bigger problem.

That’s from page one of the search results. We could keep going.

Does this mean all children who attend public school are in danger of being abused? No it does not. Does it mean we should ban public schools in order to keep children safe? I don’t think we should. But the idea that sending your children to the corner public school will make them safer than homeschooling them is ludicrous.

If we get to the point where we’ve managed to elminate the abuse that happens in the public schools, then perhaps we’ll know something about how to thwart abuse that happens at home. In the meantime, let’s admit to the plain facts: The Turpins, despite their best efforts to hide it, were known child abusers over seven years ago. No one stepped in. This isn’t about homeschooling. This is about a society that overlooks child abuse.

Artwork by Kathryn Chan, CC 3.0, via Wikimedia

On the Senate’s Tax Plan to Repeal the Obamacare Mandate

Last updated on: December 4, 2017 at 3:52 pm By Jennifer Fitz

The GOP’s Senate version of this year’s tax bill apparently repeals the mandate to purchase health insurance. The Chicago Tribune reports on it here. Business Insider reports on it here.

This is good news.

All fall I have been seeing reports from friends around the country who are being sunk by the purchase-or-perish provision of the “Affordable” Care Act. Neither the fine for not-purchasing, nor the mandatory purchase itself, are affordable for many middle-income families. If you don’t have traditional employer-sponsored insurance, you can expect to go broke paying your poll tax.

Has the ACA been good for the segment of the population who qualifies for the expanded offerings of government-funded insurance? Yes indeed. It is good that people with low incomes be able to have health care. I approve of this.

What is not acceptable is paying for that health care by literally bankrupting citizens in the next income bracket up. It is immoral to destroy a family’s finances by legal fiat.

It is also no help to entrepreneurship. The ACA has the effect of outlawing self-employment for many people in the middle-income brackets.

In summary: If the GOP manages to repeal the insurance mandate, they will be doing the one thing that kinda proves their reason for existing.

If they don’t do the thing? We’re down to zero viable political parties.

The Democrats are so pathetic we ended up with Trump. If the Republicans under Trump are unable to do this one thing . . . what else is there?

File:Courtney Shropshire and Eddie Cantor small.JPG

Photo via Wikimedia [Public Domain]

Death and Dread – Links & Comments

Last updated on: October 5, 2017 at 11:34 am By Jennifer Fitz

My parents live in Las Vegas, I have good friends from Las Vegas, and it is a city that I love. I watched the news of the massacre with dread, and as the names of the deceased are released, several friends of friends are among the bereaved.

I was irritated to see the political vultures start swooping before the guns had even cooled, and I’m sorry to say I’m as weak as the next person — having been spared the ashen emptiness of grief, I keep getting sucked into conversations on the gun question. (I am, fortunately, blessed with civilized friends who seek productive dialog, so it’s not the average experience.)

But this is what people are talking about, and people are talking about it because it is important and must be dealt with.

***

At The Babylon Bee: “Tragedy Forces Every American To Ask How They Can Bend The Facts To Support Their Preferred Narrative.”

The massacre in Las Vegas is a classic argument for banning civilian access to firearms. If you believe, as many do, that such a ban will be unsuccessful, then the recent church shooting in Tennessee lends itself to arguments in favor of citizens carrying firearms for defensive use.

How serious is America’s gun death problem? The Washington Posts lists all the fatal shootings in the US on Sunday. It’s a long list.

It is therefore understandable that people would like to get rid of guns. It’s an obvious go-to option, especially for those who have no particular use for the things. The question of course is: What will actually help? On that point, DarwinCatholic writes about the importance of using facts if you wish to learn the truth.

Leah Libresco, no fan of firearms, writes for the Post: “I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.”

Her comments fit with my observations here after glancing at the CDC statistics on gun deaths of minors. It is not that gun laws can’t help. It’s that complex problems — really a set of problems — require complex, varied, time- and labor-intensive solutions.

An aside: Five Thirty Eight reports on the difficulty in classifying (and therefore understanding) the nature of gun deaths. The numbers involved in ambiguous cases are fairly small, though. We end up back at the classic problems of murder, suicide, and accidents.

***

A difficulty Americans face is that our laws have to take into account the actual way that Americans act. This poem from Joe Long at American Greatness captures the cultural divide between what the mainstream political elite wants people to want, and what they actually want.

In dialog with friends, the importance of mental health care and of keeping weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill both came up as related challenges. Difficulty: There is a portion of Americans who would sooner avoid treatment for mental health problems than risk losing their right to bear arms.

How firmly do Gunlandians cling to the 2nd amendment? As per usual, stock in gun companies went up after the massacre. It’s a painfully predictable series of events: Notorious shooting –> calls for gun control –> rush on gun purchases. It is as reliable as running out for bread and milk before a snowstorm. The stock market knows it. This round, bread-n-milk is ‘bump stocks’, the particular item which Gunlandians fear will be banned.

You can be certain that the stronger the rhetoric in favor of gun control, the stronger the turnout will be for candidates who oppose it. Hence we have Trump. (See how he spoke to his base and didn’t mention guns in his Las Vegas talk? He knows who elected him.) Thanks team.* Sheesh.

You don’t have to think these people are right. You do have to understand that these people live in this nation, they vote, and they already own the guns. Wishing them away will not fix anything. Writing legislation as if these people aren’t there or don’t count will only exacerbate the problem.

***

How hard is America’s murder-suicide problem to solve? Take a look these articles:

There is no deep-seated culturally entrenched belief in a right to drugs. The laws on drug trafficking (for heroin) are unambiguous, and enforcement is intense. And yet this problem is completely out of control.

If we wish to understand the homicide-suicide problem, we first need to get a handle on much, much simpler problems.

***

I wrote last week about the challenges (and some techniques) for preventing accidental deaths. In this area again, I think the polarization of the gun-divide does not help. I have nothing further to say (Review: If you can’t store a weapon properly, you should. not. own. one.), but I do want to share some links on the problem of accidental death in general.

My hardline stance on responsible gun (stove, pool, automobile) ownership is not incompatible with a vivid awareness that accidents can happen even when you do everything right. And thus:

At The New Yorker: “The Sorrow and Shame of the Accidental Killer.”
USA Today reports: “Deaths on the rails haunt engineers, conductors.”

One thing the New Yorker article mentions is the dearth of literature dealing with the trauma of manslaughter. Michelle Buckman’s novel Rachel’s Contrition is specifically about the aftermath of an accidental death. I recommend this book. Even if it isn’t your usual genre, the storytelling will suck you in sufficiently. It is by no means a facile treatment of the topic.

***

On the topic of suicide, here’s the National Review: Pushing Euthanasia for the Depressed.

We will not succeed in ending suicide so long as we are busy encouraging suicide. Forget guns. Let’s outlaw doctors?

***

In my post-Las Vegas post at the Conspiracy, “The Problem of Evil Revisited”, I wrote this week my usual thing that I write after massacres.

Here’s something similar I wrote after the Paris attack in 2015.

In that Paris post I linked to an article at The Nation, “What I Discovered From Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters.”

I maintain that while tactics are necessary in order to mitigate the effects of evil (and hence the gun debates), ultimately what you have to battle with, really truly battle with, is evil itself.

***

What is the state of affairs concerning evil in the US?

We’ve talked about the heroin problem. I think something many Americans in the voting classes don’t understand is how intensely corrupted life is among the have-nots. Wealthy people manage to cover over these problems and present a good veneer, even though we, too, have addictions and children dying of overdoses. When our kids go astray in other ways, we hold together as fair a face as we can.

But things are bad.

My daughter’s chief complaint about her local public school is the girls (the girls!) who listen to songs about rape. I googled “rape music” and the results were . . . informative. In addition to the fact that this is a genre you can get playlists for, there’s this quote from an article on rape at music festivals:

I was at Secret Garden Party–a four-day Cambridgeshire festival that’s as much about hedonism and dressing in costumes as it is about music–a few weeks back. After wearing a nipple-flashing outfit and voguing on a podium to electro, I staggered back to my tent alone in the dark without considering that I might be in danger. A few days later, I found out that a girl had been allegedly raped at the festival just the night before.

Try parsing that one out. This is where we are.

People think I’m all pie-in-the-sky when I say we need to battle evil.

No. Really. Evil is our problem.

If you want my first step: How about we eliminate rape music? Can we even agree on that?

Artwork: William Blake [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

*New readers: My opposition to Trump is longstanding and you can search this blog for more details.

Looking for the combox? It’s here.

When Your Class Is So Bad You Have to Apologize to Other Teachers

Last updated on: September 24, 2017 at 5:31 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Over at the Conspiracy, I tell the story of my most spectacular teaching failure ever.

I would like to be able to say that this was something that happened long, long ago when I was just starting out.

No.

It happened two weeks ago.

I made plans for a class, and those plans turned out to be not what my students needed:

About half the children were enthusiastic about games and eager to do interesting activities oriented towards developing an awareness of rhythm, tempo, and communication skills (like paying attention to what your singing partners are doing). The other half of the children were clearly hard-wired to receive the sensory input of “there is a foam ball in my hand” and immediately activate the DODGE BALL IS ON centers of the brain.

No one got hurt, and that’s about the only positive to report on the post-incident review.

It was so bad I had to immediately apologize to the other volunteers and assure them I knew full well we had just witnessed an absolute disaster.

It was truly horrible.

But here is the good news, if you, too, have ever been nominated for Worst Teacher Ever: It doesn’t have to be that way.

Teaching is a skill. Classroom management is a skill. Some people master these skills intuitively and “just know” what to do. The rest of us can learn. If you volunteered to teach religious ed this year and things are not going well, you can turn your class around.

I’ve done it before. I did it just this week. You can too.

Classroom Management for Catechists by Jennifer Fitz

Ordering notes if you are so inclined:

ISBN-10: 0764822349
ISBN-13: 978-0764822346

The book is Classroom Management for Catechists by Jennifer Fitz, published by Liguori Publications. For bulk orders, phone or e-mail Liguori and find out what the best deal is. It may be worth while to combine orders with a neighboring parish in order to get a volume discount. There’s also a Spanish edition, Manual del manejo de clase para catequistas. The book is useful for anyone who has to manage groups of children. You can read my summary of what it’s about over at my books page.

Can a Catholic Affirm the Nashville Statement?

Last updated on: September 8, 2017 at 12:37 pm By Jennifer Fitz

The Nashville Statement is a set of fourteen affirmations and denials concerning Christianity and human sexuality, composed by evangelical Protestants. You can read the Nashville Statement here. As the Babylon Bee observes, it doesn’t contain any new information. There are two points on which Catholics should disagree. Article 12 states:

WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ gives both merciful pardon and transforming power, and that this pardon and power enable a follower of Jesus to put to death sinful desires and to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.

This is very close to Catholic teaching, but appears to be slightly off. Catholics acknowledge the existence of concupiscence, the tendency to be attracted to sin even after we have been washed free of original sin by baptism. You can read about it in The Cathechism of the Catholic Church here, here, and here. Concerning sins of the flesh:

2514 St. John distinguishes three kinds of covetousness or concupiscence: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life.³⁰¹ In the Catholic catechetical tradition, the ninth commandment forbids carnal concupiscence; the tenth forbids coveting another’s goods.

2515 Etymologically, “concupiscence” can refer to any intense form of human desire. Christian theology has given it a particular meaning: the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason. The apostle St. Paul identifies it with the rebellion of the “flesh” against the “spirit.”³⁰² Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin. It unsettles man’s moral faculties and, without being in itself an offense, inclines man to commit sins.³⁰³

2516 Because man is a composite being, spirit and body, there already exists a certain tension in him; a certain struggle of tendencies between “spirit” and “flesh” develops. But in fact this struggle belongs to the heritage of sin. It is a consequence of sin and at the same time a confirmation of it. It is part of the daily experience of the spiritual battle . . .

Catholics agree with the Nashville Statement that by God’s grace we are set free from sin. The disagreement is if the Nashville Statement means to suggest that every person who wishes to be entirely pure will become so in this life.

Catholics acknowledge the obvious: This doesn’t always happen. Most of us know otherwise commendable Christians who died still not entirely free from all sin, as far as anyone could tell (what happened in those final moments after consciousness ceased, we cannot say). That’s why we believe in Purgatory, the process of being made, by God’s grace, completely free from all impurity, and therefore able to enter Heaven.

1030 All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.⁶⁰⁶ The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire:⁶⁰⁷

As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come. From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.⁶⁰⁸

1032 This teaching is also based on the practice of prayer for the dead, already mentioned in Sacred Scripture: “Therefore [Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.”⁶⁰⁹ From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God.⁶¹⁰

Catholics do firmly deny with the Nashville Statement the second half of Article 12:

WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ is insufficient to forgive all sexual sins and to give power for holiness to every believer who feels drawn into sexual sin.

Moving on to our second disagreement. The nuances of Article 13 are similarly problematic:

WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ enables sinners to forsake transgender self-conceptions and by divine forbearance to accept the God-ordained link between one’s biological sex and one’s self-conception as male or female.

We do joyfully affirm the power of God’s grace. But if you are just having a horrible time trying to shake off your gender dysphoria, we acknowledge that perfectly earnest Christians do sometimes get caught up in mental illness that goes uncured by either natural or supernatural assistance. So if you are a Christian who struggles — even to the point of death — with anorexia, body integration identity disorder, gender dysphoria, depression, or any other mental illness that alters your ability to think rationally, that doesn’t mean you somehow failed as a Christian and are condemned to eternal damnation.

Mental illness reduces culpability for sin, and purgatory, see above, is a necessary reality precisely because we know that people do sometimes die still quite miserably wretched. Some people even die of wretchedness directly, and yet they can be saved.

Catholics do agree with the second half of Article 13:

WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ sanctions self-conceptions that are at odds with God’s revealed will.

Beyond that, the statement is in agreement with the Catholic faith. A future statement might better clarify these two points. In the meantime, Catholics should refrain from signing The Nashville Statement. Be assured you can sign off on The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which covers all the same ground on the important bits.

Image courtesy of Amazon.com.