Epistemic Status: You really, really should know this already. Reference post. We have a $2.7 billion industry devoted to causing the traumatization of children. They refer to it as ‘active shooter drill training.’ I was initially motivated to write this when
"Schools should track data about the efficacy and effects of drills."
I wonder how exactly they expect to measure the "efficacy" of drills. As you rightly point out the probability of being involved in a shooting situation is vanishingly close to zero. So... what are they going to measure and compare? What kids do in subsequent drills?
The out and out lies the activists and politicians spread about school shootings have made people crazy. In the "entirely detached from reality" sense, that is; in a world where any school had a 5% chance of experiencing a mass shooting in a given year this might make sense, although at that point one should ask "why do we have these schools?"
It’s been interesting to see “trauma” become a more and more important word in our culture, with its definition evolving. Traditionally, a “trauma” was an event hat led to post-traumatic symptoms, which means that you can't necessarily call a bad event a "trauma" prospectively, without knowing whether it will lead to PTS symptoms, since a commonplace among students of trauma is that different people can have very different responses to the same event.
Now, many people, including Zvi here, seem to be using "trauma" to mean “a bad thing,” or “a thing that makes people feel bad.” So "traumatized" means someone being upset by an event. (Because the evidence of e.g. increasing social media posts about pain or being nervous certainly does not support a conclusion that active shooter drills are causing actual post-traumatic stress disorder, and if they were, it would almost certainly be in only a small fraction of kids.)
So when you say “we shouldn’t do X because it traumatizes kids,” it means the same thing as “we shouldn’t do X because it upsets kids.” And then you’re engaging in one-sided thinking, by only considering the harms of X, and not the benefits. Yes, it seems clear that active shooter drills upset kids, but their proponents no doubt think that temporary bad feelings are a reasonable price to pay in exchange for the benefit.
Everything I ever hear about public (and most private) schools makes me more glad that I was homeschooled and more determined to homeschool my own children should I ever have any. This is complete madness.
I don't believe the quant results of "bad" that the study claims. Every study that analyzes student reaction to anything (masks, drills, homework, changing vending machines from coke to Pepsi) always shows very strong results.
In reality, students are pretty resilient. I think we should adjust our priors against the studies.
At the same time, obviously, active shooter drills are extremely counterproductive to the point of irony and shouldn't be held. I don't think we need a lousy study to prove the point, I actually think it could weaken the point. (A shooting once every 5000 years is compelling enough)
$2.7 billion. Shit. We'd be better off if the money was literally lit on fire.
> $5 billion in additional funding for childhood trauma.
Omg this isn't just bad writing style, it really is funding FOR CAUSING trauma.
I think some of the people advocating for drills are trying to make the situation worse for the children because "if we make the trauma for them BAD ENOUGH then we can FINALLY ban guns." I don't know if that's true or not but it's evil to make kids pawns in this game.
It’s a very good business model. Protecting people from something that is incredibly unlikely to happen means that your efficacy will probably never be measurable. Wait until a shooter says they personally enjoyed a good drill
I've been wondering for awhile if lockdown is even an optimal strategy for mitigating spree shooters.
As far as I can tell we do not practice lockdown anywhere except for schools. Workplaces, public places, there are no drills and no lockdown plans. If there is a shooting, most people will instinctually flee from the sound of gunfire. Excepting coordinated ambushes, or mistakenly fleeing into a dead end, that seems like a good, if not the best, strategy.
Guns have a limited effective range, and most spree shooters are not trained marksmen. Distance and shooting angles scale linearly. If you present a two foot wide target at 10 feet away the shooter can shoot within a 12 degree angle to hit the target. At 20 feet it's about 6 degrees. At 40 feet it's about 3 degrees. At 400 feet about 0.3 degrees. So, getting distance greatly decreases your chance of getting hit.
Locking yourself into a room is effectively fleeing into a dead end with a door. If the shooter breaches the door, you're very close and have nowhere to run. If the walls are penetrable a shooter could just fire through them and have a good chance of hitting targets. If the walls aren't penetrable, the shooter could still fire into windows from outside.
Where's the evidence that lockdowns are a good strategy? Is the thinking that it's too hard to get kids to run away? Have you met kids?
"Schools should track data about the efficacy and effects of drills."
I wonder how exactly they expect to measure the "efficacy" of drills. As you rightly point out the probability of being involved in a shooting situation is vanishingly close to zero. So... what are they going to measure and compare? What kids do in subsequent drills?
The out and out lies the activists and politicians spread about school shootings have made people crazy. In the "entirely detached from reality" sense, that is; in a world where any school had a 5% chance of experiencing a mass shooting in a given year this might make sense, although at that point one should ask "why do we have these schools?"
It’s been interesting to see “trauma” become a more and more important word in our culture, with its definition evolving. Traditionally, a “trauma” was an event hat led to post-traumatic symptoms, which means that you can't necessarily call a bad event a "trauma" prospectively, without knowing whether it will lead to PTS symptoms, since a commonplace among students of trauma is that different people can have very different responses to the same event.
Now, many people, including Zvi here, seem to be using "trauma" to mean “a bad thing,” or “a thing that makes people feel bad.” So "traumatized" means someone being upset by an event. (Because the evidence of e.g. increasing social media posts about pain or being nervous certainly does not support a conclusion that active shooter drills are causing actual post-traumatic stress disorder, and if they were, it would almost certainly be in only a small fraction of kids.)
So when you say “we shouldn’t do X because it traumatizes kids,” it means the same thing as “we shouldn’t do X because it upsets kids.” And then you’re engaging in one-sided thinking, by only considering the harms of X, and not the benefits. Yes, it seems clear that active shooter drills upset kids, but their proponents no doubt think that temporary bad feelings are a reasonable price to pay in exchange for the benefit.
This post fails to steelman.
Everything I ever hear about public (and most private) schools makes me more glad that I was homeschooled and more determined to homeschool my own children should I ever have any. This is complete madness.
I don't believe the quant results of "bad" that the study claims. Every study that analyzes student reaction to anything (masks, drills, homework, changing vending machines from coke to Pepsi) always shows very strong results.
In reality, students are pretty resilient. I think we should adjust our priors against the studies.
At the same time, obviously, active shooter drills are extremely counterproductive to the point of irony and shouldn't be held. I don't think we need a lousy study to prove the point, I actually think it could weaken the point. (A shooting once every 5000 years is compelling enough)
$2.7 billion. Shit. We'd be better off if the money was literally lit on fire.
> $5 billion in additional funding for childhood trauma.
Omg this isn't just bad writing style, it really is funding FOR CAUSING trauma.
I think some of the people advocating for drills are trying to make the situation worse for the children because "if we make the trauma for them BAD ENOUGH then we can FINALLY ban guns." I don't know if that's true or not but it's evil to make kids pawns in this game.
It’s a very good business model. Protecting people from something that is incredibly unlikely to happen means that your efficacy will probably never be measurable. Wait until a shooter says they personally enjoyed a good drill
I've been wondering for awhile if lockdown is even an optimal strategy for mitigating spree shooters.
As far as I can tell we do not practice lockdown anywhere except for schools. Workplaces, public places, there are no drills and no lockdown plans. If there is a shooting, most people will instinctually flee from the sound of gunfire. Excepting coordinated ambushes, or mistakenly fleeing into a dead end, that seems like a good, if not the best, strategy.
Guns have a limited effective range, and most spree shooters are not trained marksmen. Distance and shooting angles scale linearly. If you present a two foot wide target at 10 feet away the shooter can shoot within a 12 degree angle to hit the target. At 20 feet it's about 6 degrees. At 40 feet it's about 3 degrees. At 400 feet about 0.3 degrees. So, getting distance greatly decreases your chance of getting hit.
Locking yourself into a room is effectively fleeing into a dead end with a door. If the shooter breaches the door, you're very close and have nowhere to run. If the walls are penetrable a shooter could just fire through them and have a good chance of hitting targets. If the walls aren't penetrable, the shooter could still fire into windows from outside.
Where's the evidence that lockdowns are a good strategy? Is the thinking that it's too hard to get kids to run away? Have you met kids?
NYC seems surprisingly good about this: https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/safe-schools/emergency-readiness
It seems good to have a general 'emergency protocol' and I didn't see any mention of active shooter drills, which was great.
I also didn't see anything about NYC schools performing this drills from a cursory review of an 'obvious' Google search; seems good too.
Do you know differently?
Or, to put it another way: Active shooter drills are as exploitative and abusive of children as is dressing them up for "get ready to get shot on the first day of school" for a political ad. https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2022/08/never-abbotters-go-dumpster-diving-for.html