In the past several months, especially after the horrific events in Uvalde, the concept of “school safety plans” has been raised and discussed a lot.

As far as we can tell, virtually every school, public and private, from Preschool to Post-graduate institutions, has a “safety plan.” These are designed primarily to protect students, staff, and faculty from manmade threats.

Based on news stories, these plans are NOT effective. Time after time we read and watch news about some nutcase getting into a school and shooting and killing a bunch of people. Or doing it out on the playground or the parking lot. Or at a football game.

Why?

We submit that it is NOT just because the safety plans are poorly thought out, poorly written, poorly practiced, and poorly reviewed and followed. This is a given for a bureaucratic organization, which ALL public schools and many private schools are.

It is definitely NOT because the schools have inadequate resources to develop and implement these plans. Although since it is (generally) highly-paid bureaucrats that actually HAVE the resources given to them, and fail to write and train and implement, this is a part of the problem. Parasites are, by their very nature, lazy, greedy, and without forethought.

We suggest that it is because school safety plans are BAND-AIDS (TM). They treat the symptoms and NOT the causes: they are NOT preventative: they are reactions. Band-Aids don’t prevent injuries, they treat injuries, already sustained. They may allow for more rapid healing, they may help produce further injuries or complications, but they do NOT address the causes of the wound you put them on. And no matter how many layers of Band-Aids (or other brands of “adhesive bandages”) you use – it won’t cure the wound.

So demands and suggestions that parents and others find, obtain, review, critique, and work to improve these safety plans are futile and while they may help some, do NOT prevent the manmade threats to schools and those in them. Even if the safety plans were perfect, and executed with the precision of a moon launch and landing.

We can make some suggestions as to what CAN prevent these manmade threats, or deal with them.

The most obvious is to STOP warehousing hundreds (or thousands) of students and staff in clearly labeled, indefensible, unprotected, and legally disarmed facilities. Particularly “public” (government run, tax funded) school buildings. Indeed, the more these places, these institutions become warehouses and places of cruel abuse and places for spreading propaganda, the more likely they are to be targets. And the more they are fortified, honestly, the more likely they are to be targets of more and more effective weapons. And the more the schools regulate the behavior of students (at least try to), the greater the excuses and incentives to escalate.

So, ending the near-monopoly of government-run education would be a big step forward. So would jettisoning the idea that bigger is better. If you can’t easily eliminate public schools, you can certainly reduce their negatives.

Another is to arm teachers and staff – yes, even though some of the worst of mass school murders in the history of these States have been done by staff and teachers. But having armed people to protect students (and themselves) has definitely worked in various places: it is a preventative as much as it is a response.

But these still just address the symptoms of the problem. The key is teaching responsibility and morality to students, parents, and teachers. Hard? Absolutely in this country and this century. But teaching – and enforcing personal responsibility and individual morality (abandoned decades ago) really is the long-term solution. But it is long term: it took a century to get so bad, and likely another century to fix it.

But at least it isn’t just a Band-Aid approach.