Bells And Whistles

Building a new elementary school? Of course you’ll want an au courant architectural feature like a wall that creates a “shadow zone” to block the sight lines of an active shooter. And don’t forget cement block “wings” that both hide and shield students in the hallway!

Even students at local schools — who, thank goodness, have been spared, at least so far, the kind of violence many others have experienced in recent years — are articulate in expressing their fears about having to return to an environment that in the days of yore was not considered a place of potentially fatal danger.

Not surprisingly, and to a degree understandably, school districts now spend millions on products like security cameras, metal detectors and automatically locking doors, even as people in the business of selling school security tools increasingly advise school administrators and help craft safety policy, not improbably with their own financial interests in mind.A recent article in The 74, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news site that focuses on education, and whose name refers to the population of some 74 million people under age 18 in this country, describes some of the aggressive strategies of marketing the bells and whistles of school security products that have come into play since the Columbine massacre in 1999. Salespeople and displays show up at education conferences. Companies woo district contracts by staging their own symposiums and conventions.Imagine another convention center nearby with its own product displays, testimonials, salespeople and speakers. This one — a gun show — touts the all the bells and whistles of its own deadly products.

It’s a shame that the current generation is caught in the crossfire of the marketing of both deadly and life-protecting technology. If only we as adults could do a bit more to protect them from the root cause of violence, rather than simply turning educational buildings into fortresses — and standing by as profits are harvested from tragedy, on both sides.