Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Conservatives Are Exaggerating Violence In Schools: Newport News Edition

—

by

James A. Bacon
in ,

Hot off the wires from The Virginian-Pilot:

A teacher was injured in a shooting Friday afternoon at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, according to police and school officials.

No students were injured but an adult was taken to the hospital. Police believe they have the person responsible in custody and said there is no longer an active shooter.

A Newport News school district spokesperson confirmed the adult is a teacher. The extent of the teacher’s injuries [was] unknown.

Never fear. This won’t affect teacher morale. I have it on the highest authority that the explanation for the increasingly acute teacher shortage in Virginia is the Youngkin administration’s policies on transgenderism and prohibition on the teaching of “real” history!

— JAB

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

46 responses to “Conservatives Are Exaggerating Violence In Schools: Newport News Edition”

  1. kls Avatar
    kls

    and there is the C-19 effect……

  2. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Before jumping to conclusions, one needs to know the identity/role of the shooter. Just because it was a teacher and it was at school does not mean that students were involved or the shooting itself was school-related. It could have been a jealous husband or wife or a jilted lover.

    1. Charles D'Aulnais Avatar
      Charles D’Aulnais

      “NNPS said the person responsible for the shooting is in police custody. Sources from NNPS tell WAVY it was a first grade student who shot the teacher.”

      1st grader? That’s a 6-year old. At that age, can this be anything other than accidental caused by a failure in the home?

      1. Donald Smith Avatar
        Donald Smith

        “Before jumping to conclusions, one needs to know the identity/role of the shooter. Just because it was a teacher and it was at school does not mean that students were involved or the shooting itself was school-related. It could have been a jealous husband or wife or a jilted lover.”

        Dick, you were saying?

        1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
          Dick Hall-Sizemore

          Jim was making assumptions before the identity of the shooter was known.

          1. VaNavVet Avatar
            VaNavVet

            Jim expressed no concern for the condition of the teacher nor for the treatment of the 6 year-old, but could not resist the temptation to give a nod to conservatives while poking his perpetual boogieman. Welcome to the twisted world of JAB.

    2. CJBova Avatar
      CJBova

      WAVY and WVEC said it was a student.
      WTKR said “Newport News Councilmember Curtis D. Bethany III confirmed to us that a student has been identified as the shooting suspect.”

      1. CJBova Avatar
        CJBova

        Nobody took away my option to make comments as part of the BR community.

    3. VaNavVet Avatar
      VaNavVet

      In what crazy 2nd amendment world does a 6 year old have access to a loaded handgun? Despite the snark from JAB, how many teachers are willing to exercise aggressive discipline when the school administration can not or will not provide for their personal safety? Teachers are not paid to be targets for the students.

      1. Not Today Avatar
        Not Today

        Sadly, schools and teachers cannot do anything about easy access to guns in homes. No aggressive discipline policy, not even basic SEL techniques, can prevent the children of ammosexuals and negligent/aggressive gun owners from seeing firearms as legitimate tools for settling grievances.

  3. Lefty665 Avatar
    Lefty665

    Perhaps a reenactment of Bacon’s Rebellion gone awry?

  4. James McCarthy Avatar
    James McCarthy

    Before carping about violence in elementary schools, a prior question concerns how and why an elementary school student was in possession of a gun.

    1. Charles D'Aulnais Avatar
      Charles D’Aulnais

      Parental choice?

      Don’t Google “six year old brings gun to school”. The results are pages and pages. One in SC brought a gun to school to shoot “zombies”. Video games?

  5. James Kiser Avatar
    James Kiser

    Amazing all those “fake” videos of school violence that are everywhere. I had 2 cousins who were school teachers in NC and retired after getting threats from students for grades.

    1. Eric the half a troll Avatar
      Eric the half a troll

      Yeah, those 6 year olds are just out of hand… must be because of CRT!!!

      1. James Kiser Avatar
        James Kiser

        actually you may be closer to the mark then you think. If a white or Asian kid did it would have been trumpeted. Methinks it was a black kid but I doubt we will ever know unless someone blabs.

        1. Eric the half a troll Avatar
          Eric the half a troll

          We will never know regardless of race… and we shouldn’t… but you are certainly letting us know where you stand on the question…

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            indeed.

          2. Eric the half a troll Avatar
            Eric the half a troll

            Looks to me like this school (regardless of racial makeup) is performing pretty dang well… https://schoolquality.virginia.gov/schools/richneck-elementary

            Looks like some 53% of students are economically disadvantaged… this school certainly does not fit the BR narrative, eh?

            http://sbo.nn.k12.va.us/schools/demographics/allschools.pdf

          3. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Oh, not surprised if it is “made” to “fit”.

            but DANG , it’s got those DEI words:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8b68f1bcc2399555c1a44759ba3bd6756e80e4c355e77ae401c6a5e5091a1522.jpg

          4. James Kiser Avatar
            James Kiser

            people who refuse to face the facts will never arrive at a solution which is why you ways will never work. You think I mean skin color and what I am talking about is culture specifically the black culture of anger and demand for appeasement ibstead of earning what they want. But you go you way and I will live mine.

  6. James C. Sherlock Avatar
    James C. Sherlock

    Still hard for me to believe that after all of the school shootings and stabbings over so many years we don’t harden schools.

    Cost is a big factor of course.

    The National Institute of Justice is in the process of revising its metal detector evaluations, but I would think a technical way could be developed to detect weapons in entryways without one-at-a-time scanning.

    NYC uses metal detectors in its toughest schools.

    1. Eric the half a troll Avatar
      Eric the half a troll

      Yep, need to harden those elementary schools against those 6 year olds thugs…

      1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
        James Wyatt Whitehead

        Eric have you ever talked to a school bus driver? There is a little more going on these days than the wheels on the bus go round and round.

      2. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        might want to know where the kid got the gun.

    2. Eric the half a troll Avatar
      Eric the half a troll

      From James’ article, Sherlock:

      “The school, however, does have the capability of metal detecting students, Superintendent George Parker said at the press conference. They do not perform the test on every student, every day, but said every school in the district has the capability to do so.”

    3. Matt Hurt Avatar
      Matt Hurt

      I don’t doubt this could help, but I have gone into a number of schools in which kids walk through a metal detector each day. It is amazing to see how many kids set of the detectors, and just go straight to class.

      When I was in a school many years ago, one of the things I did was to walk around the school and remove the rocks that folks had placed in the door to prevent them from closing because they locked automatically. Some folks found it more convenient to do that than to resort to using their key.

      The point is that in schools which find themselves in communities of chaos, i.e. those communities in which shootings are a common occurrence, the situation dictates that individuals expect bad things to happen all the time, therefore, they remain in a much more vigilant state. In communities in which this type of event is rare, folks don’t maintain that heightened state of vigilance because they don’t think that type of thing “can happen here”.

      My thinking is that if we want to fix these type of things in the future, we need to begin working on the root causes, which are systemic community issues. Working on this type of thing at the school level is more closely akin to applying a Band-Aid to a gushing arterial wound.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        yeah….but…. can’t ignore immediate threats either… gotta do both IMO.

        1. Matt Hurt Avatar
          Matt Hurt

          Yes sir, but we’re currently completely ignoring the root causes. We can provide safer environments by dealing with those root causes than simply dealing with the after effects. In this case the old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” really hits the nail on the head.

          1. Not Today Avatar
            Not Today

            This part. There are lots of ways to address teacher hiring/retention and gun violence. I’m certainly open to data-informed conservative approaches to both but I haven’t heard any in years.

    4. James McCarthy Avatar
      James McCarthy

      It’s not often I find agreement with Sherlock. When communal safety and the lives of others are at stake, protective measures like magnetometers in schools are a short term solution. The longer term solutions, e.g., social breakdown rehab, can be undertaken at the same time.

  7. Not Today Avatar
    Not Today

    It couldn’t possibly be that the refusal of legislators to impose significant punishment on adults who allow children unfettered access to guns (thereby risking the lives of teachers) is a contributor to gun violence too…

    This piece is yet another in a long line, looking for easy answers and scapegoats for multi-pronged challenges and nary a policy proposal/solution in sight.

    The disrespect of the teaching profession includes the failure to respect their professional judgment writ large (pay, book bans, historical revisionism, demonization/claims of ‘grooming’). This screed is part of the problem.

  8. Not Today Avatar
    Not Today

    Wouldn’t it be nice if there were actually some concern expressed in the editorial for the little boy (not “YOUNG MAN” as authorities said) who was allowed access to a gun and somehow learned that using it to shoot his teacher was an appropriate way to deal with his feelings? Gosh, I wonder if social, emotional learning tools and gun regulation might have reduced the risk of harm? Part of the social breakdown here is the inability to recognize that there are any social obligations at all, not the least of which is to recognize each other’s humanity. The tragedy of this boy/teacher/school demands more than politicking. It demands SOLUTIONS. JAB never offers any. This feels like a lost opportunity to reduce grievance and achieve change.

    1. James McCarthy Avatar
      James McCarthy

      Ideology causes blindness at a minimum or encourages disregard of proportions and perspective. It was more important to post “breaking news” about school violence than offer commentary on causes and solutions.

      1. Not Today Avatar
        Not Today

        It wasn’t simply breaking news though. I’ve no objection to your stated aims. The post, however, included opinion/commentary that inaccurately attributed to unknown authorities reasons for the teacher shortage. Folks should be informed that this is what teachers themselves are saying on the record: https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/9/6/23220508/teachers-leaving-the-profession-quitting-teaching-reasons?_amp=true

    2. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      So if you don’t know, then you presume it? SHOULD YOU?

      is that “awful” ?

      Well, it ain’t necessarily “good” journalism.

    3. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Yes, it is tragic when a 6-year-old boy brings a gun to school and shoots someone. For the person who got shot… and the child.

      As far as “solutions,” let’s start by discussing “solutions that are not working. Social-emotional learning is not working. It can’t begin to cope with the kind of social breakdown this country is experiencing. The entire “social-justice” project is not working. Rather, it’s contributing to the breakdown.

      When you’ve got a headache, the first step toward a cure is to stop banging your head against the wall.

      1. Not Today Avatar
        Not Today

        What evidence do you have that social, emotional learning is ineffective? Or that learning how to handle interpersonal conflict is ‘contributing to the breakdown’? Declaring something with confidence doesn’t make it true or correct. https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-does-the-research-say/

        When I was growing up, this didn’t have a fancy name; it was just good home training and basic social skills. https://www.cfchildren.org/what-is-social-emotional-learning/

        Indeed, efforts to demonize ‘soft skills’ like cooperation and teamwork in education are one of the many ways the professional expertise of classroom teachers has been devalued and disrespected. This is, in the words of teachers themselves, driving them out of the classroom.

        It’s a shame that it’s, as many basic notions of socialization/decency have, been used as a wedge issue. Social interactions would be so much more pleasant if everyone had better social skills and a clearer sense of right, wrong, and even justice. https://www.npr.org/2022/09/26/1124082878/how-social-emotional-learning-became-a-frontline-in-the-battle-against-crt

      2. James McCarthy Avatar
        James McCarthy

        Beg to differ. The first issue is NOT the ones you opine are not working. The first failure is that of a 6 year old with a gun.

      3. Eric the half a troll Avatar
        Eric the half a troll

        JAB, maybe if I ask you directly, your censor will not delete the question before it can be answered. Your piece is very snarky. Why is it that you and other contributors are breaking the rules you established for commenting? Are there other rules for BR editorials and editors…?

    4. Not Today Avatar
      Not Today

      One presumes the ability to add postscripts is available, no? Or, maybe take a breath and get more information before describing the problem in such a limited way?

  9. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead

    Pray for Abby Zwerner. After being shot in the chest she had the presence of mind to tell the children in the classroom to clear out. It is strange that I had to go to UK source on a Virginia news story to find any meaningful details.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11608763/PIC-Teacher-25-left-critically-ill-deliberately-shot-chest-boy-aged-SIX.html

    1. Eric the half a troll Avatar
      Eric the half a troll

      JMU graduate. An excellent teaching program there.

    2. James McCarthy Avatar
      James McCarthy

      ‘Twould have been preferable had the BR posted article contained more info.

  10. Not Today Avatar
    Not Today

    An update with more info. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/newport-news-school-shooting-virginia.html?unlocked_article_code=A34QE8fMlNoAUPGLVSd-s8fztf233Yl9YqUpuESVTFUAQEwu52T-yhT3HvO1Nak4gIDSEcKboxaKwbflVPi5ZXqwc0JwY0AAQyxXGNjeAMpKgSw-QQKEFE4uUPQo6z39xQ0Mid_lSwAf5KX7d4cefdxqkApiyuYXhVoKMMSmV8wuOEBpFaehzqvYp63BhNI6Pl77pG6aSf7sXvoInumBvvm9gpNcvAAFLfIG0mQaJNTdBmlTJjTy2AgAveik8DVAn1vWlEMNReCIRsK3yqajHbPsEUtHRT1nRD44IPJSsW9uPmIxFjH8wktK7gqpt7SNajm_Q_E-ksgLguFQ1mODaYHISh0kakfkJ_8&smid=share-url

    This isn’t a story about school violence. It’s a story about adult negligence.

  11. Thomas Dixon Avatar
    Thomas Dixon

    Take God out of the schools and you get boys going into girls’ restrooms and six year old children shooting teachers.

Leave a Reply

Read More