Reporter

A proposition to arm educators has arisen in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

A teacher’s responsibility is to teach, not to be a first line of defense. That is why police officers and security exist in the first place.

Rae Abbott, a junior math major, said that arming teachers is a terrible idea and referenced the armed personnel who held back during the recent Florida shooting.

“There has already been at least 28 incidences where a gun has been fired at a school this year. If the f**king campus police at the Parkland shooting didn’t do his f**king job, a trained police officer, how the hell are teachers going to be expected to do it?” said Abbott.

It’s true that arming teachers might provide an extra layer of security for American youth, but asking them to both educate and protect their students is a hefty task, and a misguided one if our current education system is any indication.

The U.S.is already struggling to keep up with other countries when it comes to test scores.

According to the Pew Research Center, the U.S. ranked just about average compared to other industrialized countries like Japan, Germany, Canada, and Finland in terms of education last year. The Hechinger Report also found that spending per student declined by 4% in the U.S. from 2010 to 2014.

More resources should be dedicated to the education and care of our students, such as counseling centers, well-trained educators, trained security, and active shooter procedure drills.

Asking teachers to pull double-duty on something they were not trained to do is too much to ask, and having some experience with firing a weapon is no replacement for professional experience. Schools should be a safe-haven for children, not a potential shooting range.

Perhaps stricter gun laws are a solution, as many of the Parkland students have been calling for. Whatever the case may be, arming teachers is not going to be the solution.