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Saddest nursery-school rhyme ever, in Somerville

WBUR reports on the Somerville school that is teaching little kids how to hide from a mass murderer to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

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More useful than duck and cover.

And as necessary as teaching them how to cross a street properly.

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If creating yet another generation of habitually terrified people with no sense of proportion about risk is your goal, then, yeah, sure.

We need more ignorant and terrified sheep to vote for Trump Jr. in 15 years, amirite?

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This is akin to the "stranger danger" moral panic, which has taught generations of children to run screaming from innocent people because they might be abductors - even though the vast, vast majority of abductions are caused by people the kids know.

Freaking out 5 year olds "just in case" isn't productive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_danger

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The children don't always run away. I was in the supermarket looking at the shelf, when suddenly a toddler latched onto my leg and grinned up at me. A woman appeared at the far end of the aisle, so I suggested to the kid that it might be his mom. It was. Of course, I got a Chester-the-Molester stinkeye from the not-so-vigilant parent.

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Or is it more akin to every other nursery rhyme out there?

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150610-the-dark-side-of-nursery-rhymes

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When I was in grade school we had to know to hide under our desks in case the USSR dropped a nuclear bomb. It was just matter of fact back then.

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This is probably just as effective as duck and cover, too.

The only kids to survive Newtown were hidden in closets and cupboards because their teacher crammed their tiny bodies in there.

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My wife is a middle school teacher. She, as an early middle age person, has been going through drills with her students on how to moves desks securely against doors in case of trouble. She was shot with paint by a local cop during a mock attack on her school. Strange days indeed.

It is unpleasant to think that my wife has to potentially face some idiot with a firearm at her place of employment, because I know she would fling herself in front of somebody with a gun to save a kid.

The nursery rhymes are being taught because in a panic situation the preschoolers and younger aged children will respond to the teacher faster if they know the rhyme.

I once started singing "Clean Up,. Clean Up" from Barney to my son's preschool class many years ago. They immediately stopped what they were doing and responded to the rhyme and started cleaning up. Fairplay to the teacher who put this poster up.

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So they will be calm when shot. Great. Got it.

Middle school is a different ball game, since middle schoolers bring weapons to school.

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It's not just a punch line:

Within a considerable radius from the surface of the nuclear fireball, 0–3 kilometers—largely depending on the explosion's height, yield and position of personnel—ducking and covering would offer negligible protection against the intense heat, blast and prompt ionizing radiation following a nuclear explosion. Beyond that range, however, many lives would be saved by following the simple advice,[37] especially since at that range the main hazard is not from ionizing radiation but from blast injuries and sustaining thermal flash burns to unprotected skin.[36][38][39][40] Furthermore, following the bright flash of light of the nuclear fireball, the explosion's blast wave would take from first light, 7 to 10 seconds to reach a person standing 3 km from the surface of the nuclear fireball, with the exact time of arrival being dependent on the speed of sound in air in their area.[41][9][10] The time delay between the moment of an explosions flash and the arrival of the slower moving blast wave is analogous to the commonly experienced time delay between the observation of a flash of lightning and the arrival of thunder during a lightning storm, thus at the distances that the advice would be most effective, there would be more than ample amounts of time to take the prompt countermeasure of 'duck and cover' against the blast's direct effects and flying debris.[42] For very large explosions it can take 30 seconds or more, after the silent moment of flash, for a potentially dangerous blast wave over-pressure to arrive at, or hit, your position.[43]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover#Efficacy_during_a_nuclear_e...

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The process to involuntarily commit an obviously disturbed and potentially dangerous person should be streamlined. And responsible individuals who work in our vast social services industry, law enforcement, our education and healthcare industries, need to be more pro-active (minus the morbid fear of potential lawsuits where applicable.) Er on the side of reasonable caution.

Nik Cruz would have been arrested for assault and be in the system and he would (at least theoretically) have been prevented from legally buying long guns (rifles; he did not have hwnd guns, just standard civilian semi-auto rifles and shotgun.) The reason he wasn't was because of a regulation inacted by the Broward Country School commissioner (who was previously Chicago school commissioner) that is designed to prevent students involved in illegal activity, including assaults, from being arrested by police and criminally charged. Why all thesocial workers and other responsible individuals never escalated him to being serious tbreat and, at mimimum, held for evaluation under the Baker Act, God only knows.

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That wouldn't work, because the things that predict that sort of violence--entitlement, resentment, and a history of having committed domestic violence--aren't mental illnesses.

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