The current debate about school safety, as tragic as recent events may be, risks derailing the positive direction we need to go in as a nation if we want to uphold the broadest purpose of education: "What kind of people are we preparing to lead society into the future?" The very sad incident in Newtown was the result of one individual's mental impairment and a variety of factors—including his access to weapons—that happened to come together in a perfect storm at an elementary school. But if our response is to arm our schools, I'm afraid that by that logic we must also arm our cinemas and arm our supermarket parking lots. The list will go on and on. In other words, the Newtown issue is not so much about "school shootings" as it is about a "shooting that took place at a school, like many others that have taken place in many other environments."
In other words, as counterintuitive as this might seem, the gun violence issue, in all its urgency (and I believe it is an urgent national issue), shouldn't cloud the school safety issue (another urgent national issue). Well in advance of keeping students safe from the very rare outside attack of a disturbed individual, we have lots of work to do to make sure our students are safe from the various forms of harassment and bullying they