Let's stop terrifying children

New York state will ban "active shooter drills" with actors playing shooters and victims, reports Shayla Colon in the New York Times. New guidelines call for a“trauma-informed” and “age-appropriate” approach to drills. Schools will give advance notice to staff, students and parents.

However, all New York schools — public and private — "will still be required to conduct eight evacuation drills and four lockdown drills every year," writes Colon.

That seems like a lot. In my school days, we had only a few fire drills every year. One year, we had a tornado drill. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, when I was 10, we prepared for nuclear war by putting our heads on our desks. Lockdowns hadn't been invented.

Fires aren't set during fire drills, says Mo Canady of the National Association of School Resource Officers. He sees no reason to pretend there's a shooter in the school in order to hold a drill.

Everytown for Gun Safety says there's "almost no research affirming the value of these drills for preventing school shootings or protecting the school community when shootings do occur," and there is evidence that children are traumatized by active-shooter drills.