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It is understandable and even commendable that school teachers and other school employees wish to have a way to defend their students against any attackers. With the truly horrifying attacks that have occurred in schools around the globe in recent years, the schoolyard has become a very dangerous place to be. However, would adding more weaponry to the mix create a safer situation?

Picture this: Teachers become armed - whether it be with guns, knives, capsicum spray or truncheons. Although the move is kept quiet, the news leaks out; the media pounces on the opportunity to create an uproar, parents on the board of governors discuss it over the dinner table, or the school grapevine simply does its job. Now, the student body is aware that there is weaponry on the premises, and how to get to it.

A disgruntled student, driven by anger and depression, remembers the mass slaughters perpetrated by other teens and starts obsessing about it. The question is, where to get the weaponry? The answer is close to home if parents have guns, but if these are kept under lock and key or if access is difficult, the next place where weapons may seem available to them is from the school itself. This would also add a nice touch of irony to the student's plan.

I need not outline the rest of the scenario. With an organisation as large as a school, we all know that it would be possible for the students to gain access to weapons wherever they were hidden - students are curious and have a lot of time on their hands when they are acting normally, and a determined and mentally unbalanced student would be even more capable.

Arming school staff is not the answer to combatting the terrible mass murders that have occurred in schools, just as an escalation of violence is never the way to achieve peace. If teachers at the next school have guns - so what? The attack after that will be by a student who uses an automatic weapon or a bomb. Reacting to the situation like an action movie hero might be an adult instinct to the imagined scenario, but it does not help to prevent or deal with these attacks.

Instead of helping to foster this culture of violence, schools would be better off talking with their students and trying to find out what it is that causes children to perform such horrific acts. Instead of funding arms for schools, councils and governments would be better off looking for ways to make young people feel that their voices will be heard without the sound of a gun blast, and ensuring that teens with mental illness are spotted and given the treatment they need before they despair. Further violence is not the answer.

Learn more about this author, Clare Callow.
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