When Was the Last Time American Children Were So Afraid?
Students used to duck and cover. Now they have lockdown drills.
This week, America got another reminder of the fear that its schoolchildren must make sense of every day. On Tuesday afternoon, nine students were shot—one of them fatally—at STEM School Highlands Ranch, near Denver.
Though the two suspects are teenagers, STEM School Highlands Ranch is K–12, meaning that some young children were exposed to the violence. Among them was a second grader who told a New York Times reporter that he’d gone through lockdowns and active-shooter drills since kindergarten. That’s close to half his eight years of life.
His familiarity with potential crisis scenarios makes him part of an.
