“The nine-year-old had been drawing images of guns at school and pretending to point the weapons at other students. He’d become more withdrawn, and had stared angrily at a teacher.”
Those are the first two lines of an article we need to talk about.
But before we go any further, what would YOU do? How would you respond to that scenario, if you were an educator or administrator at that school?
The school….
….suspended him. For a WEEK.
If you’re read my book, Building Boys, you know it begins with me receiving a note from school about the “disturbing” picture my son drew. You also know that another one of my young sons spent hours tracing pictures and photos of guns.
Both of those boys are now gainfully employed young men in their 20s. Both are in committed relationships. And neither has shot up a school, a church, a parade, or anything else. Both are decent humans.
We can’t dismiss educators’ concerns…
Here in the U.S., teachers and school administrators are asked to do too much with too little. They are understandably & justifiably concerned about violence; in 2023, there were 182 school shooting incidents, according to Education Week. 21 people died and 42 others were injured as a result of gun violence in and around schools. Thousands of others were traumatized.
Educators want to keep students safe. They want (& deserve) to be safe. And they know that today’s students bring with them high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. They know that student mental health is not great and they see the effects of that every day in their classrooms.
We, collectively, need to listen and respond to educators’ concerns. As I noted in this 2018 blog post (written shortly after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman High School), educators have been raising alarms about students’ mental health for years now.
…But we shouldn’t pathologize boys
Educators weren’t sure if the nine-year-old boy mentioned at the start of this post — the one who was drawing images of guns & stared “angrily” at his teacher — was safe to return to school after his suspension. So they had him meet with a psychiatrist. Via video chat:
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