Lac qui Parle simmers with threat issue

We most certainly cut slack for kids, as they can do and say the craziest things. There's hardly any restraint on the kind of media that kids consume. Very troubling thoughts can be planted in their heads. In their immaturity, they may not be conscious of certain lines you do not cross, either with words or action.
Adults need to remember better about when they were kids.
A conundrum arises: We cut kids slack, yes, but there is no margin for risk with a public school where kids have compulsory attendance. We have the obvious mandate of trying to ensure safety for all, all the time. I have suggested we rely less on the model of public school, that kids can develop themselves in a variety of ways with tools that do not have to be dispensed by a school with its rules and bureaucracy.
My ideas on this are not likely to take hold. So parents will continue to be beholden to the traditional model. I'll concede that improvements have been made to reduce the kind of monopolistic grip the institutions once had. But it's still pretty rigid. And safety is paramount. And kids can be immature, foolish and impressionable. They can get bitter about school. They can get bullied, or disciplined in a draconian way by adults around them.
Or they can be bored and tired almost to tears, if it's anything like what I remember. Conjugate verbs in French class? I found French to be a futile area of study and my inattentiveness at times caused reprimands and even laughter from my classmates. Years later we found there is only one meaningful approach to language instruction - "immersion" - and the method I was subjected to was found to be almost completely pointless.
I wasn't the kind of kid to break down and do something foolish like issue a threat. We are supposed to understand that kids can do drastic things without fully knowing the consequences. But the consequences are in fact drastic for the year 2020. We have learned this in Morris with the recent incident that brought law enforcement dogs here, even. A kid commits an emotional and impulsive act and then all heck breaks loose, presumably with a considerable expense of money in the end.
And then we hear there will likely be hell to pay for the parents, who I just have to sympathize with. Don't you? Is it too risky to even have kids in 2020?
There were times when I wanted to "vent" in high school. I kept such thoughts contained. I was attacked by a teacher in class once - Steve Poppe can tell you about it - and afterward I fantasized about what I might have done in response. But it didn't go beyond fantasy. I fantasize to this day about what I could have done.
Today I share these thoughts because of stuff that is going on with the Lac qui Parle Valley school. I got a tip from a friend:

This puzzling post appeared on the KLQP Radio Facebook page last night:

  

"The Lac qui Parle Valley school administration and the Lac qui Parle County Sheriff's office are working to resolve an issue which has come up. As a result of this, there will be no school at the high school or elementary schools in the district on Thursday, February 27th, or Friday, February 28th. No other details are available and residents are asked not to call school officials for details at this time. More information will be released in the near future. Students should note that Friday will be a virtual day."

I texted a teacher there that I know, asking what the deal was, and she said that they hadn’t been told what was happening. There was a chalkboard threat to “shoot up the school” made by a kid a couple weeks ago, dating the incident to happen on the 28th. But, they caught that kid almost immediately and “removed him from school.” Unless the authorities were concerned that the kid was serious and not working alone . . .

 
Refuge in "virtual days"
I'm amused at some of the wording: "an issue which has come up." No intent to elucidate there. We read "Friday will be a virtual day." I'm inclined to prefer that every day be a virtual day. I think teachers are scared that if the weather or threat incidents cause too many "virtual days," families will begin to think all the studies could be handled this way, all the time.
I have to wonder: When schools are shut down because of threats, do we begin to see a sort of PTSD effect on all the kids? Do these incidents plant a kernel of fear in the kids' minds, or cynicism, about how the world is full of danger? Yes danger exists, but in our schools? Where we're required by law to send kids every day?
We must push the trend toward home-schooling. It started as a concept associated with religious zealots but I feel that has faded. It fades as the Internet blossoms ever more, serving the wide swath of needs we feel on any given day. And to think it started as a novelty. We could have seen this coming, couldn't we?
The Internet is a bottom-up information experience, not top-down. Young people, who really do want to learn, can seize it the way in which they really truly want to be fulfilled. It's a total miracle, except maybe not in the eyes of those who have made their living in the legacy monopolistic bricks and mortar model. That model is slowly breaking down. Just give it more time.
In the meantime, I hope the foolish, impulsive and immature kids who scribble threatening messages can get some empathy and get straightened out. We were all kids once.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com