Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Conn., earlier this year, how schools should protect children has been debated by politicians and educators alike across the nation.
Wayne LaPierre, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association (NRA), proposed placing armed guards in every school; a school board in Ohio approved a plan that would arm janitors; and South Dakota passed a law allowing teachers to have guns in their classrooms. But one of the most controversial tactics proposed recently has been instructing the children themselves to fight.
First proposed after the massacre at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colo., in 1999, the idea of teaching kids to respond and “gang rush” a mass shooter instead of hiding was met with a lot of resistance.
But after a year with 16 mass shootings, resulting in the loss of 88 persons, teaching kids to respond aggressively has resurfaced, this time with more support.
One program used in schools is called “A.L.i.C.E.” — which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate. The program was created by Greg Crane, a former SWAT officer and schoolteacher in Texas after Columbine. To date, according to his company’s website, more than 300 schools and universities have trained 1.6 million students using A.L.i.C.E.
Crane says A.L.i.C.E. has received “unprecedented interest” since the Sandy Hook shooting, and says that once students are aware of an intruder in the building, they can build barricades against their classroom doors by stacking chairs and desks.
Braden Kling, an 8-year-old from Middletown, Ohio, says his school has prepared him for a gunman. “We have this big board and we hide behind that. If he comes in, we start throwing stuff,” he explains. “Pencils, chairs, boxes, books, markers. And then we escape.”
The program also instructs students about how to best go “toe-to-toe” with a shooter if necessary. Start by throwing books, backpacks, desks — or anything else they can get their hands on — to disrupt the gunman, explains the booklet.
“While he’s busy ducking and covering his head from our air assault, we can now begin the ground assault,” the booklet continues. “If we can motivate a small number of the attacked to become attackers if necessary, we will decide when and how this event ends.”
Critics of the program say that A.L.i.C.E. presents safety and liability risks for students and schools.
“A.L.i.C.E may be well intended, but it’s not well thought-out,” says Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services. “You can’t get a group of middle-school kids to simultaneously agree on chicken nuggets or pizza in the cafeteria for lunch, much less make a split-second decision to start throwing items at an armed intruder.”
One A.L.i.C.E-trained student, 17-year-old Alyssa Roehm, from Liberty Township, Ohio, says a teacher at her high school has a plan for potentially evacuating her second-story classroom through a window, by having students tie their jeans together to form a rope. “I think that’d be kind of weird,” Roehm says, “because, well, no one would be wearing pants.”
Crane says he is used to defending the program. To date, no school teaching A.L.i.C.E. has faced an active shooter situation; Crane points instead to the 1998 shooting at Thurston High School in Oregon, where 15-year-old Kipland Kinkel fired 50 rounds in the cafeteria, killing two students and injuring two dozen others before he was tackled by his classmates.
“It wasn’t a staff member who led the rush against him that took him to the ground and disarmed him. It was a 17-year-old student, Jake Rykar,” Crane notes. “If they had maintained that passive, static posture on the floor, with all those hundreds of kids in the cafeteria, there’s no telling what the outcome could have been that day.”
Still, some like Dr. Stephen Brock of the National Association of School Psychologists says teaching such tactics may cause unnecessary anxiety and stress for students, particularly young ones who are more easily traumatized. “It strikes me as an overreaction and potentially dangerous,” Brock says. “School shootings are extremely rare. The odds of a student becoming a victim are 1 in 2.5 million. The odds of getting struck by lightning? One in 700,000.”
Brock has a point, as second-grader Kling has already expressed his fears related to the training. “I don’t want to get shot,” he said. “I’m kind of scared.”