Are School Shootings a Good Reason to Consider Homeschooling?
Where the real threats really lie
What would you do if you were Kirsten Clemons?
Days after a Georgia school shooting left four people dead, students presented the Lakeview Middle School principal with a TikTok video that seemed to target their Missouri school.
The students were scared. Teachers were scared. The parents who started calling Clemons’ office were scared. No doubt Clemons was scared too, but she couldn’t afford to focus on the fear.
She had a big decision to make—How should the school respond?
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Time to Consider Homeschooling?
I never expected to be an evangelist for homeschooling, but since our family started our non-traditional educational journey I’ve spoken to many parents about it. They’ve either made the switch to homeschooling or are curious about it.
They cite the usual reasons. They want more academic rigor. Some seek better instruction for their special-needs children. They fear indoctrination, bullying, and more and more of them add a new item: fear of school shootings.
That last one is especially tricky. In general, I regard movement away from public schools as a good thing, but let me add my usual disclaimer: If you’re in a good situation with your public school, please know I’m not referring to you. My main goal, even more than promoting homeschooling, is to help parents find the educational option that is right for them.
I might be big on homeschooling, but I’m also big on rational risk assessment. So much of life is a struggle to sweat the right stuff. Yet so many of us, myself included, swell with anxiety about tiny threats while we ignore bigger dangers.
Are schools safe?
So many of us want to know, but you can’t provide a sensible response without adding, “Compared to what?”
Nearly every action we take shows how we calculate risk. It starts when you wake up in the morning.
Should you take a shower? You might slip and fall!
Should you grab a coffee? What about the silent killer, high blood pressure!
Are you going to drive to work? You could get hit by a bus!
(I happen to be pro-shower, pro-coffee, and pro-driving to work, unless walking is an option).
So many of us get nervous when we board a flight, but forget we’ve already survived the most dangerous part of our journey—driving to the airport.
If we were statisticians, we’d feel most relaxed at 35,000 feet.
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The Real Threat
Of course, we should worry about school shootings. But how much should we worry? That’s when the “compared to what?” addendum helps us think straight.
How much do we worry about drownings, medical errors, driving, or walking to school?
Turns out all of those take many more children’s lives than school shootings.
I don’t want my friend Lenore Skenazy to revoke my Free Range Parent card—I’m not against kids walking to school, I swear!
And what’s true in general might not be true for any specific situation. We all live in specific situations, and, with the right information, we can alter our situations and make more sensible decisions.
Unfortunately, we often fixate on specific types of tragedies (such as school shootings) but overlook the big picture (such as persistently low violent crime clearance rates). Here in California, 55% of violent crimes go unsolved, and, since clearance rates don’t account for sentencing, the reality is probably much worse when it comes to actual justice served. You’ll find abysmal clearance rates in cities across the nation. Cops solve less than 50% of murders nationwide. Clearance rates remain low partly because we’re invited to focus on a million other threats.
When it comes to school shootings, politicians, reporters, and activists often muddy the waters. Organizations such as Everytown for Gun Safety and the Center for Homeland Defense and Security tell us that America endures more than a hundred school shootings each year.
But there’s much more to that story.
Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox helps maintain the AP/USA Today/Northeastern Mass Killing database. He notes that these databases include suicides, accidental shootings, shootings not involving students or faculty, shootings on school property but not associated with school activities, and even some that occur on weekends or evenings.
Focus on shootings during school hours since 1999, and the figure drops from more than a hundred school shootings per year to 16, with about four resulting in fatalities. Over the past quarter-century, 88 people have died from school shootings. And of those, Fox points out that only 21 involved indiscriminate gunfire, “as opposed to a specifically targeted individual or an accidental discharge of a firearm, the very scenario of randomness that engenders so much anxiety.”
According to Fox’s calculations, the yearly odds that a child in America will die in a mass shooting at school are nearly 10 million to 1, about the odds of being killed by lightning.
So Many Alarms
Back in Missouri, Principal Clemons’s staff soon discovered that their school wasn’t facing a potential school shooting. The TikTok post in question referenced schools that were “targeted,” not for violence, but for increased state funding. And the “Lakeview Middle School” highlighted in the post referred to a different school with the same name located in Georgia.
What a relief, but Clemons acknowledges that her community has been on edge since the last school shooting. And the rise in students making thousands of hoax threats each year only adds to their anxiety.
I don’t have much faith in public schools to respond properly to threats, whether they’re real or not. So much of the reaction seems like the same kind of security theater we witnessed after 9/11.
Today’s schoolkids can expect plenty of lockdown drills, panic buttons, and false alarms. The actual threat may be tiny, but the day-in-and-day-out anxiety looms large. And I would indeed worry about subjecting kids to that.
“There is not an epidemic of mass shootings,” says Fox, “What’s increasing and is out of control is the epidemic of fear.”
If you’re fed up with groupthink in entertainment, media, and more, please consider subscribing to Shiny Herd.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His written work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, USA Today, Reason, and The Washington Post.
His recent film work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here.
Ted and his wife and producing partner Courtney Moorehead Balaker are now making a narrative feature film based on Rob Henderson’s bestselling book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.
Both my kids high school and middle schools were the subject of threats of shooting, and the terrifying couple of days where someone had made the threat, are not ones I want to live through again. Mine are in private now, but I can't say those threats had nothing to do with the decision. I have seen so many great homeschooling options, and even homeschooled football teams, that I really respect families choosing that option.
A comment that seems to occur to no-one is that homeschooling is simply more work. More than a few times my wife confessed to wishing the big yellow bus would get her kids too, not just the neighbor boy. Sure, there are certainly all the ones you mentioned. But don't forget this one.