How to end mass shootings at schools? — Get rid of the schools

We seem to have this conversation all too often, and it seems to always go the same way.

Democrat lawmakers immediately come out for more gun control, and Second Amendment advocates always recommend more armed personnel in schools to prevent the carnage. And nothing changes. Nothing would change even if you tried to take every gun away from every American — which will never happen, by the way.

I have a much more radical idea to end mass shootings at schools. End schools.

Every other private-sector industry has modernized and updated methods of creating, manufacturing and doing business. Why do we still educate our children based on a 19th century model of learning? Why? We put kids them on big yellow tin cans and transport them to concrete bunkers at great expense. It makes no sense not to use the technology available to avoid the costly, wasteful and now sometimes extremely dangerous method of sticking sometimes thousands of kids in a building where they are all sitting ducks.

Is it tradition? Is it powerful teacher unions? Is it a stubborn bureaucracy that refuses to innovate for the sake of job security? It makes so sense. Distance and online learning should have replaced the old school model years ago. Technology has changed tremendously, and society has changed drastically.

For instance, did you see any of the interviews with the kids right after the horrific massacre in Florida? The kids were all poised and well-spoken and almost all unusually flat and calm. Some even had an awkward near-grin on their faces. They've just been through hell and my heart goes out to them — but if this was just barely a generation ago, the reaction would have been much different.

Kids seem different today. Maybe the technology that seems to have changed them needs to be the vehicle they need to learn from. I'm certainly not advocating ending education, but these shootings are just another in a long list of reasons to look at how we need to change how we educate our children.

Ask any teacher or administrator over the age of 35 and they'll tell you it's weird in there (at school) and getting weirder by the school year. Hopefully, in another generation (about 20 years from now) we'll look back at this period of time and wonder why we didn't make the changes sooner than we did — if we ever do.

And we'd better do it soon.

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