"The United States has institutionalized the mass shooting in a way that [Emile] Durkheim would immediately recognize. As I discovered to my shock when my own children started school in North Carolina some years ago, preparation for a shooting is a part of our children’s lives as soon as they enter kindergarten. The ritual of a Killing Day is known to all adults. It is taught to children first in outline only, and then gradually in more detail as they get older. The lockdown drill is its Mass. The language of 'Active shooters', 'Safe corners', and 'Shelter in place' is its liturgy. 'Run, Hide, Fight' is its creed. Security consultants and credential-dispensing experts are its clergy. My son and daughter have been institutionally readied to be shot dead as surely as I, at their age, was readied by my school to receive my first communion."
- Kieran Healey, August 3, 2019.
I will only add to Healey's evocative comments that I did "duck and cover" drills in school. I don't think they improved anyone's odds of surviving a nuclear exchange. But it was a liturgy acknowledging in its own way the imperative issue of the age, and teaching the very young what they ought to be worried about.
In the Bronx, in the 1950s, when I was in elementary school, we had drills (I don't remember whether they had a name, but they weren't called "duck and cover") in which we crouched under our desks to save us in the event that the Communists launched a nuclear attack. If I recall, even we children knew that the drills were pointless. The school officials must have known that too, although perhaps they thought that being under the desk would protect us from shards of glass when the windows broke. But windows would melt in a nuclear attack, not break, wouldn't they? Another possible reason, although I think that I am being anachronistic, because I doubt that this sort of thinking was around then, was fear of lawsuits. If a kid died but his or her parent survived, did the school fear that the parent would sue because the school hadn't held get-under-your-desk drills? But, even without drills, teachers could have told kids to get under their desks after word came that the big one was on its way. It shouldn't require practice to get under your desk. I'll stop now; I'm thinking too much.
ReplyDeleteIn northern Connecticut, by the mid 60s, they WERE called "duck and cover." It sounded scientific. We were not only supposed to get under the desk, we were supposed to cover our heads with our hands. TWO layers of protection for the skull! I think whoever came up with the idea must have understood that anywhere near 'ground zero' this would be of no significance But there might have been some marginal zone miles away from impact where the immediate impact would be felt as wind smashing through windows -- or ceilings coming down -- survivable material things that might hit one's head. Then those who did the best job of covering could crawl out of the mess alive and begin to feel the effects of the radioactivity.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, if it was indeed true as many people at the time were saying that "the living would envy the dead" in a post-apocalyptic setting, the drills were setting us up to be the alive-and-suffering patsies.
I didn't doubt your word that your drills were called "duck and cover." Things have different names in different places. The game called "Captain" in the Bronx was called "King-Queen" in Brooklyn. This game was a form of handball, played against apartment buildings as one walked to or from school, in which one bounced the Spaldeen on the ground so that it would bounce off the wall, instead of, as in handball, hitting it against the wall directly. A game could have multiple players, lined up facing the building, each in his own box. (The boxes were formed by crevices in the concrete sidewalk.) If you messed up, then you'd move to the last box and everyone else would move up.
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it, we too may have been told to cover our heads with our hands. And that's a good point about being miles away from the bomb.