New thinking for safe and peaceful schools

By Cheryl Duckworth •

Gun violence and a safe environment to learn in seems to be on everyone’s mind, especially students and faculty. In March 2018, just after the horrific murders just north of us at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, young people led the largest mobilization the U.S. had seen since the Vietnam War Era under the “March for Our Lives” banner. They called for an assault weapons ban, among other demands. The desire for a lasting and sustainable solution to the pandemic of gun violence in America is clear.

Educational leaders and politicians grapple with the best way to improve public safety. As a professor in conflict resolution, I would call for entirely new thinking. Old approaches to thinking about public safety have failed. We know this because the scourge of gun violence in our schools and communities continues. We need to think about security itself in new ways. What if we thought in terms of human security, rather than traditional approaches to security?

Traditional or hard security involves security measures that we see ramped up in South Florida schools. They include school resource officers (law enforcement) in schools, metal detectors, surveillance, lock down drills, and efforts that might shock the public such as having teachers clear everything out of their closets in case of an active shooter scenario. The closet might be needed for hiding! A growing body of research shows that lockdown drills in particular may be causing undue anxiety, and the research on if school recourse officers increase or decrease school safety is mixed at best.

So what’s the best way forward? Along with other conflict resolution scholars and practitioners, I call for human security for our schools and campuses.

What does this mean and why will it keep us safe? Traditional security, again, has failed. It is top down, rather than inclusive. It is punitive, rather than restorative. Perhaps worst, it’s reactive rather than preventative.

Human security is quite different. Although it does not do away with all traditional kinds of security completely, it focuses on the security of students, staff and faculty, rather than just the security of the building. A human security approaches to our schools would emphasize participation by all involved and focus on building community.

Human security is based on a comprehensive understanding of security—considering all kinds of experiences that might make us less secure. This includes poverty, homelessness, and more. Human security works by centering the voices of those on the margins of society, which makes sense because gender, racial, ethic, sexual and other minorities often are less safe in ways that more privileged people might not even consider. By adopting this more democratic and proactive way of thinking about security, we can save lives and better foster peace and security for our schools and campuses.

Cheryl Lynn Duckworth teaches peace education and conflict resolution in the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies, Halmos College of Arts and Sciences. She directs the MS in Conflict Resolution program, and is Editor in Chief of the Peace and Conflict Studies Journal.