Back in the summer, when we started working on the Winter 2013 issue of Independent School, we knew that the topic of safety — physical and psychological — was an issue of great importance to both independent schools and the culture at large. But we could not predict that the topic would be thrust into the national spotlight, as it has been this week when a young man with mental health issues and access to assault weapons took the lives of 20 schoolchildren, six teachers, and his own mother.
When I wrote my Editor’s Note for this issue, I did not mention guns or the many instances of gun violence in schools. But they were certainly on my mind. Without question, we live in a culture that is too violent; according to the National Centers for Disease Control, in 2007, 12,632 people in the U.S. were killed by guns.
My concerns about our competitive culture still stand. We really do need to learn how to care for each other better. We haven’t figured out how to provide quality mental health support for all our citizens. We haven’t figured out how to regulate guns well. And we haven’t figured out how to provide the sort of quality education that will lead most (if not all) of us to become healthy engaged citizens.
As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said recently in his call for action, “We can do better.”
Normally, we post the current issue of Independent School online a few weeks after the print magazine is published, and run a sampling of articles then. But we are posting six relevant feature articles today, and making the online issue available to all readers. NAIS has also posted past Independent School articles and many other resources on the website’s homepage (www.nais.org) that can help us in our discussions about safety in schools and the culture beyond, as well as in efforts to deal with the grief that accompanies tragedy.
We wish we could do more. We hope this helps lead to greater safety for our children, and a healthier culture for us all.