Choosing a new backpack for back to school in the United States in August can become a more complex task. After the country recorded a series of shootings, parents, schools and authorities debate whether choosing the model can help students protect themselves.
The most recent case at educational institutions in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 children in May, at the end of the school year. Now, some cities have announced measures to try to increase security.
On Monday (18), Dallas, also in Texas, determined that elementary and high school students will have to use transparent backpacks, given by the government – they will be able to carry a second, smaller, opaque bag for personal items such as medicine, sanitary pads and Wallet.
“We recognize that clear backpacks alone will not eliminate concerns. This is just one of several steps in a comprehensive plan to ensure safety,” the city government said.
In Lafayette, Louisiana, clear backpacks will also be mandatory starting this semester. There was debate about the requirement that even lunchboxes leave the contents visible, but parents complained about the cost of replacing them, and the idea was discarded.
Despite good intentions, analysts and teaching professionals question the measures. “If a student really wants to commit a crime, he can wrap the gun in a cloth or put it inside a notebook or fake book in his backpack. Or take it with his body”, ponders Jorge Lordello, a security specialist.
For him, the most appropriate thing would be to restrict the access of outsiders to schools and reinforce care for the mental health of students. Investments in psychological care and monitoring of people with destructive behaviors are almost a consensus between Democrats and Republicans.
In several recent cases, the shooters had signaled that they were suffering from problems such as depression and that they were planning a massacre. In other points, however, there is a strong division: Democrats defend that it is necessary to restrict the population’s access to weapons, especially those that fire many shots at a time; Republicans say they are not the problem and that the way out is to tighten security in schools. Thus, ideas such as changing backpacks, creating bunkers in the classroom and arming teachers emerge.
There has been an increase in demand for bulletproof backpacks since the Uvalde case, and searches remain above average, according to Google Trends. The product is generally not found at major retailers, such as Amazon and Walmart, and is priced high: more than US$ 100, five times more than a common one.
Other proposals also have questioned effectiveness. Creating safe spaces where students can run in the event of an attack is complex to implement: they would need to be large to house dozens (or hundreds) of people and, at the same time, be quickly accessible.
To completely bar the entry of weapons, it would be necessary to carry out searches, as in airports, but schools have different dynamics. “When traveling, people arrive little by little, throughout the day, in advance. At school, they all enter at the same time. It would be necessary to have a large structure, with several agents and metal detectors”, ponders Lordello. “And a line of students standing in front of the school, waiting to get in, would be a potential target for a sniper.”
Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of a teachers union in Dade, Fla., is wary of this approach, which, in her words, would turn schools into prisons. “We teachers are not law enforcement officers or the military; and we don’t want to be. We are there to take care of and educate,” she tells Sheet.
She says the state changed several rules after the attack on a Parkland school in 2018, which resulted in 17 deaths. “Since then, we don’t have open campuses anymore, we try to have as much protection from the outside as possible and limit access to the school as much as possible. We have a police officer at each school. And we teach children how to hide and protect themselves when say there’s a code red.”
The teacher points out that the training is given to students from the age of three, age at which they still do not understand the concept of death well. “They repeat words that adults say, but they don’t really understand why they’re being trained. It’s very sad.”
