by AFT President Sandra Feldman
July 1999

Being nosy
tells our kids
we care about them
and what they're up to.

I'm a city girl, through and through. The only guns I saw growing up were on a policeman's hip or in the movies.

But after I became president of the teachers' union in New York City, I was introduced the hard way: One of our members, Audrey Chasen, was shot in a drug-gang crossfire while driving between a district-office workshop and her school. In those terrible years of gun violence during the late 1980s and early 1990s, another teacher, hurrying to save her students from wild gunfire, got shot in the leg as she pushed the last second grader from the playground into the school.

During that same period of urban drug violence, a high school student killed one student and shot another just as the school was getting ready for a visit from the mayor. It seemed that illegal guns were everywhere--and teenagers had too many of them.

Real Consequences

The Board of Education, the PTA, and the teachers' union mobilized. After a lot of debate, metal detectors were installed in a number of schools. And both state and federal laws were tightened. Students who came to school carrying guns found they faced real consequences: exclusion from school for an entire year.

Awakened cruelly to the previously unimaginable, adults began paying more attention. And the crack cocaine wars started winding down.

There are still neighborhoods where violence erupts, but the time when kids regularly brought guns to schools is long gone in New York, and in most other cities. And even though the horrific suburban gun sprees that have taken place over the past year bring back those dark days in our cities, there are some striking differences.

The boys involved in these recent incidents, besides being seriously troubled, grew up in a culture where adults have a positive attitude toward guns, and the access to guns of all kinds is nearly unfettered.

Like city kids, middle American youngsters are exposed relentlessly to violence on television, in movies, and through video games. Youngsters who are emotionally healthy won't resort to killing. But teenagers are volatile; they get into fights. They brood and bear grudges. Although most of them are decent, respectful kids, they are kids. They need adult guidance and supervision. They need us to nose around in their lives.

A reporter who was in Denver after the Columbine incident told me that many parents were unsure about how much to "intrude" into their teenagers' lives. They felt as though they were snooping. She asked me what I thought, and I said, "Snoop!"

There are protective measures that we need to take as a society:

• Pass state and federal gun control laws that do a better job of restricting children's access to guns. Mandatory child safety locks on all guns would be a good start. So would stricter laws for licensing and monitoring those who sell guns. The Senate made a useful beginning, only to have it totally undercut by the House--so we still have a long way to go.
• Bring more counselors into schools, especially for kids in those hormone-heavy adolescent years. One counselor for 400 or 500 students--the most we are likely to see in schools today--cannot keep tabs on troubled kids and make sure they get the help they need.
• Explore further ways to discourage the marketing of products that glorify violence to kids--that goes for the music industry, Hollywood, TV, and video game makers.

But neither these things nor other necessary school-safety measures are enough, and I say, loudly, to parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and other adults who have relationships with children, "Snoop!"

Pay attention to the kids. They need it. They need to know what is acceptable behavior and what isn't. They need to know that rules count, and that there are (fair) consequences for breaking them. That's how they know you care. Believe me, teenagers will find enough ways to keep secrets from you. But the nosier you are, the more they'll know what to do and what not do.

Parents have a tough job these days. They need the support of schools, communities, laws, and all the institutions that set the moral tone for society. If we all pitch in, we can help make sure that these adolescent years of passage--which can be so difficult--are safe and secure for everybody's children.