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I don’t see much of a problem myself so long as it’s actually for safety purposes and not just for detainment purposes at a normal school.
The elementary and middle school I went to had fencing to keep people out of backyards and the street, and a gully in the case of elementary school. Reasonable. Keeps minors safe just in case a car came by if a kid went to grab a ball they accidentally launched into the street or they decide to explore the fully and fall over and hurt themselves because little kids are good at disappearing and hurting themselves, I swear.
High school? Absolutely no idea why the football field had a fence other than keeping people off the property, which was connected to a park.
Yes, and barbed wire, Czech hedgehogs, guard towers with snipers.
Jokes aside apart from preventing a ball flying into traffic during recess what are we trying to achieve?
how else are we supposed to have security theater preventing school shootings?
Fences are fine. Especially for young kids near the playground and streets.
Except the fact you need to maintain it (which will be in the form of a replacement every 73 years when enough kids get stabbed by it) and it needs to have enough exit points in case of emergency. It shouldn’t funnel everyone to one spot in the front.
I could only image the amount of injured children at the elementary school I went to if they went without a fence. Young kids see the nearby gully and decide exploring it sounds like a good idea, up until they injure themselves and there are no adults around to help.
They fenced my son’s school this summer. Previously it was only the playground and field that was fenced. New fence is 4 ft high, no gates, just gaps at walk ways.
At first I was unhappy about it, feeling that it cut the school off from the community. But then my son and I arrived early one day and had his soccer ball, we were able to really play on a lawn that would have been too small without a fence. So I can see that the fence creates more usable space for the school. And I’ve come around.
An interesting game to play when driving around the US is “Prison, or School?”
The rules are simple. When driving past any complex with tall fences, quickly blurt out if it’s a prison or school. Then look for signage or check a map application to verify.
You’d be surprised how often you’ll get the answer wrong.
Seems like an easy game, just guess school and you’ll be right the vast majority of the time.
Unless you think there are more prisons than schools.
My immediate answer was yeah why not, but then I read the comments about prison fences and realised I was missing some American specific context. The fence’s at my schools were waist high with open gates. They were more of a boundary marker than anything else.
as someone who graduated fairly recently (school added the fences my junior year) it just makes that place feel like even more of a fucking prison. also, fences are easy to bypass so all it would achieve is making it harder to escape if a shooter did get in. on top of that shooters are typically students, so it doesn’t keep them out to begin with. this means that the only two things it actually achieves are making students feel like they are in prison and keeping them on the premisis so the shooter can kill them even easier. the real answer to what the fences are supposed to do is to 1) put more effort into mental health stuff as that is often the main reason the shooter is doing it, and 2) teach kids to escape the school instead of teaching them to just kinda sit there. and before anyone replies taking about gun control, getting illegal stuff isn’t that hard (see drugs), making guns isn’t that hard (see luty submachine gun, or any 3D printed gun), and schools (including the entire campus) are already gun-free zones and have been for a long time. making things illegal does not stop people from getting them. the solution is to make people with mental conditions that make them dangerous to others get help, and to make the drills we already do better by teaching kids what will work, not what sounds nice.
See the sad thing is that almost your entire thoughts on this is centered around school shootings. Theres tons of other reasons schools might put up fences but to Americans kids deciding to ditch school and get into shit or getting themselves hurt or parents with custody disputes trying to gain access to their child when they shouldnt are just minor concerns.
my thoughts on that are centered around school shootings because that’s the reason schools are adding fences. to address the points you mentioned though, during my senior year when we had a fully constructed fence people still skipped school all the time (same people that always were) so the fence did not help. the whole custody thing is better solved by the parent that should have custody letting the school know about the situation at which point the school will have a legal obligation to ensure the child’s safety. shootings aside, this leaves only making kids feel like prisoners for potential changes the fence could make.
I think you got what I meant twisted.
Its sad that thats where American thinking HAS to go because America had 69 victims and 12 shooters dead in 300+ incidents last year. Australia has had 6 incidents and 2 deaths since 1991 and our schools have fences too.
Theres dozens of reasons outside of shootings that schools may want to control access and yeah it does look like a prison and it is sad.
