courtesy nytimes.com and Grace Heejung Kim
Previous Post
Next Post

“If you put an armed guard into a school, there’s at best a possibility of preventing a shooting there, says Dewey Cornell, a professor of education and a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia. But, he says, ‘put a counselor or psychologist in a school, and you have the potential to prevent shootings in any building anywhere in the community.’

“The average student-to-counselor ratio in the United States is nearly 500 to one. According to the American School Counselor Association, it should be closer to 250 to one. Mr. Cornell and his colleagues say that schools also need far more psychologists and social workers than they currently have. Hiring more of these professionals is the key to helping students who are on a path to violence before they bring a gun to school.” – New York Times Editorial Board in Schools Can Keep Kids Safe Without Giving Their Teachers Guns [via nytimes.com]

Previous Post
Next Post

80 COMMENTS

    • This “study” has NO control for background violence rates in the jurisdictions of the schools it looks at.

      When you control for background crime rates, schools in localities with the same background crime rates that have armed personnel have much lower murder, rape, assult, robbery with force or weapon and other violent crime rates then otherwise similar schools without armed personnel.

      the number of counselors is irrelevant and has no affect when you compare otherwise similar schools.

      Comparing schools in Compton vs Beverly Hills without controlling for known major variables is utterly idiotic and these left wing researchers.

      MOST children come from two parent households, most school shooters and violent criminals come from single parent ones. This “study” doesn’t even control for that across the schools it looks at!

      • Exactly. A school counselor has no capacity to change the conditions in aa student’s home or neighborhood. Kids who live in dysfunctional homes in bad neighborhoods, and live lives filled with frustration and fear have a lot more problems than can be dealt with by a school counselor whose main gocus and training is academic in nature.

    • And you know they’re probably right that better counseling and mental health infrastructure to help students that may be on the edge of violence. But as you just said good counselors will do S.F.A. when you have a threat that’s coming in from off the school grounds. We need both better counseling and armed guards or teachers.

      And if you want my $3.50 cents (damn inflation) we could probably could afford both if we didn’t have funds being siphoned off by corrupt teacher’s unions and 3rd party ‘non profits’ corporations that support schools. Some of those are pretty much fronts for the DNC.

      • Parental involvement is the most important item. This generation of parents use the school system as day care not education. Teachers know that and so do the counselors. The counselors at my daughters HS can’t even advise her on how to go about getting college credit classes at her school, or giving her the wrong advice, much less advising her on coping with the day to day stresses involved with teen age peer groups.

    • Or like my baby sister who is studying to become a student counselor, and is a manhating progtard.

      She doesn’t have ABS like Mr. Frond, though.

    • It really is shocking that a bunch of counselors who want jobs paying the big bucks would come to the conclusion that that would preclude school shootings, but he might have mentioned what in the flaming hell would make a sane person think so! What a MORON! I think paying retired USAF pilots six figures to counsel the cheerleading squad would be a wonderful idea, but anyone who would listen to that is a pure fool.

  1. All of these suggestions are just one piece in the puzzle. I know my school counselors were entirely useless. Basically gym teachers who got too old or hurt to move around. Should a real counselor hit upon something alarming the administration needs to be on board as well as any applicable agency. None of this keeping it quiet so the school looks good nonsense like in FL. Perhaps the nation as a whole should revert to valuing the family unit but that’s just *ist and *phobic talk. And of course you need to be ready to meet violence with force on premises. Otherwise it’s sit and wait 5, 10, 20 minutes and hope you aren’t one of the dead when the dust settles.

    If we’re going to just do one thing the most effective one thing is having force on site. If applied properly it would almost make up for everything else failing.

    Of course these discussions are all a waste of time because nobody really wants to do anything because time, cost, politics, liability.

    • Sorry, but obama’s PROMISE ANTI-DISCIPLINE(Save a Thug) Directive says…No One is allowed to Report any Form of Violence from any student as long as their not White. Every Troubled child gets a Participation Trophy because, well you know, their FEELINGS may be hurt and cause them to get Violent. And to achieve this “OUR?” government is going to Pay the Schools Big Bucks to show how well this New School to Graveyard Pipeline works. Just so you’ll know, “OUR?” government is here to Help get kids out of school no matter how many lives it cost.

  2. Our school counselor was marine retired, his advice was always ” join the Marines before the Army drafts you.” Times were a little different back then, had other things to worry about then losing a video game or someone dissing you on Fakebook

  3. How about we do away with Participation Awards & bring back Prayer and spankings from Kindergarten on up? Make each student personally responsible for their own actions or inactions and reward or punish as needed. Just sayin’.

  4. I believe Dr. Cornell is more than a bit naive in his approach to the problem. But, his opinion does fit the political agenda of the NYT so that makes it “solid science”.

    • Not naive.
      Just hoping the rest of us are naive enough to believe him.

      “As a clinical psychologist, I can tell you that the answer lies in forcing the government to hire more clinical psychologists”

  5. What School does not have councilers? I see them doing nothing. We need to get nut jobs off the streets. Stop the News from getting the crazies to quit looking for their 5 seconds of fame. I think news does more damage than good! Need to outlaw guns to Liberals. These school shooting been almost 100% liberals!

  6. I’m all for counselors preventing school shootings. Stopping them, on the other hand, requires a different skill set. Defense in depth, people, defense in depth.

    • Let’s require school counselors to be fully qualified as armed security, and carry every day in school. Then sit back and listen to the screams.

  7. Counselors In Schools Can Prevent More Shootings Than Armed Guards

    Parents at home can prevent more shootings than counselors in schools.

    And all of them – all of them – can prevent more shootings than “gun control.”

  8. Firstly, one would have to believe a “troubled student” would seek help from a counselor. I do not see any evidence of that having happened (but there may be some I am not aware of).
    Secondly, if an “attacker” was not in the Student Body of the school, what is a counselor going to do? Try to go “counsel” the attacker?
    Thirdly, and most importantly, this comes from the New York Times, so it is just more crackpot Leftist lies and subterfuge. Dismissed outright in my book.

  9. So the Psychologist wants more money spent on psychologists? Seems legit.
    Children need parents, structure, discipline, healthy socialization and maybe counselling.
    Also, stop making kids lives harder lying about things like that there are 67 genders and stop telling them that their feeling create reality and all points of view are equal.

    • All points of view are equal except the white/male/non-DNC/Christian point of view. That one is evil and must be stamped out.

  10. Councilors are too busy trying to keep children from having babies(we know how well that is working). Many times a smart kid will mess with them, like my daughter did writing “dark” poetry.
    They are trained to spot potential “problem kids”. I am sure they could spot them and flag them, but until the kid acts violent, they can do little. It is usually another kid(bullying the “problem child”)that gets him/her to snap.
    All of us mammals need to find a pecking order. That is usually found by puberty and by then we have figured out that in a physical fight, both lose, one less than the other. Not letting them squabble as kids, and not having sibs to fight with, just makes for bully bait – this makes that kid even more unstable. These kids need a way to belong, even if it is just the chess club. Maybe if teachers and parents could start clubs at the school, pay attention to the kids(instead of leaving then in the basement playing video games), but we are so scared that said parent/teacher is a pedophile and that it might cost a few dollars that it doesn’t happen anymore.

  11. If we change the ratio from 500:1 to 250:1 wouldn’t we just be doubling the amount of warnings made by school personnel to administration that get ignored?

    • Pretty much! I will say that the admins I’ve worked with love to stress how important counselors are until we suggest something that they disagree with. I’ve seen students who are budding socio/psychopaths remain in school after assaulting multiple staff and/or students. Even the Left leaning counselors will advocate for alternative placement but that’s when we see how little our opinion really matters. It’s disgusting.

      OTH, you learn very quickly the other staff who have a non-Leftist mindset and we form good friendships and try our best to offset the SJW, “free handout” mentality…

  12. “… Hiring more of these professionals is the key to helping ”

    No. It is not ‘the key’ to helping.

    It is one tool of many that can make a difference. Armed adults on campus is ‘the key’ to solving the problem, counselors and education and a whole slate of other things are only pieces of a process.

  13. Back in my day more than 50 years ago my councilors were basically useless unless you were on a fast track to a university. I doubt they’re better now. Stopping a psychotic murderer like Cruz everyone failed(or actively got kid’s killed). Home SCHOOL!

    • Exactly the same where I went to school. If you wanted to go to college then you got all sorts of help. If you were in the school industrial arts class and wanted to be a mechanic, welder, machinist etc. they would ignore you. Now days I see high school grads go to work for an electrical contractor and do not know what a sawzall or a cresent wrench is or how to use one. Working with your hands seemed to be a taboo.

    • I work in a middle school – the majority of our counselor’s time is NOT spent on counseling, but rather testing (they manage the STAAR), scheduling, and crapload of other admin duties and occasionally put on a feel-good presentation. Public schools are top heavy with high paid admin/curricula types, i’d like to see those salaries go to actual classroom teachers so they’d have smaller class sizes and can get to know their students. And, as a side note, get the low IQ inclusion students out – it’s a failed idea that just leads to constant disruptions and a general dumbing down of everyone.

  14. “According to the American School Counselor Association, it should be closer to 250 to one.” Conflict of interest, you might say. Follow the money.

  15. ‘put a counselor or psychologist in a school, and you have the potential to prevent shootings in any building anywhere in the community.’

    After all Leftists need full employment on the backs of taxpayers.

  16. Hmm. Let’s do a comparison of vocal velocity and energy of spoken words vs any number of bullets.

    Words: Travel at a respectable 1125 ft per second, but hit with zero energy and only has mild impact on the ear drum, and that’s only if at a high pitch or high decibel.

    Bullets: 8.6 Creedmoor on the other hand travels at 2500 FPS and hits with more energy then released by the black hole at the center of the galaxy.

    The choice is yours to make.

  17. Getting the kids off the psychotropic drugs is a good start. Then address the core of the problem…the 24/7 psychological attack from our media and pop culture.

  18. “But, he says, ‘put a counselor or psychologist in a school, and you have the potential to prevent shootings in any building anywhere in the community.’”

    The critical danger is, they actuality believe that bullshit.

    They believe it, in their hearts and (what little, if any) soul they have.

    Then, when they are shown to wrong, when someone shows up and slaughters the kids and all eyes turn to them, because *they* were the ones who said that *they*, and only *they*, had the ‘KEY’ to prevent that from happening, their eyes will swell with tears, their voices will quiver and quake, and they will say…”But we meant well!”.

    In their twisted and psychotic little world, ‘feelings’ and ‘intentions’ have the same power as actual, concrete actions, like having armed staff to actually STOP THE THREAT in progress.

    They are dangerous, delusional people that will get more children killed…

    • Geoff, somehow I missed it in my original reading, after reading the above I had to go back and confirm. Yup, your quote is correct, this dipshit actually promises that putting one counselor in one school (I assume anywhere) could prevent shootings in any building (not just schools) in the community!! He’s got to really have his head WAAAY up there, ya know?

  19. “If they can get you asking the wrong questions they don’t have to worry about answers.” – Thomas Pynchon

    My question to the armed intelligentsia is this: Why are there public govt. run schools in the 1st place?

    It would be much safer to home school and the quality of education would be much better. Just a thought.

    • Because the Founding Fathers thought it was a good idea. The Northwest Territories Act placed the public school in the center section of the township.

      Question asked, question answered.

      • Those schools were to be supported and controlled by the community they served, not by the federal taxpayer. Not even by the community in the next town over. Your community takes care of your community’s kids. How thoroughly violated it THAT concept, today?

        • Can’t disagree. The government has no business in education. Look at Common Core. What a disaster that has been. As I have previously stated, it should be laid to rest, post haste. Because our daughter has been a Diabetic since she was three years old, we consider ourselves the Diabetic experts, not the schools. And since the schools in our county have no nurses assigned to each school, we decided to Home School her. The school superintendent would argue with us every year that they would educate all personnel involved with our daughter ie: bus drivers, teachers etc. Yea, right, we live with it 24/7 and sometimes make mistakes. What would a lay person do? She can’t carry her own medication or syringes? Not gonna happen. Now, at the end of her high school education, she is a ton better educated than most of the public educated kids in our county and maintains her Diabetes like a pro. Get the government out of education and we may see a huge improvement in our kids education.

      • Actually, it was Horace Mann and Henry Barnard who began the public school system in the USA, in 1840. The founding fathers had nothing to do with it:
        https://people.howstuffworks.com/public-schools1.htm
        “Massachusetts passed the first compulsory school laws in 1852. New York followed the next year, and by 1918, all American children were required to attend at least elementary school.”
        Nowhere near 1776…

    • The rise of the “two working parents” system greatly empowered the public school system.

      Unfortunately these days two working parents is often a requirement to make ends meet (depending on circumstances of course).

      It comes with A LOT of problems, but as I said, in many places/circumstances it is necessary to pay the bills and make sure the parents actually can retire instead of working until they die.

  20. And get rid of tenure and destroy the current lefty profs. US education is a sad joke (since the late 1960s) Antifa is a direct result of the bill ayers scool of indoctrination. Parents; stop feeding the lefty schools. Stop with the so-called social science. All we ever needed to know about how society works was to watch/read Jane Goodals’ chimp. shows/books. If my kid said he wanted to be in a STEM program I might help him. Anything “social, gender, etc. he will pay for it not me. And if he chooses to go to Berkley et al. I would kick his ass out. And no basement dwellers.
    Sorry. Rant over.

    • Nobody gets tenure anymore because the Old Guard of Hillary-supporting ex-hippies want to keep their positions and the administrators who are buddy-buddy with them are driving tuition costs up every year with needless construction and crazy schemes. The administrators are a bigger problem than the old profs. Eliminating all government funding, grants, and loans for anything that doesn’t directly benefit the taxpayers would be a good start.

  21. So, Pravda-on-the-Hudson thinks school shootings maybe have to do with the whack-jobs doing the shooting … now that they’ve found a way to turn that into more admin spending controlled from The Imperial Capitol.

    Before that, the solution was all about more admin and encroachment on gun owners, controlled from The Imperial Capitol.

    It’s almost like the encroachment n control is the point; all else just pretense.

  22. The councilors at Margorie Stoneman Douglas did a fat lot of good for the 34 victims of Nikolas Cruz. The councilors in Santa Fe did a fat lot of good for the victims of Dimitrios Pagourtzis. The councilors in Marshall County did a fat lot of good for the victims of Gabriel Parker. The councilors at Sandy Hook did a fat lot of good for the victims of Adam Lanza.
    Wait…. I think I see a pattern here. Not at all surprising that the authors don’t. In my entire tour at various Universities I never met a single Language Major(journalism, etc…) or Psyc Major that could so much as multiply or do long division(5th grade shit…). Not. One.
    The ‘liberal’ arts seem to draw the innumerate (mathematically illiterate) like moths to a flame. We from the science buildings called them; educated beyond their intelligence. In hindsight it was just the beginning then, back in the 1980s. Today its an epidemic. And the only cure I can see is for the sheeple to wake up enough to stop listening to the crowd of loony tunes with ‘journalism’ and basketweaving degrees.

  23. My 2 Daughters go to school in Parkland, FL. The only thing that has changed is more “code red” drills. The kids learn how to run and hide…Also one cop at the entrance who sits on a bench in the hall looking at his phone all day in boredom. My neighbor, Mr. Pollock and his foundation is the only one who is making a change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pollack. Unfortunately Hogg lives up the block from me.
    I agree more counseling will help. I also can’t say what I really think is going on.

    • A change at Park Trails Elementary, Parkland, FL, is the children are not allowed in the hallway without an adult from the school. So if they have to go to the bathroom, they wait for the teacher to walk them….big deal. I just asked both my daughters about therapy and counseling. Right after the shooting the kids were all offered therapy sessions. It lasted one month. Now both my daughters say that they don’t even know who the guidance counselors are! In elementry there is one for 900 kids. At MSD there is two counselors for 3,000 kids!

      • They have to go with a teacher, huh? Let me just guess–an UNARMED teacher, right? Who plans to do exactly what, if the school is attacked again?

  24. I agree that more counselors would be a good idea, but they should NOT be a considered as a REPLACEMENT for armed guards that many leftists would like to see happen. That would be a huge mistake.

  25. The counselors at Parkland KNEW and COVERED UP what they knew so the school could qualify for grant money. If the Admin will not segregate or expell the “walking time bombs” then they are worthless.

    • On point. The entire reason the Parkland shooter wasn’t in jail long before the shooting was due to policies that focused on the feels of the vermin. Schools purpose should be education, not turd polishing.

      • Remember the MSD shooter’s dad was fbi. mom had a high profile lefty job too. As for max headroom the shrink… KMA Anyone with an IQ above 90 can run circles around those ..those….”people”. And guidance consolers are a waste of money. Worked at a school for 10 years and saw the leftist teachers try and get kindergarteners to turn in their parents for having “drugs”. Hitler youth anyone? BTW the said teacher was one big pothead till she found “religion” in DARE.

  26. A counselor will be able to do absolutely nothing to stop a school shooter. However, he or she might have success in preventing one. I’d rather have both counselors and armed guards. One to help the kids work through their problems, and one as a backup, in case the first method fails.

  27. Layered defense is good. Helping students deal with life in a responsible way is a good thing. Having armed personnel to respond to an attack is a good backstop should prevention fail.

  28. This study is exactly why people right distrust politically motivated or self interested (junk) science.

    It has NO control for background violence rates in the jurisdictions of the schools it looks at.
    When you control for background crime rates, schools in localities with the same background crime rates that have armed personnel have much lower murder, rape, assult, robbery with force or weapon and other violent crime rates then otherwise similar schools without armed personnel.
    the number of counselors is irrelevant and has no affect when you compare otherwise similar schools.
    Comparing schools in Compton vs Beverly Hills without controlling for known major variables is utterly idiotic and these left wing researchers.
    MOST children come from two parent households, most school shooters and violent criminals come from single parent ones. This “study” doesn’t even control for that across the schools it looks at!

  29. I have an un scientific sample of psychologists.

    I have personally known two for many years. One is a Phd university, full on progressive, the other a very conservative drunk.

    I wouldn’t let either close to my kids, both were so warped they should have been locked up.

    The words I read that were written by psychologists and psychiatrists suggests they should all be locked up. Physician, heal thyself!

    Just my opinion.

  30. BS, nothing is going to stop the insignificant amount of school shootings. The key word in that statement is insignificant. Why people get so emotional and up in arms over the 40 to 50 shooting deaths out of 30 thousand gun deaths a year is mind boggling in the first place. I wonder how many school kids get killed each year in traffic accidents to and from school per year? Kind of puts it all into perspective so the overemotional retards can understand it. So do we stop all traffic deaths per year and ban automobiles, hell no!?! That would be to detrimental to Little Johnny when he had to bust his ass and walk to school like all the generations before him. The problem is the kids and their parents are all just a bunch of entitled wimps. Shit happens….

  31. How about Parents taking control of their kids lives? What a concept, try doing a little move than getting an erection & spreading your legs.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here