A Fire in the Forest Is a Fire in the Village

  When there's a fire in the forest, there's a fire in the village. Often, anyway. As the fire grows and intensifies, it threatens the homes. Then it more than threatens them; it consumes them.

  As we consider school shootings like the one in Newport News, Va. -- where a teacher was shot by a 6-year-old student -- there's a lesson to be learned from forest fires: the "fire" doesn't start in the classroom; it starts in the community, at large.

  Teacher after teacher, and parent after parent had gotten up at a school board meeting this past week to complain that students weren't properly disciplined. They spoke of how teacher after teacher is assaulted by students, and student after student is not suspended. There's a big problem in our schools, and it is not being properly addressed, they said.

   Then, another parent, David Wilson, rose. He suggested the problem starts at home. I would add that it comes from the culture that is developed in the whole community. The whole area is analogous to a forest, and as the fire spreads and intensifies, it threatens the village.

   And the village, in this case, is analogous to the schools. If the whole forest is burning, it's going to burn the village down with it. Schools don't escape.

    Suspend the students to correct the problem? "We can do what everybody wants to do -- we can start suspending more kids, sending them home," Wilson said. "So you just prevented a school shooting, but you just caused a 7-Eleven shooting. You didn't solve the issue; you shifted the issue from one thing to another."

   No, if you are going to stop a forest fire, you have to stop it in the forest. Newport News has a gun violence problem; more than 400 out of almost 1,000 incidents of crime in the city in 2021 involved firearms. I would suggest it is not just that many have guns; it is the attitude of the community on what guns are used for. Remember the old adage that what you do speaks so loud I can't hear what you say? You don't need to verbally teach a child to kill. If the kid sees people killing their fellow townspeople with guns as a way of settling their differences, he's quick to learn the trick. If it is the attitude of the community and those around him, even a 6-year-old child can conclude that if he has a problem, the gun is his way to solve it. 

   Gun violence is a constant in Newport News, So of course it's going to affect the schools. "Gun violence has even made its way into our schools," said eighth-grade teacher William Fenker. 

   A fire in the forest is a fire in the village.