Studying the arms race and brinkmanship in class this week. At the end of a lecture on air raid drills and bomb shelters, I showed the class "Duck & Cover." Predictably, they scoffed at its alarmist directives: "We must be ready everyday - all the time - to do the right thing if the atomic bomb explodes." They're just so much cooler, so much tougher than their predecessors. Modern teenagers aren't susceptible, it seems, to quaint problems like "nuclear paranoia."
And then, to my delight, our principal announced over the loudspeaker that we were going into a "lockdown drill" - all the better to prepare for a school shooting, you know. Sometimes the universe conspires in your favor. I think it's called "pronoia." You can't plan a lesson that good.
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