Whenever there is a violent school shooting like the one in Florida we diverge into two separate groups of thought. The first one wants an all-out ban on assault rifles and firearms in general, the second or the other side of the spectrum wants to arm the teachers and school administrators to make the schools safer for the children.

While I don’t necessarily agree with either side, I would like to propose a third option, that while it might not have immediate effects it is sure to have long-term effects. We need to bring back old fashion discipline into the homes and the schools. School children used to fear their teachers and their parents. However, more nowadays children fear nothing.

They don’t fear failure because everyone receives a trophy, they don’t fear reprisal because if they do something wrong someone else is always to blame. A student who gets an F in school is told that the teacher failed to teach them, not that they failed to apply themselves.

We have placed all the blame and therefore all the responsibility on someone else, the end result is teenagers, young adults, and adults who believe that they have the right to take a life, they have anger issues because when they were small children their tantrums weren’t properly dealt with.

So rather than arm the teachers or ban firearms, we need to reinstate basic discipline. Children who talk back to their teachers in kindergarten and first grade need to fear the consequences, not just of the teacher but the consequences at home when their parents find out they got in trouble at school. Positive parenting is an utter failure, it has produced a society that cannot function at its best and at its worst turns into homicidal maniacs.

I am not advocating for beatings, or child abuse as many would like to believe. I do however believe that when a teacher corrects a child and the parents find out the parents should also come down on the side of the teacher.

Take for example the teacher who is facing not only the loss of her career but also possible criminal charges for forcing a student to stand for the pledge. She should be made an example of, not in that she should lose her job or that she should go to jail, but the example should be that students are so disrespectful when some adult requests they do something as simple as stand for the pledge they tell them no.

The freedom that many cite in this case, the freedom to not stand should not supersede the respect that the student is expected to show an adult and especially the respect that they are supposed to show a teacher. We don’t need to arm the teachers to protect the students, we need to start young and teach our offspring to respect adults.

So I guess in a manner of speaking I do agree with arming teachers, but with rulers and yardsticks, arming them with basic discipline, allowing them to correct a child’s behavior when it gets out of hand, and telling teachers that if they want their students to hop on one leg around the room the child should do it as a sign of respect for the position if for no other reason.

If we don’t start young, demanding our children treat adults with respect we will end up with adults who respect no one, and in the worst-case scenario, an adult who respects no one turns into a homicidal maniac.