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Technology as a Salve for Society's Gun Problem [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-09-06  

The New Yorker has an interesting article on a private school that uses virtual reality to teach students in the “classical” mode. It does not go well, as you can imagine. Students act out, don’t absorb the lessons, do things like point out on a virtual trip to Everest that loud noises cause avalanches and then scream as loud as they can. (On an entirely unrelated note: to every middle school teacher I ever had I am deeply, deeply sorry.) You know — they act like kids.

Remote schooling during covid was likely the best of a serious of bad choices but it was still a bad choice. Remote school is not like remote work because kids don’t have the higher executive functions that most adults possess. Virtual schooling likely makes that even worse because you are essentially giving the kids a toy as a school environment. Of course, they are going to play with it. Play can have value, mind you, but not as a full-on replacement for classroom education. But what really caught my eye was a heartbreaking comment at the very end of the piece.

One mom is quite happy with the isolation the VR school provides. Her son Rylan used to be crippled with anxiety about going to school. Now, with a virtual school, he no longer is. In the words of his mother: “He doesn’t have to worry about a school shooter coming in,” Hill said. “He doesn’t even have to worry about the drills anymore.”

America is a failed state that does not love its children.

Ms. Hill’s son is terrified of physical school in part because of the not entirely unreasonable fear of school shootings. On a regular basis, he is reminded, by the active shooter drills, that he could be killed for merely attempting to learn. His parents are advertised bullet proof backpacks for him to wear. We, as a society, have decided that his life means nothing compared to the desire of people to own weapons of war with no restrictions on how and when they can be purchased, stored, or carried. No other industrialized country has this issue, because no other industrialized country cares so little for its children.

Faced with this complete societal disregard for the lives of its children, Ms. Hill turned to a technological solution. But it won’t work. It never works. I have said this over and over again, but there are no technological solutions to societal problems. At best, they can tinker at the edges, mitigate a worst case here or there. Rylan can be shot in our NRA hellscape at a Target or a movie theater just as easily as he can be at school. Keeping him at home for class won’t save him. Fixing our gun problem might.

But we cannot imagine a collective response to our collective problems, in part because our technological industries sell us on the notion of individual solutions based on the technology they want to sell to us. So we devolve into atomized units, isolated and desperate for solutions that cannot come from isolated action. If we want to solve our problems, if we want a society that cares about murdered children more than gun manufacturers’ profits, we have to make that society together, through political action.

It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to come through a VR helmet.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/6/2191459/-Technology-as-a-Salve-for-Society-s-Gun-Problem

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