I received an email from the Arlington County Public Schools schools telling me that a single “student was found unconscious in a bathroom at Wakefield High School,” a school my daughter does not attend. The email went on to inform me that “Students learning of the incident may experience a variety of emotions and you may see the following behaviors: tearfulness, irritability, clinginess, withdrawal, physical complaints, fear of dying or difficulty concentrating.”
Why would high school students in an entire county become tearful and “clingy” just because a student in one high school — who is very much alive, and who they have never met — was found unconscious? Doesn’t that treat high school students like babies? And why would even a two-year-old become “clingy” about a mishap involving a kid he doesn’t even know and doesn’t go to school with him?
What might unsettle students at Wakefield is the fact that the school was needlessly placed on lockdown due to the incident, which did not involve a shooter or any threat to the safety of other students. It is the school system’s behavior, not the student being found unconscious, that could have momentarily left students with “fear of dying or difficulty concentrating.” But only momentarily. It’s not a big deal for students. Schools have lockdown drills all the time, and no one is traumatized by them.
Arlington County has over 8,000 high school students and more than 27,000 K-12 students, most of whom never go anywhere near the high school in which this incident occurred.
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