长在校园枪击阴影下的美国下一代

长在校园枪击阴影下的美国下一代

更新时间:2014-1-20 

In Age of School Shootings, Lockdown Is the New Fire Drill
长在校园枪击阴影下的美国下一代

The bomb threat was just a hoax, but officials at Hebron High School near Dallas took no chances: School officials called the police and locked down the school this week. Separately, a middle school 2,000 miles away in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class.

炸弹威胁只是一出恶作剧，可是位于达拉斯附近的希伯伦中学(Hebron High School)的管理人员却不敢冒险：本周，校方管理人员给警方打了电话，封锁了学校。在2000英里（约合3200公里）外的华盛顿州发生了另一桩案件，当地的一所中学被封锁了，原因是一名学生把玩具枪带到了班上。

But the threat and the gun were real at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, N.M., where a seventh grader with a sawed-off shotgun walked into the gymnasium and opened fire on his classmates on Tuesday, wounding two of them. School officials and teachers, who had long prepared for such a moment, locked down the school as police officers and parents rushed to the scene.

不过，新墨西哥州罗斯韦尔市贝伦多中学(Berrendo Middle School)的威胁和枪支可是实实在在的，本周二，一名七年级学生拿着一把锯短枪管的猎枪，走进体育馆，朝自己的同学开枪，导致两人受伤。当警察和家长们赶到现场时，早就对类似状况做好了准备的校方管理人员和老师已经封锁了学校。

For students across the country, lockdowns have become a fixture of the school day, the duck-and-cover drills for a generation growing up in the shadow of Columbine High School in Colorado and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Kindergartners learn to hide quietly behind bookshelves. Teachers warn high school students that the glow of their cellphones could make them targets. And parents get regular text messages from school officials alerting them to lockdowns.

对全国各地的学生来说，封校已成为上学的固定科目，在科罗拉多州科伦拜中学(Columbine High School)和康涅狄格州桑迪胡克小学(Sandy Hook Elementary School)的阴影下长大的一代人将接受这种躲藏演习。幼儿园的孩子要学习悄悄地躲在书架后面。教师告诫中学生，说他们手机的屏幕亮光会让他们成为攻击目标。家长们时常会接到校方管理人员的短信，提醒他们学校已被封锁。

School administrators across the country have worked with police departments in recent years to create detailed plans to secure their schools, an effort that was redoubled after the December 2012 shootings in Newtown, Conn. At the whiff of a threat, teachers are now instructed to snap off the lights, lock their doors and usher their students into corners and closets. School officials call the police. Students huddle in their classrooms for minutes or hours, texting one another, playing cards and board games, or just waiting until they get the all clear.

近些年，全国各地的学校管理人员和警察局合作，制定了详细的计划来保卫学校的安全，自2012年12月，康涅狄格州钮敦镇发生枪击案以来，类似的举措在成倍增加。现在，只要出现一丝威胁，老师们就会按照指示关灯锁门，引导学生躲到角落和橱柜里。校方管理人员会给警方打电话。学生们会挤在教室里，待上几分钟或几小时，相互发发短信、打打牌下下棋，或者就干等着，直到警报解除。

“They kept saying, ‘Lock your doors and keep everyone away from the windows,’ ” said Rebecca Grossman, a 10th grader at Watertown High School, outside Boston, where students have been forced to “shelter in place” three times this school year, a less serious version of a full lockdown.

波士顿外的沃特敦中学(Watertown High School)10年级生丽贝卡·格罗斯曼(Rebecca Grossman)说，“他们不停地说‘锁上门，所有人不要靠近窗户。’”这个学年，该校的学生已经被迫“原地躲避”了三次，这种躲避比全面封锁的程度要轻一些。

The lockdowns were more disruptive than scary, Rebecca said, like the time last month when a bullet was discovered in a classroom, and she and her classmates had to stay in place for four hours. She said the litany of false alarms was desensitizing students, who have come to see the responses as “just an annoyance.”

丽贝卡说，封锁造成的混乱大于恐惧，比如就在上个月，一间教室里发现了一枚子弹，她和同学们不得不在原地待了四个小时。她说，没完没了的假警报让学生变得麻木起来，他们已经渐渐把封锁反应视为“烦人的事”。

The lockdowns are part of a constellation of new security measures deployed by schools over the last decade, a complement to closed-circuit cameras, doors that lock automatically and police officers in the building. Most states have passed laws requiring schools to devise safety plans, and several states, including Michigan, Kentucky and North Dakota, specifically require lockdown drills.

过去十年里，学校采取了一系列的新安全措施，封锁是其中一项，是对闭路摄像头、自动落锁的门和校内警察的补充。大多数州已经通过法律，要求学校制定安全计划，包括密歇根州、肯塔基州和北达科他州在内的几个州还特别要求开展封锁演习。

Some drills are as simple as a principal making an announcement and students sitting quietly in a darkened classroom. At other schools, police officers and school officials playact a shooting, stalking through the halls like gunmen and testing whether doors have been locked.

有些演习简单至极，不过是一名校长宣布进行演习，然后学生们就安静地坐在一间黑暗的教室里。在某些学校，警察和校方管理人员模拟了一场枪击案，他们像枪手一样在楼里出没，测试学校里的门是否被锁上了。

School officials and security experts say the lockdowns are a modest and sensible effort to guard against the unthinkable, and that they have helped keep students safe, calm and organized during shootings and emergencies. And dozens of times every month, the drills become reality.

学校管理人员和安全专家说，对于防范意想不到的攻击，封锁是一种明智而适中的措施，在遇到枪击和紧急事件时，它有助于确保学生的的安全、冷静和有序。而演习成真的情况每个月都会有几十次。

Last month, when an 18-year-old student walked into his high school in suburban Denver and fatally shot a classmate in the head, students huddled in their classrooms behind locked doors as police commandos swept the building. They were evacuated classroom by classroom, hands over their heads, onto the snowy playing fields, all according to a plan school officials had put in place to prepare for just such an emergency.

上个月，在丹佛郊外的一所中学，一名18岁的本校学生进校后开枪击中一名同学的头部，致其死亡，学生们缩在被锁了门的教室里，等待全副武装的警察搜索事发建筑。他们被逐个教室地疏散到白雪覆盖的运动场上，所有行动都是按照学校管理人员专为此类紧急情况准备的计划进行的。

“The staff and students knew how to safely lock down and then evacuate the school,” Scott Murphy, the district schools superintendent, wrote to parents after the shooting at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, praising what he called a well-coordinated response. “They acted quickly, appropriately, and bravely.”

负责管辖地区学校的警长斯科特·墨菲(Scott Murphy)说，“教职工和学生们知道该如何安全地实施封锁，疏散校内人员。”科罗拉多州阿拉帕霍高中(Arapahoe High School)发生枪击案后，墨菲给家长们写信，说应对措施协调出色，他对此给予了赞扬。“他们行动迅速、得当、勇敢。”

Even without a direct threat, schools will default to a lockdown. A high school in the San Francisco Bay Area was locked down last week as the police in the area hunted for a carjacking suspect.

即使没遇到直接威胁，学校也会按默认程序启动封锁。上周，当旧金山湾区的警察抓捕一名劫车嫌疑犯时，处在该地区的一所中学实施了封锁。

Some parents wonder whether the trend has laid a backdrop of fear and paranoia across their children’s education.

一些家长怀疑，这种趋势是否已经给子女的教育造就了一个恐惧而多疑的环境。

The North Carolina elementary school where Jackson Green, 5, counts to 100 and delights in celebrating classmates’ birthdays has gone into lockdown twice this school year, once for a drill and once for real, sending Jackson and his classmates to huddle quietly in a hidden corner of the classroom until their teacher says everything is O.K.

这个学年，北卡罗来纳州小学已经两次实施了封锁，一次是演习，另一次是真的。在这座学校里学会数到100、和同学们一同庆祝生日的5岁学生杰克森·格林(Jackson Green)和同学被迫安静地缩在教室里的隐蔽一角。

On Oct. 11, the school was locked down for part of the morning after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school who turned out to be a parent. The school, which locks doors during the school day and has cameras at entrances, alerted parents and called the police.

去年10月11日，一名5年级学生报告说他看见一名陌生的男子，学校因此在上午实施了一段时间的封锁，后来证实此人是一名家长。学校在上课日锁上了教室的门，门口还装了摄像头，校方给家长发了警报，给警察打了电话。

“It speaks to the psychological conditions of these children, that they’re alert, they’re on the lookout, that this danger is always present for them,” Jackson’s mother, Sarah Green, said in an interview. “It’s constantly on their minds.”

“这说明了这些孩子们的心理状态，他们相当警惕，在留神观察，他们随时会遇到危险，”杰克森的母亲萨拉·格林(Sarah Green)在一次采访中说。“这些都是印在他们脑子里的。”

Though Jackson is still too young to understand the broader threats behind the drills, he has absorbed their lessons so well that he has started playing lockdown at home, Ms. Green said. “Attention everyone, this is a lockdown!” he announces in the playroom. “Turn off the lights!”

格林太太说，虽然杰克森还太小，无法理解演习背后意味着怎样广泛的威胁，但他还是充分地吸取了演习的经验，甚至已经开始在家玩封锁游戏了。“大家请注意，我们要实施封锁了！”他在游戏室里宣布，“关灯！”

Even the preparatory drills can leave an imprint on the youngest children. In Manhattan, Kan., Tina Steffensmeier said her first-grade son had to hide in his classroom cubby during a drill while police officers walked through the hallways and into classrooms, practicing how they would ensure that the children were tucked out of a gunman’s sight. That night, she said, he had a nightmare that a “bad guy” shot him at school.

即使是预备演习也会在最年幼的孩子身上留下印记。堪萨斯州曼哈顿的蒂娜·斯特芬斯迈尔(Tina Steffensmeier)说，在一次演习中，警察们穿过走廊进入教室，演练该如何确保孩子们能躲到枪手的视线之外，当时，她上一年级的儿子不得不躲在教室的角落里。她说当晚她的儿子做了一个噩梦，梦见“一个坏人”在学校里朝他开枪。

“He’s a sensitive kid, and it really affected him,” Ms. Steffensmeier said. “How sad it is that our kids have to deal with this.”

斯特芬斯迈尔说，“他是一个敏感的孩子，这件事真的影响了他。我们的孩子要应付这样的事情，太可悲了。”