Calming Rooms & Safe Spaces

The below Public Mind article was submitted to and published by Parsons, Kansas newspaper, the Parsons Sun (re: page 4, July 13-14, 2019, Weekend Edition).

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The July 10, 2019 edition of the Sun included an informative front-page article titled, “Teacher raises funds for calming room.” A reporting in large part about various teachers in this area seeking donations—“to help them provide students tools for learning everything from technology to self-regulating behaviors when school starts in the fall.” Including, for example, a place within Meadow View School “that the students can access at their request to calm down.” Reportedly, “kind of a chill-out room basically.”

No doubt it is too often overlooked that countless of our nation’s students continue to be blessed in various life-meaningful ways, by teachers who dream of being able to do something special for their students. Dreams that to be truly realized, most often entail special effort, sacrifice, and financial cost.

Also too often disregarded are many of the unsettling reminders of various dangerous paths our society has for too long been treading. None the least, the through ignorance or intent passing-the-buck of responsibility for “raising our children” to our educational institutions and various aspects of government. Including delegated or assumed responsibility for their social and emotional needs, and ability to manage stress, etc.

Present trends suggest that it is likely we will, for some time yet, continue to support or otherwise tolerate pursuit and funding of “Calming Rooms & Safe Spaces” equipped with counselors, soothing tropical beach themes, and pet kittens/puppies, etc., reportedly to help students “de-escalate their emotions and be ready to go back to class ready to learn.”

Hopefully, however, somewhere between kindergarten-age and the early years of so-called adulthood, a nation-saving number of our youth will somewhere and somehow get a survival-essential grasp of reality. Such as, the indisputable and ultimately inescapable fact that: life is not fair; nothing is truly “free”; the right to offend and to be offended are essential elements of our precious U.S. Constitution recognized “freedom of speech”; and, those who are hell-bent to do us harm couldn’t care less about rules, regulations, laws, thou-shall-not signage, or our feelings.

For, it is to our demise that the reins of responsibility for this great nation ever be turned over to a generation ignorant, unconcerned, and inattentive of the origin of our too-often taken for granted and abused liberty and freedom. A precious liberty and freedom not spawned from avoidance of responsibility and a false sense of reality, security, and entitlement. But from a deep grasp of truth, freely-assumed responsibility, great sacrifice, and unrelenting courage.

And, may we responsibly do much more than hope that our nation’s colleges and universities will soon voluntarily, or otherwise, focus more on “educating” and less on “political activism.” And that our valued K-12 administrators and teachers will likewise one day soon be freed up to spend more of their limited time and resources on “teaching”—and less on struggling to compensate for neglected “parental responsibilities.”

                                                   —William James Moore