The First Rule of French Club Is...

Pop quiz:

Middle and high-school students in the suburban town of Burleson are being taught to attack school-invading gunmen on sight. In what state is Burleson located?

(a) The State of Texas
(b) The State of Florida
(c) A State of Confusion
(d) No Fit State
(e) The Stater Bros. off I-71 in beautiful rustic Gaptooth County (Pop. 322, all half-brothers)

Obviously it's (a), shit-kicking stupid Texas because the Texan solution to every problem, from school shootings to lactose intolerance, involves over-the-top, poorly-planned, aggressive and violent behavior.

Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they got — books, pencils, legs and arms.

Pencils!

I always thought the DARE Program was a stupid idea...Send a cop into a classroom to give kids a boring lecture about why drugs are bad. That reinforces two ideas - drugs are taboo, and therefore fascinating, and cops are full of shit. Both of those things happen to be true, but 15 year olds don't neccessarily need a leg-up on obtaining that vital information. Better to slowly realize the truth over the course of your late teens and early 20's.

But stupid though the DARE Program was, it's nowhere near as retarded as instructing children to attack large men with guns by chucking pencils. That's a good way to get yourself noticed, which is pretty much the last thing you want to do mid-school shooting. Besides, what happens if all the other kids panic and hide under their desks, and you're the lone douchebag tossing school supplies at a guy on a triple-dose of PCP gripping a semi-automatic weapon loaded with hollow points.

"Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success," said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools.

Folks, I'm telling you...Anarchy is looking better and better all the time. Not pure anarchy, I suppose. More a kind of anarcho-syndicalism, in which citizens form into communities of solidarity, looking out for the common welfare. Because the local, state and federal governemnts are basically trying to tell us that we're on our own.

"Yeah, your 14 year old daughter can crouch under her desk like a pussy on the off chance that some cops are going to show up to save her life, or she can bum rush a 200 pound assailant and stab him repeatedly in the eyeballs with her compass. Or, if she is not good enough at math to have reached geometry at that point, the sharp end of her three-ring binder."

If the Burlseon school district is so concerned about gun-toting maniacs showing up during 4th period, why don't they just hire Response Options to guard the school instead of teaching the children how to fashion a shiv from common protractors? Oh, right, cause that would cost money. Yeah, better to turn the nation's young people into vigilante trainees. Good thinking.

That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed.

Isn't that just a bit paranoid? I mean, just because a grown man walks into a school with a loaded gun, that doesn't mean he neccessarily wants to shoot children. Let's be reasonable, folks. If a few 7th graders come at him making a mean face, he'll probably just shoot himself in the head from panic and save everyone a lot of time and worry.

But school officials in Burleson said they are drawing on the lessons learned from a string of disasters such as Columbine in 1999 and the Amish schoolhouse attack in Pennsylvania last week.

This illustrates the problem with trying to draw meaningful lessons from every random tragedy that occurs. What makes the sudden, unthinkable horrors of Columbine and the Amish school house so immensely tragic and frightening is that they are unpredictable anomalies. For every "Trenchcoat Mafia," there are literally thousands of peaceful nerdy, alienated cliques of high school students who will never turn violent. There's no way to extract some sort of moral from that story.

Everything we "learned" from Columbine can be summed up thusly:

(1) It's wise to have at least one friendly conversation with all the creepy, quiet kids in your class at school. That way, if one of them ever turns into a kill-crazy psychopath, you're unlikely to make his or her Hit List.

(2) Michael Moore really is considerably overweight and does not appear to do laundry with any sort of frequency.

(3) To avoid being killed during nerd-related violence, it's best to not be a minority, if at all possible.

At Burleson — which has 10 schools and about 8,500 students — the training covers various emergencies, such as tornadoes, fires and situations where first aid is required. Among the lessons: Use a belt as a sling for broken bones, and shoelaces make good tourniquets.

All this is fine, I suppose, although teaching kids how to fashion tourniquets seems a bit extreme. I hope they still make time for actual learning in between all the merit badge exercizes. Perhaps this is why our school system consistantly hovers near the very top of the International Dumbass Index (the IDI). Last I checked, we were actually between Uruguay and Paraguay.

Students are also instructed not to comply with a gunman's orders, and to take him down.

Browne recommends students and teachers "react immediately to the sight of a gun by picking up anything and everything and throwing it at the head and body of the attacker and making as much noise as possible. Go toward him as fast as we can and bring them down."

I seriously can't believe this is real. First of all, I can't believe we have any in-school training for what to do in case a maniac with a gun shows up. The chances of that actually happening are still incredibly slim, despite what your local talking head of choice would have you believe. Incredibly, incredibly slim. If you're going to train your kids for Columbine II: The Quickening, you might as well start training them for what to do in case a chunk of SkyLab crushes the girls' locker room or how to fend off a horny, Net savvy Congressman.

But even more importantly, if a gunman ever does show up in a Burleson school, unlikely though that may be, this policy is going to get some poor kid killed. Even if a mob of children manage to take down an armed evildoer, couldn't he get a few shots off before he's out for the count? I mean, are these children going to get an adrenaline rush and suddenly transform into Green Berets? I don't care how much Metal Gear: Solid they've played, it's unlikely that middle school children, surprised by a sudden intruder into their classroom, will be to completely incapacitate the foe before a single shot can be fired.

Yes, having a hostage situation involving school kids is less than optimal, and having children murdered is the worst possible scenario, but there's clearly a chance that a hypothetical nutjob might not actually go through with any kind of actual violence, or that police could talk him out of the classroom while keeping everyone alive. Having the children attack such a person on sight pretty much guarantees that the situation will escalate. I mean, right? Obviously?

Most of the freshman class at Burleson's high school underwent instruction during orientation, and eventually all Burleson students will receive some training, even the elementary school children.

"We want them to know if Miss Valley says to run out of the room screaming, that is exactly what they need to do," said Jeanie Gilbert, district director of emergency management. She said students and teachers should have "a fighting chance in every situation."

"It's terribly sad that when I get up in the morning that I have to wonder what may happen today either in our area or in the nation," Gilbert said. "Something that happens in Pennsylvania has that ripple effect across the country."

Isn't it amazing when people let the truth slip out without even realizing it? Nothing changed in Jeanie Gilbert's community. It's still the same suburban town, the same school with the same students. They are all exactly as safe from violence as they were a month ago.

She says it herself..."I have to wonder what may happen today in our area or in the nation. Something that happens in Pennsylvania has that ripple effect across the country."

Wasn't she listening to herself? The ripple effect is just panic, not any real threat. It's not like there's an actual band of school shooters who struck in Pennsylvania and are now cutting a bloody path across the country towards Burleson, Texas. (Although this would make a terrific film...What's Rob Zombie working on now?) It's just that, this thing was on the news, so nwo Jeanie and her friends are freaked out, so they're teaching their kids lunacy in a desperate, somewhat pathetic and woefully misguided attempt to feel empowered against imaginary gunmen.

It's a really horrifying case of children being traumatized by clueless adults. They are going to teach elementary school kids how to fight against random murderers in school. What a terrific message.

"Welcome to school! You're going to learn a lot and it's going to be great fun! You're going to make lots of friends and...HOLY SHIT, KID, LOOK OUT, THERE'S A CRAZY PSYCHO KILLER SNEAKING UP BEHIND YOU! No, I'm just role playing. But if there was a crazy psycho killer sneaking up behind you, you're better off just flailing against him with all the strength in your puny 80 pound frame than waiting for some authority figure like a teacher or school administrator or police officer to save you. They're only here to boss you around. Even though you're just a kid, it makes them feel big and important to harass you and generally give you a hard time. Not unlike that crazy psycho killer who's sneaking up behind you! No, no, that's just more role playing. But, seriously, when you attack the crazy psycho killer who wants to fashion a vest out of your skin, try to injure his genitals, so he's not tempted to rape your corpse after he's done strangling you with the large intestine of his previous victim. Just a tip."