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anglais 2

A town where the teachers carry guns a well as books

Students in this tiny town of grain silos and ranch-style houses spent much of the first couple of days in school last month trying to guess which of their teachers were carrying pistols under their clothes.

"We made fun of them", said Eric Howard, a 16 year old high school junior. "Everybody knows everybody here. We will find out."

The school board in this improvireshed rural hamlet in North Texas has drawn national attention with its decision to let some teachers carry concealed weapons, a track no other school in the country has followed. The idea is to ward off a massacre like the one that happened at Columbine in 1999.

"Our people just don't want their children to be fish in a bowl", said David Thweatt, the schools superintendent and driving force behind the policy. "Country people are take-care-of-yourself people. They are not under the illusion that the police are there to protect them."

Even in Texas, xith its tradition of lenient gun laws and frontier justice, the idea of teachers' taking guns to class has rattled some people and sparked a fiery debate.

Gun-control advocates are upset, while pro-gun groups are gleeful. Leaders of the state's major teachers unions have expressed stunned outrage, while the conservative Republican governor, Rick Perry, has endorsed the idea.

In the center of the storm is mr. Thweatt, a man who describes himself as " a contingency planner", who believes Americans should be less afraid of protecting themselves.

Mr. Thweat maintains that having teachers carry guns is a rational response to a real threat.

The country sheriff's office is 27 kilometers away, he argues, and the district cannot afford to hire police officers, as urban schools in Dallas and Houston do.

Teachers have received training from a private security consultant and will use special ammunition designed to prevent ricocheting, Mr Thweatt said.

Harrold is about 290 kilometers northwest of dallas, far from the giant districts in major Texas cities. Barely 100 students of all ages attend classes here in two brick buldings built more than 60 years ago. There are two dozen teachers.

Yet hte town is not isolated in rustic peace, supporters of the plan point out. A four-lane highway runs through town, bringing with it a river of humanity, including criminals, they say. The police recently shut down a drug-producing laboratory in a ramshackle house near school property. Drifters sometimes sleep under the overpass.

"I'm not exactly paranoid", Mr. Thweatt said. "I like to consider myself prepared".

Some residents and parents, however, think Mr. Thweatt may be overstating the thear. Many say they rarely lock their doors, much less worry about random drifters with pistols attacking the school. Longtime residents were unable to recall a single violent incident there.

" I don't think there is a place the school whatsoever for a gun unless you have a police officer in there ", said Bobby G.Brown, a farmer and former school board chairman whose two sons were educated at the school. "I don't care how much training they have".

Mr. Thweatt declined to say how many teachers were armed, or who they were, on the theoryy that it would tip off the bad guys.

Most critics question whether teachers, even with extra training, are as qualified as police officers to deal with an armed attacker.

" We are trained to teach and to educate," said Zeph Capo, the legislative director for the Houston Association of teachers." We are not trained to tame the Wild West."

Traci McKay, a 34-year-old restaurant employee, sends three children to the school, yet said she had not herad about the pistol-carrying teachers until two weeks before the start of the semester. She was stunned.

"I should have been informed," Ms. McKay said." If something happens, do we really want all these people shooting at each other?