> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Our kids know what time it is - URL: https://www.smdp.com/our-kids-know-what-time-it-is/ - Published: 2007-10-24T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-25T01:11:43.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import *By MICHAEL TITTINGER is Editor of the Daily Press. When he’s not trying to mold the minds of our youth, he* “IT’S GONNA BE HARD TO COMPETE with the SWAT unit and their trucks,” we were warned before taking part in Career Day at Grant Elementary last Friday. “I suggest you bring some visuals, some props.” Visuals? We’re writers. Red pens aren’t likely to spark much inspiration among the kids. A notepad? Camera? Coffee mug? Actually, the SWAT team just outside the window of Ms. Croft’s fifth grade classroom proved to be all the props a journalist might need on Career Day. “Who knows what a news story is?” It’s telling stories, like in the schoolyard when all the other kids gather ’round to hear the tales of a 10-year-old’s life experience, to be in the know. That was, more or less, the answer we agreed upon. “What are some news stories going on now?” There was a moment of contemplative quiet, before the students unleashed an array of current events that struck a chord. “In New York, this kid brought a gun to school and started shooting.” Ouch. Anybody else? “My friend brought a gold bullet to class... and I touched it!” Hmm. Who else? “Columbine.” There it was, the one word synonymous with news reporting for students of all ages. Almost to a little man (or little woman), the kids rattled off topical news stories, all of which had two things in common — guns and schools. The Lakers game, movie reviews, travel, school celebrations — all types of news stories I threw at them, but, invariably, the ones they obviously latch onto and retain involve school shootings. These are the stories, whether well-intentioned, protective parents gloss over them or not, kids hear and contemplate. Most of us born in the last millennium have a hard time relating to kids’ fears today, in a post-Columbine world where attending school brings along with it the fear — no matter how remote the possibility — that violence could break out on campus at any moment. Dodging homework was more pressing than dodging a bullet. When we attended school there was envy and self-consciousness, awkwardness and vitriol, giggling and gas. But school shootings? Negative. Eight years after Columbine, kids that were just 2 when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris began firing, rattle off the name of the Colorado secondary school as easily as they do the White House or Dodger Stadium. Really, who can blame the young Grant students for having school shootings in the backs of their minds last Friday, when SWAT trucks were literally positioned just behind their heads and out the window? Armed police officers on school grounds have taken on a whole different association in the last decade. This is the world our children live in, and kids being kids, they were soon impervious to the unwanted discussion about school shootings and rifling through their free copies of the Daily Press, seeking out the comics page and erasing people’s heads from photographs with their No. 2 pencil eraser tips. Few parents would be faulted for not watching and reading news accounts of increasingly common school shootings with their kids. The last thing a child needs is to be looking over his shoulder while trying to learn what connects the neck bone to the arm bone. Still, maybe parents and kids should be reading such stories to one another; an unpleasant topic to be sure, but no measure of protective censorship will keep the news from kids’ ears. They know about school shootings; they know school shootings are more widespread than ever; and they know kids just like them have been killed by classmates for doing little more than attending class on the wrong day. As journalists, we don’t create the news, we just report it and leave it up to the reader to decide how to use the information. Sometimes it’s temporal and decidedly disposable (Paris Hilton anyone?) and sometimes it is nothing short of life-saving. Two weeks ago — on the same day as a shooting in a Cleveland High School — 14-year-old Lewis Bennett III tipped off police to the threatened attack by a classmate who wanted to unleash a Columbine-style attack on his suburban Philadelphia high school. Kids are resilient. They can take it. Shielding them from the news might be more for our own benefit than our kids, recalling that our biggest fears on the playground were being opened to ridicule for our quirks, our weight, our differences, our ethnic names... not a black trench coat and a 12-gauge. A tough conversation, but a vital one. Arming students with the most accurate information will prove to be their best defense against threats both perceived and real as they proceed through our schools. Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it, or suffer because of it. And that’s a conversation that needs no fancy props and visuals. *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 24, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/102407.pdf?ref=smdp.com)