“We have to harden our schools, not soften them up,” President Donald Trump said at a White House event days after the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

There is no evidence to support such an assertion. I know, because I’ve looked for it. I have spent close to a decade studying various aspects of American high school life, culminating last year in a book that questions whether high-security schools do students more harm than good. In Rhetoric, Embodiment, and the Ethos of Surveillance: Student Bodies in the American High School, I make a controversial suggestion: We need to lessen school security.

We may think that more metal detectors, more sniffing dogs, and more armed police officers will keep students safer. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the STOP School Violence Act last week by a 407-10 vote to provide training and funding for violence prevention. The bill doesn’t allow funds to be used to provide firearms, but could fund threat assessments and crisis-intervention teams. A similar Senate bill is awaiting a vote.

The darker side of all these safety measures is that they conflate schools with prisons, engendering the school climate with fear, distrust, paranoia—and, yes, violence…

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