I have an 8-year-old sister.
She lives in Egypt and wants to study in the US when she grows up.
My little sister one day called me and started asking about schools in the US, how good or bad they are and what are the differences between different schools.
At some point, I told her about the shooting.
I guess because of how frequent the news of school shootings is I started becoming numb to the pain.
However, Rofayda (My sister) was terrified by the news.
She had so many questions, all of them were constructive questions aimed at finding a solution.
Here are some of the questions and suggestions Rofayda called out:
Why can’t the government prevent people from having guns?
I didn’t want to start the argument of “The guns don’t kill people but people kill people” because she thinks I’m smart and I don’t want to seem dumb.
I simply said that the gun industry is so strong it’s not that simple to control guns right now.
Why can’t people move?
Rofayda suggests that if you live in a place where children can be shot, get out of there.
I had to challenge that and I told her that people can’t simply leave, it’s expensive and some people can’t leave everything behind.
How about homeschooling?
That was simply her solution for the ones that can’t leave everything behind.
Work harder
The ones who can’t leave because it’s expensive, simply have to get extra jobs and save more, work as hard as they can.
Rofayda believes it’s as urgent as fleeing a battlefield and should be addressed immediately.
I actually challenged that by asking who will stay with the kids at home if the parent(s) is going to work most of the day, and she assumed that work should allow them to take the kids to work because otherwise, the employer would be evil.
Rofayda thinks (as does most of the world) that the US should be the best country in the world.
It should have the best education and no child should be in danger by going to school.
The US gets very strong PR, but evidently, it’s not the place that is advertised, but rather a place we dream that it exists.