In response to recent coverage of the Eddie Eagle gun safety program, a correction concerning that program’s relationship to the state of North Carolina should be noted for the record.
Your reporter stated that North Carolina mandates that Eddie Eagle be taught in its public schools (Main news, Nov. 20). This erroneous information was again repeated in a Dec. 6 letter.
A check with North Carolina’s State Department of Public Instruction would have established the fact that during its 1995 session, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a resolution that encouraged each of North Carolina’s 100 county boards of education to include Eddie Eagle as part of its curricula. The General Assembly chose not to mandate Eddie Eagle because a mandate would have been inconsistent with legislation that eliminated state-level policy directives, allowing local school boards more authority to determine what should be taught in their public schools. Mandating Eddie Eagle would have been contrary to the legislature’s successful 1995 bipartisan effort to decentralize its educational bureaucracy.
The program is not yet taught in all North Carolina primary schools. But its common-sense approach is attracting the attention of educators who are serious about helping children identify situations in which firearms may pose a danger to their safety. Each term, more public and private schools in North Carolina are including the meritorious Eddie Eagle program as part of their curriculum.
Given that half of all households in North Carolina contain at least one firearm, it seems only right that firearm-safety education for school children will become a priority along with fire safety, drug awareness and conflict resolution. Illinois policymakers ought to ignore those advocating a gun prohibitionist agenda under the guise of child safety and give Eddie Eagle the objective consideration it deserves.
