ABUJA, Nigeria — Facing different but equally harrowing crises, parents and educators in the United States and northeast Nigeria are debating similarly drastic measures to improve school safety as a painful public reckoning plays out in both countries.

As students hold walkouts across the U.S. amid a scourge of mass shootings, President Donald Trump’s proposal to put more guns in schools carries echoes of questions being asked in one corner of Africa’s most populous country. Determined to do something, Nigeria’s government has deployed armed guards to schools while parents debate the merits of arming teachers themselves.

Americans tend to think of their struggles as far removed from the misfortunes that afflict distant, volatile nations like Nigeria, where 110 schoolgirls abducted in February from the town of Dapchi have not been returned. After all, while America has contended with terrorist incidents, there is no marauding insurgency in the U.S. like the Boko Haram extremists who have killed more than 20,000 people in the last eight years.

For parents focused squarely on their children’s wellbeing, that distinction may be beside the point.

“What teachers should have in their hands should be chalk, books, rulers and markers — certainly not guns,” said Nafisat Aliyu, a mother of three boys in Maiduguri, Borno state, where Boko Haram was formed. She said impressionable young kids may see their teachers carrying firearms and decide they want to try one for themselves. “Armed teachers can be as dangerous as having some crazy fellow running into the school with a blazing gun.”