Since the Christmas day terror attempt, airport security has been tightened and questions have been raised about why the U.S. government didn’t “connect the dots” beforehand. What was your reaction to this news story and its aftermath?

In his column “The God That Fails” , David Brooks writes that “After Sept. 11, we Americans indulged our faith in the god of technocracy” and now “we seem to expect perfection from government and then throw temper tantrums when it is not achieved.”

All this money and technology seems to have reduced the risk of future attack. But, of course, the system is bound to fail sometimes. Reality is unpredictable, and no amount of computer technology is going to change that. Bureaucracies are always blind because they convert the rich flow of personalities and events into crude notations that can be filed and collated. Human institutions are always going to miss crucial clues because the information in the universe is infinite and events do not conform to algorithmic regularity.

Resilient societies have a level-headed understanding of the risks inherent in this kind of warfare.

But, of course, this is not how the country has reacted over the past week. There have been outraged calls for Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security to resign, as if changing the leader of the bureaucracy would fix the flaws inherent in the bureaucracy. There have been demands for systemic reform — for more protocols, more layers and more review systems.

Students: Tell us what you think about the terror attempt and our national reaction to it. Do you agree with Mr. Brooks that we need to understand that “human systems fail”? What do you think the government can or should be doing? Why?

Make sure you respond in 5 to 8 thoughtful sentences with no repetition. Proofread your response out loud in your head to make sure it makes sense and addresses the questions asked. Write your response first on Think and save it.