Reply #80: First we need actual schools in which to teach anything... [View All]

rather than the free-fire zones our city schools have become. It's another of those insoluble chicken-egg problems: Did the schools go to shit and that visible decay caused massive student apathy and changed the basic function from education to baby sitting? Or did the last few generations of surly, unmotivated and well-armed kids finally destroy the institution of public education, and we're now seeing the results of that systemic failure in voter apathy and/or identification with idiotic paleofascist and/or fundie ideologies?

If I had a school age kid, I'd figure some way to get him/her into private school. Not because I'm an elitist prig, but because if I want the kid to have a reasonable chance to acquire an education about something other than fashion, celebrities and small arms proficiency, private school is the only remaining option.

I went to a Jesuit high school, which was absolutely detestable at the time -- particularly since this was San Francisco in the late '60s and the school was right on the edge of the Haight-Ashbury district, which I marched through daily, up and back down Stanyon Street with my Jesuit-length hair and collared shirt. Of course, the first order of business upon graduation was growing my hair to my navel and getting rid of any collared shirts. But the education I got has served me very well indeed, and taught me enough scholastic discipline to get through grad school, so I thank my parents for the financial sacrifices they had to make on my behalf.

I know several grade school and high school teachers who are basically just putting in their time, staying on for the paycheck and the benefits and the pension, and trying to cope with near-universal hostility on the part of the kids toward the world in general and school authority in particular. Most say they try to find one or two kids who aren't completely lost and direct their energies towards them. Things are, of course, different in wealthier school districts, and the weaponry is certainly more expensive.

Anyway, after decades of neglect and underfunding, the school buildings are falling apart. So the physical environment's already depressing. Couple that with the near certainty that kids from these schools, absent some incredible luck or unique skill set, are going to be flipping burgers, selling drugs and settling into the bleak life of the chronic underclass.

But the Pentagon gets all the money, and schools get some fraud called "no child left behind," which is a horrible idea because it discourages creativity and independent thought, while forcing teachers to "teach to the test." This would be bad enough, but the vile bastards pushing it conveniently forgot to properly fund it. So we have a fraudulent educational standard that rewards rote learning and punishes deviation from the norm, and the miserable cheapskates can't even find the money to produce all these little Stepford automatons. You'd think they'd be ecstatic to fund a system that's geared to turn out doctrinaire republicans.

I don't know. I'm getting more pissed and depressed just typing all this. I don't have any idea how to actually convince a 14 year old gang banger wannabe that reading is among life's great pleasures, history is vital to understanding the present, learning is a value in and of itself and doesn't need a price tag to justify it, and that school really is the best time of life.

That's a pretty hard sell; I know, because I heard the same platitudes and knew they were bullshit. I could see that the slimy and corrupt got all the money and drove the cool cars; I could see that the sleazeballs and lizards were the ones laying down the $20s and tipping big; I could see that the church was all about using a naive belief system to con the congregation out of their hard-earned money; I could see that school was all about social control and education was only an accidental by-product.

Kids today see all this, and they have the added pleasure of knowing their world is going to hell as rapidly as possible and their lives will be immeasurably poorer and more desperate than those of us boomers. Advertising and PR tell them to shoot for the stars, while their own life experience tells them to shoot for the head in case the target's wearing Kevlar. Nice fucking world we've handed them.

Anyway, this is just another one of those semi-coherent rants that pass for analysis in my own addled brain. If you've read this far, consider consulting a specialist.



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