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April 21, 2006
Our Educational Prisons
Word that another school shooting was narrowly averted should serve as a wake-up call to our society about how we are treating our adolescents. The story already appears to ring the same - a couple of bullied black-wearing nerds in the middle of nowhere have had it with being ostracized, and are reaching for rifles. The tighter we try to control our kids, the safer we attempt to make things, the more we narrow the view of the 17 year old who doesn't understand that there is life after 18.
I'll admit it - I was a bullied computer nerd who wore black when I was in high school. Columbine was during my Junior year. And while I must say that I never had dreams of shooting the kids who made my high school life so miserable, I did want to see them get theirs. But I was fortunate for several reasons. First, I grew up right outside DC - I had a city at my fingertips, and my parents were wise enough to grant me some freedom to go out late at night (Denny's at 3 am!) and explore the city around me.
But more importantly, it finally all clicked for me when I was 17. Years of misery and depression had taken it's toll - my grades were atrocious, rebellion in full swing, and I needed an outlet. A family friend set me up with an internship at the Kennedy Center. Suddenly, I was commuting into the District on a daily basis. I was going out with coworkers after the show was over. I spent that summer, writing computer code in the production shop and then popping my head out at 3 pm to run lights at The Millenium Stage. This summer made me realize the insanity and bullshit of our current high school system. When I finally understood just what was waiting for me in the world, there was nothing that could push me back to high school (I did go back for a quarter as I waited to hear from a college, but when I didn't get in I picked up and switched to NoVA - something I should've done when I was 16.)
Our school systems do everything they can to stifle individualism in the name of "curbing disruption". Literature is sanitized. Controversy is avoided at all costs. Anything that is remotely "dangerous" is immediately removed as if you were dealing with a 6 year old - not a 16 year old. But most damaging, with the exception of a few idealistic young teachers, the students are treated as cattle instead of people. When you box people into such surroundings, why would anyone be surprised when a few hit their breaking point and act out?
This is not to excuse the behavior of these kids - popping caps in the asses of the popular kids is not going to solve anything. But these kids had no out they could see - there probably aren't any art museums in Riverton Kansas. For the love of G-d, the biggest nearby city is Oklahoma City - hardly a hot bed of culture or stimulation (Go ahead, call me a snob. I am...proudly.)
The bullying isn't helping either. As long as schools allow the "popular" kids get away with taunting the "freaks, fags, and nerds", the longer we're going to have these problems. And you can't convince me that the kids who were targetted weren't making the lives of the accused miserable. That being said, being an asshole jock isn't a capital offense either.
My father used to hitchhike to school. Kids used to be able to go out for lunch. They'd get little slivers of adulthood in their day - the chance to witness what life will be like for them. But without fail, there's always some misguided Helen Lovejoy shouting "Someone think of the children!" who insists on wrapping kids on a Travolta-esque bubble. Kids will get hurt. Kids will do stupid things. Some kids WILL kill themselves, accidentally or intentionally. It's time that we, as a society, accept that and recognize that if we want to help limits those numbers, the answer it not to suffocate them with rules designed to protect. Let kids be kids. And most of all, let the high schoolers see the world around them. Give them the chance to go out to lunch. Let them stay out late.
Have some faith & trust in your kids - the alternative will be corpses in the schoolyard, and the cycle repeating itself all over again. Unfortuantely, those who are making the rules have forgotten what it was like for them, and they have forgotten how powerful one's perception can be to shape one's actions.
Posted by MikeSager at April 21, 2006 1:03 AM
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