Cirque du so what

It’s been awhile since I espoused just why I.S. 666 and schools like it are bad for America, but a diatribe is long overdue. New York City Department of Education, how do I hate thee? Don’t make me count the ways.

In ye olde days of the 1990s, I went to a Texas public school in a small independent school district. Unfortunately, I think quite a few students were labeled early on and inappropriately tracked into less challenging classes and academic programs. Unfortunately, everyone knew everyone else and the town was very conservative with a before school prayer group and an annual visit from abstinence-touting holy roller, Ed Ainsworth. (I wish him many lost tax dollars and a number of painful experiences involving crying babies in movie theaters). My hometown isn’t a place to feel comfortable in your own skin if your skin happens to be liberal, suspiciously unique and creative, or gay.

On the converse, the lack of anonymity in the O.E.I.S.D. school system was a blessing. Discipline issues were always in check. I never saw a student assault a teacher and I never saw students curse or sexually harass a teacher; nor did I ever see extreme cases of these behaviors among students. From the start of my education, I knew what was expected of me at school. Overt misbehavior was shocking, because cases of it were so rare. We had zero tolerance, “no pass, no play” policies set up. There was a physical office where people were sent for egregious behavior. (”Egregious” is all relative, of course. Farting on someone in Texas is “egregious.” Here, in NYC, it’s called “that bastard on the subway again”).

The principal’s office was not where you’d want to be. Upon resting your butt on a chair in the principal’s office - where you’d imagine the flesh might be burned off by the thought of the punishment that awaited you - your parents were called. This is the part that would have scared me the most, had I not been the goody two shoes I was in school. No one shapeshifts in anger like my Mama and Daddy. It’s a super power. Getting caught and facing the wrath of teachers, principals, my parents, and the drones that operated the In School Suspension (I.S.S.) room would have been like an ass whoopin’ by the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - humiliating, forceful, and wickedly synchronized.

My a.s.s. never spent a day in I.S.S., but I know kids not bad enough to be sent completely away from school (which wouldn’t even be the worst of the bad kids in Odem) were placed in locked-down isolation in a building far away from normal student life. Teachers piled on work and miscreants did it in silence…or else.

A few years later….

Welcome to I.S. 666, land of no consequences! Step right up and hit a teacher as hard as you can! Should this teacher follow up with the piles of paperwork it would take to maybe get you in trouble, you have an all-expense paid vacation of three days OUT of class, but IN school! You’ll sit in the assistant principal’s office on a couch, mostly unsupervised! You’ll have no work to do - just sit back and watch the violent, distracting chaos unfold before you! If one of your pals does something really bad that warrants seeing the assistant principal, like dowsing a classmate with gasoline, you may get some time to socialize! Conjugal-like visits probably aren’t out of the question, either.

I talked to a parent yesterday. She’d come in all fired up, because her son broke another boy’s arm while play fighting in class. I found out that three boys, including the smallest one who needed an operation to repair his arm, were suspended for play fighting. The parent conference ended. The assistant principal said each boy had three days of suspension. I watched the mom get up, look hard at her son, and walk away.

I wanted to call after her, “Are you sure you don’t want to take him back home with you and lash him with a belt or cutting words? Or knock with into next Tuesday? Please…?”

She walked out and went home, rid of him for the day. I wish I could have done the same thing.

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