The Institution on Trial

[MJTurano@aol.com]

*The following is my own opinion, based on the reading I've done, the schools 
I've attended, and the changes I've seen in Mark and Becky since they left 
school.*

Overall, public school is not a healthy environment (aside from what happened 
at Columbine and other places around the country).  At the risk of sounding 
like some touchy-feely, contact-your-emotions-to-feel-good-about-yourself 
kind of guy, public school never was and never will be about nurturing the 
child.  It's about the dissolution of free will, and teaching kids to 
conform.  It's about getting people to follow orders.  It's about stripping 
away six years' worth of accumulated individuality and subjugating it to the 
will of the state.  Oh yeah, and you might learn to spell while these things 
are going on.  But don't hold your breath.

Institutions--government, educational, or otherwise--are no place for 
children, unless we want to teach them that they don't matter, that failure 
is expected and inevitable, and that the most worthwhile goal is that of 
conformity.  That's why those who are "different" catch so much shit in 
places like public school--conformity is prized above all else, by teachers, 
administrators, and (worst of all) by parents.  

Parents are supposed to be their kids' advocates, not mindless tools of the 
public school system who dutifully dole out punishment when their child fails 
to measure up to some predetermined, etched-in-stone standard.  "Did you pass 
or fail?  What are your *grades*?  How did you do?  HOW WELL DID YOU 
PERFORM?"  Those are questions that should be asked of the teachers every 
nine weeks, not the students.  And any parents who defer to the authority of 
a school or administrator when it comes to the well-being of their kid should 
be ashamed of themselves.

I've heard it argued that Japanese children score much higher on standardized 
tests than American kids, that they're better students, and above all, that 
they accept the primary responsibility for their education as their own.  Not 
their parents' responsibility, not their teachers', and not the school's.  
This works for them.  This is their culture.  Conformity is a way of life.

Unless we're ready to embrace that way of life here in America (where words 
like individuality and independence receive great lip-service but are seldom 
realized in truth), we need to rethink our approach to education.  I'm not 
saying that homeschooling is the answer for everyone--there are some folks 
out there who, if they're too gullible to discern a scam artist in the 
alternative health care business, certainly have no business trying to 
educate their children at home.  <G>  But things definitely need to change, 
and this won't happen by harassing the innocent and persecuting those who 
fail to conform simply because they've survived with a shred of their 
individuality intact.

Because that's where the truth seems to wriggle out of the cracks and tap us 
on the ankle; each of the kids being harassed presents himself as a failure 
to the system, a failure to break them of the most reviled habit of 
all--having the audacity (and the courage) to be different from everyone 
else.  Needless to say, I'm referring to those who *don't* resort to mass 
murder as a means of expressing their frustration with the way they've been 
treated.

Was it the school's fault?  Was it the parents' fault?  Was it the janitor's 
fault?  The gun manufacturers?  Quake?  Doom?  Tom Brokaw?  Movies?  
Television?  Who knows.  

But when you find an educational system that's as morally bereft and devoid 
of compassion as ours, it ceases to be a wonder that things like this happen 
at all.

Instead we should ask why they don't happen more often.

-Matt