Square Inside and Brown

I've been reading the book by John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education.  You can read it for free, online, and if you have children or grandchildren, or nieces or nephews, or if you think you have an opinion about public school education, you should.  I've been reading more about education since the fall, when I brought my younger daughter home to school.

We're not the "traditional" homeschoolers.  We don't worry too much about the "liberal media."  We don't lament the absence of God in the classroom, since our God is a lot different one than the one who would be there, and I'm not at all interested in what students wear, as long as it's something.  We brought my daughter home because I realized that I had been sending her to be educated by mindless zombie automatons, more interested in a paycheck, conformity, and "good order" than in my child, or any other.

The incident that brought this realization was that our public schools began to drug test all kids in supposed "extracurricular activities."  I have a bit of a problem with this.  The first problem is the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees that the government can't search us without probable cause.  As it's pretty long-established that a drug test is a "search," I was a bit unclear how a public school, which is clearly the government, could get away with such a thing unless they had some reason to believe that you used drugs.  I read the Supreme Court decision on the subject, and then I was REALLY confused.  Suffice it to say that, from a legal and logical standpoint, their decision was horse puckey.  But they are the Supremes, and they're letting it happen.  Big surprise.

The second problem I had with the drug testing is that it's useless and ineffective.  Study after study, e.g., here, has shown that random drug testing does not keep school kids from using drugs--period. And even if it did work, the kids who are in extracurriculars are the least likely to be the ones with drug problems, so it seems exactly ass-backward in practical application. And it seems like if people are going to give up their rights for something, it ought to at least be for something that works and makes a modicum of sense.

The third problem I had with the drug testing was that, while it said that that it only applied to extracurricular activities, when my daughter refused to "consent" to the "voluntary" testing program by signing an agreement, she was expelled from a CLASS.  Now, I don't know about you, but I always thought that "extracurricular" was stuff outside of class. And dictionaries agree with me. Classes are "curricular".  I, being a logical sort, went to the school and pointed out to them how the policy said only extracurricular, how it said there would be "no loss of instructional time" because of the policy, how a class taught as part of the school day, by a teacher on regular salary is the very definition of "curricular."  Alas, I was rebuffed.

The fourth problem I had was how I was rebuffed.  While none of the three "gentlemen" who pass for school administration at my daughter's school had any prior knowledge of my daughter--not even her name--I was told my kid was a drug user, because only a drug user would refuse to take drug tests.  I was mocked and laughed at when I told them that no, there was no evidence of drug use by my daughter, but there was evidence that they were overreaching the Constitutional rights of my kid and many thousands of others.  Later, when one of these "gentlemen" knew my daughter was outside waiting for a meeting with him, he loudly mocked us to other administrators in his office.  And, later that day, my daughter saw and heard the same "gentleman" grilling her teachers, trying to dig up dirt on her, apparently in an attempt to discredit her, and me.

So, we brought her home.  She's studying independently, working at the local university in the chemistry lab, and doing well.  After getting some publicity in local media, the school board revised their policy to make clear that I was right and the the "gentlemen" at my daughter's school were not supposed to do what they did .   I did a mental and flourishing flying o' the bird at the school administrators who had mocked me even though I realized that the Board didn't seem too concerned about it all until it was in the paper and I was on the phone daily to the state department of education.  So that was probably exactly what the "gentlemen" were supposed to do, right up until it looked like someone was going to make a big stink or sue them.

In any event, that brings us to the last problem I have.  After bringing the kid home, I realize what a ridiculous excuse for education public school really is.  My daughter is an exceedingly bright girl.  She's a sophomore and has scored in the 95th percentile on the ACT, as a freshman against kids one and two years more advanced in school.  She's not just straight As--she's always been straight A+.   The kid ain't no dummy.  And since she's been in public school, she's never been allowed to learn.  She's been required to memorize--pablum-like, bumper sticker suited, pat answers for life, the universe, and everything--and spit it back up like a baby with gastrointestinal issues, only on demand.  But as far as learning by answering questions for yourself, through research and consideration of the problem--well, not so much.

So, I've been looking into education, and began reading The Underground History, which is an absolutely scathing account of public schools that, unfortunately, seems to describe to a T exactly what I've been seeing.  And in the process, I found this.  In the Prologue, part of the following poem appears, attributed to a high school senior in Alton, Illinois, written two weeks before his death by suicide.  I found the rest of it to include here.  It was probably written a while ago, judging by the references to ties and rocketships, but other than that, it sounds just like what's happening in schools everywhere, right now.

It made me think how, every day,  we send our kids off, just like everyone else, to act just like everyone else, to dress just like everyone else, to think just like everyone else.  We don't care if they don't feel like everyone else.  We sure as hell don't want them to see anything in a way different than everyone else--people who do that are "crazy,"  even though to do so is the real meaning of genius.

And so, every day we send them off.  And when they come home, every afternoon, we've killed another little piece of what they were meant to be, replaced it with a piece of "everyone else," and made them square inside and brown. God help us.

MAY YOUR SKY ALWAYS BE YELLOW-Author Unknown

He always wanted to explain things

But no one cared

So he drew

Sometimes he would draw and it wasn't anything

He wanted to carve it in stone

Or write it in the sky

He would lie out on the grass

And look up at the sky

And it would be only the sky and him that needed saying

And it was after that

He drew the picture

It was a beautiful picture

He kept it under his pillow

And would let no one see it

And he would look at it every night

And think about it

And when it was dark

And his eyes were closed

He could still see it

And it was all of him

And he loved it

When he started school he brought it with him

Not to show anyone but just to have it with him

Like a friend

It was funny about school

He sat in a square brown desk

Like all the other square brown desks

And he thought it should be red

And his room was a square brown room

Like all the other rooms

And it was tight and close

And stiff'

He hated to hold the pencil and chalk

With his arms stiff and his feet flat on the floor

Stiff

With the teacher watching

And watching

The teacher came and smiled at him

She told him to wear a tie

Like all the other boys

He said he didn't like them

And she said it didn't matter

After that they drew

And he drew all yellow

And it was the way he felt about morning

And it was beautiful

The teacher came and smiled at him

"What's this?" she said

"Why don't you draw something like Ken's drawing?"

"Isn't that beautiful?"

After that his mother bought him a tie

And he always drew airplanes and rocket ships

Like everyone else

And he threw the old picture away

And when he lay out alone and looked out at the sky

It was big and blue and all of everything

 But he wasn't anymore

He was square inside and brown

And his hands were stiff

And he was like everyone else

And the things inside him that needed saying

Didn't need it anymore

It had stopped pushing

It was crushed

Stiff

Like everything else.