Uncle Charley and High-School Dropouts

Charley and I were walking past the high school a few days ago. The young people were doing their usual horsing around like young people all over the world.

"Nice to see them having a good time," I said.

"See that little group over by the new Ford in the parking lot?"

"Sure," I said. "They're smoking, I think."

"Probably weed, if I ain't mistaken. Look again."

"I think you're right. Somebody needs to put a stop to that. How are they going to get an education if they're stoned?"

Charley laughed. "Yer just not thinking right. Why do you want for them to get an education?"

"How are they going to make something of themselves if they don't?"

"See, that's the point. They're making somethin' of themselves. Day labor! We need to be able to compete in the national day-laborer market. We need people who can stock groceries and wash cars and fix roofs, and right now people from other countries got the market on that."

"You're serious?" I asked.

"More serious than a brain tumor. Look, we need cheap labor. Those idiots over there in the parking lot signin' up for digging ditches. They're not gonna be running companies or even goin' to college. They're gonna be sacking groceries or working for Walmart or running for office. We need grocery sackers and garbage collectors! We need them to work real cheap! If they all go to college, whose gonna mow yer lawn?"

That stopped me. "Charley, that's... that's not...'"

"It's not liberal or somethin' like that. I know. You want everybody to be educated. You can lead students to books but you can't make 'em think. Some of 'em are too dumb to know they need it, and those are the ones I need to clean my septic tank. All they're doing in school is to hold the others back and wear out the teachers."

"I'll have to think about that one, Charley".

"I'm not talking about refusing to teach 'em. I'm just suggesting we let the ones that don't want an education go free. Maybe give them work to do in school, get 'em ready for the assembly line. I got a plan to keep 'em from voting too, but I'll tell you another time. When yer not so overcome."

"Thanks, Charley," I said weakly.

Uncle Charley Visits the High School

Charley started before we were even out of the driveway.

"You mind if I talk to you about something while we're going to the hardware store?"

"Nope," I said. "I always enjoy our talks".

"Well, some things I think are probably not safe to say in public, so I figure, you're a relative, so what choice you got?"

"True enough," I grinned.

"OK, here's what started me thinking. I read in the paper not long ago that somethin' more than 9% of the kids in high school here in town have been threatened or assaulted with a gun, knife or bat within the last 12 months. And more than 5% admitted having brought a weapon to school."

"That's pretty bad," I admitted. "It was sometimes bad when I was in high school, right after the invention of the wheel, but I guess it's worse now."

"You got no idea," he said soberly. "I decided I wanted to see what it's like for the kids, so I arranged to stand around in the halls between classes and after school, and I just watched and listened."

"And?" i asked.

"I tell you what," he said angrily, "if people acted like that in the mall, we'd never put up with it. I heard young men and women using 4-letter words loudly, I saw the boys bullying each other, pushing and shoving. I saw young women being sexually groped and harassed. One guy grabbed this young, maybe 15 year old girl, and his buddy grabbed her breasts, and they walked off laughing. There was a teacher there too, did nothing."

"That's terrible," I said.

"What's terrible is that we grown-ups don't do anything to stop that crap. We make laws to protect us grown-ups from that kinda thing, and we enforce them, but not in the high schools! Those kids live in a jungle where the biggest apes get to do whatever they want!"

"That's bad. How can kids learn anything in a situation like that?"

"Grown-up teachers stand and watch without doing anything because they're afraid of the consequences, not only from the kids but from their parents, and they know they won't get any protection from their administrators."

"I think the threat of lawsuit paralyzes them to some degree," I said.

"It ain't just the lawyers or the scared school administration. The parents of those kids are no better than the kids, and they raise hell at the top of their lungs when somebody wants to make their little angels mind their manners and obey the law," Charley said.

"Maybe we ought to punish the parents if their children misbehave."

"Well, since we don't protect the kids, I guess they figured out that they gotta protect themselves. So that's why they're takin' weapons to school."

"Maybe we should put more police in the hallways" I suggested.

"Nah, our police have enough to do as it is. Maybe we should train and deputize a bunch of grandparents and give them the power to arrest people for breaking the law. I mean, there are plenty of laws against assault and sexual harassment already. We just need to make the kids realize that they have to obey the law like adults or face real consequences."

"I guess right now we're just teaching them the law doesn't protect them. No wonder so many grow up without respect for police or the law in general," I said.

"I think some of those kids need to get arrested and answer to a judge. Hitting somebody isn't a form of play. It's a damn assault. There needs to be consequences, and all the kids need to see that there is a law that can protect them and that they can respect." Charley said. "Doing nothing about wickedness is how it succeeds."

"That's what my grandma would have said."

"Mine too," Charley said. "But my grandpa just mighta gone down to the school and done something about it".

Discipline in schools

We all know that disciplining children in schools largely stopped with the start of integration. As schools began mixing children from more economically different groups, the children themselves had come from more disparate backgrounds. Some came from homes with rules and discipline; others did not. At that time many of the non-white children admitted to middle-class public schools were from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and families. A higher percentage of these children were from single-parent families and had been "on their own" to a much greater extent than the average middle-class child of that time. These students, the majority of whom were non-white, presented a higher degree of disciplinary problems. School administrators did not want to be accused of being racially biased. They bent over backwards to avoid this eventuality; as a result, the standards of behavior were lowered for all students.

Teachers facing serious disciplinary problems were given less and less support in their attempts to impose behavioral limits, especially when the trouble-makers were non-white. School administrators feared the legion of lawyers eager to make bucks on racial conflicts, so they effectively disappeared. The teachers, left without adminstrative backup and fearing lawsuits or disciplinary actions themselves, adopted a "hands-off" policy toward all the students, irrespective of racial background.

Walk through any school hallway filled with 7th grade or higher grade students. The level of verbal and physical assault and sexual harassment is astonishing. If adults were to behave in this manner, criminal charges would be filed. But the young people in the hallways of these schools get no protection from frightened "authorities". There are few or no guardians to limit antisocial behavior. As a result, the kids live in a largely unpoliced jungle, where the bigger animals make their own rules. They turn to each other and form gangs. They lose any faith in the legal system or in the police. They are alienated from the system which does not, will not support and protect them. As adults they have learned that the only person who will look after them is themselves, and so they have no loyalty to the legal and political system.

Why should they? They depended on the adults to protect them, and we abandoned them to the lawyers and the gangs. We would never allow others to treat us in this fashion, but we do absolutely nothing to protect the children from their peers.

I want to be clear about this so that any argument is not based on irrelevant considerations: I favor school integration. I favored it when it happened and still do. This is not about race. I want all students of any color or background to be treated equally and equally required to obey the school regulations and society's laws. The disciplinary problem results from the sudden mixing of children from very different socio-economic backgrounds and not providing them with the protection from each other to which they were entitled. We have sowed the wind and we are reaping the whirlwind.