House of Eratosthenes

Several years ago I noticed my son was starting to engage in “reasoned” debate about discipline, restrictions, et al, not so much as a matter of reason but as a matter of ritual. (Cut me some slack, because when they’re seven or eight, you have to do some studying to tell the difference.) I instituted a “Budweiser” policy, in which the parental rejoinder is an immediate, and deliberately thoughtless, “Why Ask Why?” That’s the exact opposite of what our prevailing sensibilities say a “thoughtful” parent is supposed to do. Parents, especially fathers, should be open to the idea that they’re fallible. In fact they should be looking for excuses to admit it. But hey, I’d already been doing the why-ask-why thing with his mother for years. One tires rather quickly of encountering dissent, constantly, which exists solely for dissent’s sake.

Or at least I do.

It seems schools don’t.

No wait, read that article again. Not schools. The justice system. The ACLU. The system that binds those three together. System. Why do we need a system? A system is an assemblage of parts forming a complex or unitary whole. Why are things so complex? It’s a dress code policy. You’re either in compliance with it or you aren’t.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Toni Kay Scott showed up at Redwood Middle School in “a denim skirt, a brown shirt with a pink border, and long socks with pictures of Tigger.”

This violated the school’s dress code, which requires certain colors or fabrics and bans clothing with words, photos or symbols.

The Chronicle, quoting from the lawsuit, says the 14-year-old “was escorted to the principal’s office by a uniformed police officer and, along with two of her schoolmates, was sent to an in-school suspension program called Students With Attitude Problems.”

The ACLU says her younger sister, a sixth-grader named Sydni, was sent to the principal’s office for wearing shirts emblazoned with pro-Christian and anti-drug messages.

“I agree; no midriffs, mini-skirts or cleavage,” the girls’ mother says in a statement from the local ACLU. “School is a place to learn. But anything above that should be my call as a parent. Pink socks and two-tones are not a crime. That’s just nitpicking.”

The overly-opinionated mother then went on to opine about who had ownership over these decisions…whoops, no she didn’t. Or at least there’s very little written about that, that I can see. Just “anything above that should be my call as a parent.” Should be, maybe. But isn’t. You don’t know how to deal with that?

See, that’s the problem right there. All this bloviating about what’s “not a crime.” Not too much consideration for who owns a decision. Nobody’s saying what all kinds of parents said back in my day…”there may be lots of good points to be made against this policy…I personally might not even agree with it…but those are the rules.”

I’m not at all against challenging things that are unfair, and I’m certainly not against teaching the next generation to do that as well. But here’s what the mother missed: That is Phase Two. Before you get into all that, the child first needs to learn how to comply with rules. Stupid ones. How to say to herself, “I have a turf, and my turf extends to this point, that decision over there is made well outside of it even though it has some negligible day-to-day impact on me, and I’m going to respect that.”

Pain in the Ass When kids learn all about Phase Two before they learn about Phase One, the problem that comes up is that they don’t learn how to recognize this boundary. To the lazy, weak mind, this doesn’t seem to be what’s happening — it’s what the kid wears, after all. Shouldn’t my precious darling be able to wear what she likes? But in the mind of a kid, especially a kid at the center of a controversy like this one, boundaries don’t figure into it. They can’t. Nobody’s really backed the brat into the corner in which she’s forced to learn about them.

So the world just becomes a big playground, in which nobody really has ownership of a decision. Everyone ends up loudly, pugnaciously, bullyingly announcing their opinion of that other guy’s decision, appealing this, overturning that…doing whatever it takes to prevail.

What kind of arsenal do they have to make sure that is the case? Talk loud. Bribe the people who are supposed to be “in charge.” Maybe blackmail some of ’em with some none-too-complimentary newspaper-printing.

Vox populi vox dei. Mob rule. Pitchforks and torches waving over the angry multitudes who are storming the bastille. Appeal to bandwagon. “Can I Get An Amen Here?”

The irony?

The irony is that by channeling the satanic energy of the thoughtless mob, this ends up being an egregious assault upon the individual, which, by design, was supposed to be the beneficiary of defense. The thoughtless parents tried to produce thoughtful adults for the future, who would speak up in favor of right-over-wrong — instead, they produce jealous idealogues. Right vs. wrong doesn’t enter into it. They try to indoctrinate the yearlings with selflessness, and they unleash upon the world vast hordes of selfish little snots. They create a European type of world, one in which everybody’s nose is intruding into everybody else’s business. Nobody owns any decision. Your neighbor can sue you for growing a tree that hangs over his driveway — and then, when he’s done with you, the guy living clear across town can sue for the way the tree looks. And, over the fact that a two-stroke engine was used in the chainsaw that cut it down. A world in which nobody with an opinion is ever told “I’m sorry…you might think that’s your business…but it simply isn’t. You don’t have standing.”

This is exactly the kind of world the parents were trying to avoid making, when they went to the ACLU to sue for the “right” of their li’l babums to dress as “individuals.” That’s why Phase II has to come after Phase I; kids aren’t capable of learning how to behave as individuals, if they haven’t learned to respect authority, so they can learn to respect the boundaries to which authority extends.

To put it more simply — nobody really cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

I feel such a sense of pity for the Jamba Juice manager or Starbuck’s manager or Blockbuster Video manager who’s put in the position of having to hire some of these spoiled brats. These brats who are utterly incapable of saying to themselves, “that’s a stupid rule, but until it’s overturned I’m going to do what it says so nobody can say I did not.” And I feel sorry for the brats, too, when they start to accumulate some experience and get into jobs with serious responsibility…and prestige…and visibility…and rivals.

Because not every little personal conflict, in life, can be settled by dashing off to the ACLU, pissing and moaning about the way you were mistreated…or offended…or slighted…or unfairly restricted. This is still Earth, a round ball filled with red-blooded humans that are three-dimensional and real. If we are destined to dissolve into a puddle of complete anarchy, even if that is unavoidable, it hasn’t quite happened just yet. And every li’l unpopular rule, as of now, is not necessarily up for appeal.

The Chronicle, quoting from the lawsuit, says the 14-year-old “was escorted to the principal’s office by a uniformed police officer and, along with two of her schoolmates, was sent to an in-school suspension program called Students With Attitude Problems.”

I think this is the part which disturbs me the most. Attitude problem? Police officer? Suspension? Come on. Does the word “overreact” mean anything to these schoolmarms?

Pffft. The public schools get scarier every day. On the one hand, you have gang-bangers shooting at your kids on their way to class and trying to sell them cannabis in the boys’ room….on the other you have self-righteous administrators coming down on them on for the slightest nitpicky thing. Reminds me of the girl who was thrown out of school on charges of “drug trafficking” for sharing her inhaler with another student who was having an asthma attack. Meanwhile, the Crips and the Bloods have divided up the campus into turfs.

I’m sending my kids to a private Christian academy if I have any. I’ll work three jobs to afford it if I have to.
- cylarz | 01/02/2009 @ 23:25

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