Our Children, the Public Schools & Our Toxic Culture

Last winter, after having been a businesswoman for seven years, I returned to teaching, accepting a position at a public high school in a typical East Coast suburban county. This school was one of my top two choices, being known as one of the best in the county, which is one of the most affluent in the state. Test scores are relatively high, and the demographics are limited to middle and upper-middle income students, with less than 5 percent minority students.

I had been asked to replace a first-year teacher who, I was told, was having a discipline problem. No stranger to difficult students, and a mother of a teenager, I expected to be able to handle any tough time. What I found was a nightmare, one that still haunts me.

As I walked into the school the first day, I saw a bulletin board decorated for Valentine’s Day with five hearts. The hearts read as follows: “Let Me Call You Sweetheart–1950s,” “Make Love, Not War!–1960s,” “Disco Love, Freak Out!–1970s,” “If It Feels Good, Do It!–1980s”; the last heart, labeled “1990s,” said “If You Won’t Love Me, I’ll Kill Myself (or You)!”

Shortly afterward, I walked into the main office to sign some papers and saw a well-dressed, beautiful girl with clothes covered with food, screaming obscenities at a vice principal. Several other administrators in the room continued working as if not hearing the diatribe: “You f–ing s–h–, I hate this f—-g place, and you’d better the f– let me go home and change my clothes….” Apparently the girl had been in a food fight, and demanded permission, along with 20 others, to call their families to go home and change. She went out and slammed the door of the office, and continued screaming obscenities in the hall. She re-entered the room and, without permission, went into the administration area and called home saying, “Daddy, they won’t let me come home to change!”

As I went into the principal’s office, I asked his secretary, “Is this usual behavior?” She said, “It happens all the time, and we can’t do a thing about it because of the parents.” As I left the office, I saw the vice principal apologetically trying to calm the student down.

The first several days teaching were a shock. I noticed that other teachers were sullen and morose, with little or no contact with the students. As I walked by classrooms, I heard continuous talking by students while teachers mumbled at their blackboards. Faculty lunches were almost painful, with teachers nonconversant.

The main topic of the faculty meeting that first week was the teachers’ disgust at having to chaperon dances where the teachers were being exposed to the raving of large groups of students, and where male students did “the doggie” together, a dance mimicking anal intercourse. The administration stated that it was considered freedom of expression, but that if it upset a teacher, he could file a personal lawsuit with particular students.

In my classes, I discovered that students believe that talking is a constitutional right. Three to five students in each class would often repeat the same scene each day, saying things like, “You’re a bitch,” “You make me sick,” and “Go ahead, bitch, call my mother; here’s a quarter.”

Discipline referrals were written, and parents called. Technically, insubordination is grounds for suspension, but the vice principals continued to send the students back to class each day with conciliatory comments such as, “Let’s see how he does…” or “Give her two weeks….”

I contacted the mother of one student who would not stop making offensive comments throughout class. In the phone conversation, the mother asked, in the same arrogant tone of voice as her well-dressed son, “Just what do you mean by ‘offensive?’ I want particulars.”

Another student’s mother I called had just sent the father to jail for abuse. Yet another student didn’t live at home, but with an aunt. And these families were not the proverbial poor and undereducated. These were my next door neighbors, with a house, two incomes, and two cars.

The second week of classes, I was asked to attend a conference in the vice principal’s office with the mother of a female student who had created a scene. The vice principal started by saying to the student, “You are an intelligent, well-spoken woman. You and your teacher don’t seem to be getting along. Would you like to tell me some of the things that you see as problems with your teacher?” Needless to say, the student’s behavior did not significantly change the next day.

By the third week, scenes escalated to one student throwing a book, another attempting to kick the door of the classroom in, and another refusing to leave the room when asked to report to the office.

When I asked other teachers their opinions of the situation, and what I could expect from the administration, most of them remained silent. One teacher told me I had to learn to “treat them like dogs.” She, a well-respected veteran teacher, remarked that they were witnessing a sharp difference in the 10th-grade students from previous years’ students. While before only a minority of students had learning or behavioral problems, in this group a large majority did. I asked the reason. She said counselors and other teachers thought perhaps it was drugs taken by their parents in the peak hippie years, or perhaps broken families or television violence. Teachers had noted almost no memorization ability in these students, who also demonstrated apparent mental slowness, and violent and obscene language unaffected by discipline.

She herself now gave her students “workbook” tests. The students copied the answers to questions in their workbooks every day. The tests consisted of the teacher asking the students to turn to page three, for example, and write the answer (already given in a previous class) to number four. Most students, she said, stare blankly at the test questions, incapable of following classroom directions or maintaining workbooks.

When I asked my own teenager about school in a nearby “superior” district, the answers were especially disturbing: “I told you my school is a hell hole, Mom, and you wouldn’t believe me.” “Mom, I tried to tell my principal that I couldn’t hear the teachers because of talking, and I finally gave up.”

Back in one of my most difficult classes, I finally met with anarchy. One student refused to leave the classroom after misbehaving, while the rest of the class jeered and laughed. I used the intercom to call in an administrator. The vice principal laughingly strolled into the room and said, “Now if any of you have any problems with your teacher, please come and see me personally.”

I handed in my resignation that day.

One teacher, retiring that year, came up to me and whispered what she actually thought of the state of the school. She was counting the days before she could leave. I was feeling very sad that I was leaving the school, but I knew that without proper boundaries and adequate disciplinary support, I could not teach. She said that she had to call the administration into the classroom a number of times recently and that psychiatrists had been called in to deal with groups of students because of the severity of the behavioral problems. “Why was this not in the papers? I have a child in the neighboring high school. Why weren’t we parents informed of this situation?”

The answers I received from her and other teachers were frightening. Many of the teachers in this school are in their late 40s. This school is considered one of the best, and many requested to come here. Now, looking forward to retirement, and earning salaries typically in the $40,000 range, no one, from the principal downward, is willing to risk career or pension on parental lawsuits or even negative comments in his personnel file. “Rumor control” was the byword of the current administration. One teacher who was trying to find another job said, “The students have taken over the school.” But parents and community are led to believe that all is well by a very active public relations committee.

Where have we parents been? I, for one, have been working. As a single parent, strapped with years of marital debt, I could not afford to continue to send my child to a Catholic school. I have tried to follow all the PTA happenings, but, I’m frankly too tired at the end of a day to volunteer. I certainly could not spend time at school on a regular basis. Or could I?

Most of my friends’ children go to Catholic or private schools. Or are tracked into programs for the “gifted and talented” in public schools: These elite few in the public sector are receiving what used to be considered a standard (not superior) education. Their parents lobby to keep the exclusivity of their small core groups, which receive the best teachers and facilities.

But what about private schools? A friend of mine taught recently in a ritzy private high school nearby. One day a male student wearing shorts and no underwear was seated with his legs open, displaying his genitalia. When she told him to close his legs, he replied, “F– you.” She walked out of the classroom and the job, taking her own teenager out of the school.

Recently I called my sister, a teacher herself, to try to understand what has happened. She reminded me that, “Civilization and culture are not made of building blocks which, if knocked over, can be built up again. They are living organisms that can suffer fatal injuries.” So, too, are our children. How can we rescue them?

At a weekend getaway with eight friends, I shared my experiences. No one could believe them except one of the friends, a psychiatrist working in the public schools. We talked about what seems like a group psychosis forming in our children’s consciousness, resulting from parental neglect and careerism, lewd and violent entertainment, and the loss of moral and religious values. Having talked with friends around the country and in Canada, I know that these problems aren’t unique to my area — they constitute a nationwide problem for the U.S. and Canada.

But what can we do about it? First we have to admit there is a problem. Many of my friends are too busy with their jobs or night school or simply surviving economic pressures or divorce. Others are too busy with the health club, therapy appointments, or self-realization workshops to notice that their children are in trouble. They are being told to think positively and create their own realities, but the reality is that many parents are in denial.

Secondly, we need to talk to our own children about a typical day at their school. Your child, like mine, probably thinks that a lot of things are normal that we know should definitely not be considered normal. Every other month or so, we should visit our child’s school for an entire day, unannounced, sitting through every class. If all concerned parents would find the time to do this, perhaps we could make a difference. Public school teachers and administrators are bound by bureaucratic red tape and the threat of parental lawsuits. They have lost hope and are too overwhelmed by problems to care anymore — they are shell-shocked.

If we parents spent time in classrooms, we would see how low the “average” and “honors” tracks have sunk, that education in the U.S. today is what one would expect of a Third World country. The high schoolers I tried to teach had third-grade reading and organizational skills, and many were not capable of the simple task of keeping a notebook.

Lastly, and most importantly, we need to take back our responsibilities as parents, and look at how we ourselves have created this situation. We need to stop pointing our finger at everybody else. We need to stop blaming our parents, our spouses, ours jobs, the system, etc., and look at ourselves in the mirror. Have we taught our children to be greedy and selfish? Have we dealt with our own addictions to work, physical appearance, social status, money, alcohol, and cigarettes?

Have we sat down with our kids and watched the shows that are their steady diet — e.g., “Roseanne” and “The Simpsons”? The foul language, insolence, and sarcasm on these shows are not harmless. They are being absorbed by our children. At our house, we no longer watch lewd and sarcastic sitcoms, or attend violent movies. Violent and lewd commercials abound during daytime programming as well, and we need to shelter our kids from this daily pounding of mental images. Restrict or get rid of the television! The originators of all this spiritual garbage work for money, not for your children. Our children are in toxic shock, and aspirin won’t cure it.

We must talk to our kids about drugs and violence, and what they discuss in sex education at school. We also need to spend time with them reading edifying articles or books in the evening instead of sitting in front of the television for three hours. Yes, it takes effort to give them encouraging ideas, nourishing moral and religious values, and role models worth emulating. Radical changes need to be made in the home.

You say, “My kids and their friends are OK. I don’t need to do anything.” My next door neighbors would disagree. Their son mowed our lawn for eight years without ever being asked. He excelled in drawing, and was the only son of a caring couple. Several years ago his dad gave him $400 to buy Christmas presents. That same day he walked into a grocery store and shot a gun at the head of the owner, killing him. The nicest kid on my block is now serving a life term. Something is fundamentally wrong with our children, and we need to take steps now to shield them from a culture that is encouraging nothing less than mayhem and anarchy.

We need to return to the values that nurtured us as children. At our house, we watch our language and how we speak to each other and about others. We pray at dinnertime. We try to do more family-oriented things together. We don’t need to buy CDs or the latest fashions in clothing or an expensive health club membership.

It will take tremendous willpower and sacrifice to turn things around. It will also take being brutally honest with ourselves about our own choices, and how we have failed ourselves and our children.

The words on the Valentine’s Day bulletin board still haunt me: “If You Won’t Love Me, I’ll Kill Myself (or You)!” These words constitute a threat. They are also our children begging for help.