Hell Hath No Fury Like That Of The Uninvolved*

- They hate me.
- No. They don't.
-Yes, they do. They sure do. I can see.

I was still working as a glass rat when my then-boss got involved in the lives of a mom and her middle-school-aged son, both of whom were renting an apartment in a property my boss managed. The kid had already been held back a year, and he was flunking out of the grade he was in. His mom had missed the deadline to enroll him in summer school so that he could make up for his failing grade on the LEAP test and progress to the next grade. I got on the phone, made like I was his mother's cousin, and got them to call his mom up to get his application in order for summer school.

But that was only the beginning...

I wasn't always like this.
I wasn't always wound this tight. There was a time when I was fun.
I was funny. I was.

Summer school was proving to be just as much of a challenge for this child. He didn't have any major learning disabilities - he just didn't have anything resembling good study habits, and he wasn't absorbing a number of the lessons he should have been absorbing to get him to the middle school level. My boss and I figured he needed to be tutored some more outside of school, and he also needed somebody other than his mom to check and see if he had homework each day, because she was proving to be a pushover in that department. The only thing that was really driving this kid was that he didn't want to be held back for another year. Well, fine.

The homework thing was what needed to be tackled first. So I did what any concerned parent or guardian would do. I called the school to talk with the staff there and see if I could check with them as to whether or not he had homework that day and if there was any supplemental work we could do with him outside of school.

I ran right into one very defensive head of the school.

But you can't be funny and be the principal of a ... school.
No, you cannot, because when it comes to their kids,
these parents, they have no sense of humor.
If anything goes wrong, it's my head. It's my head in the smasher.
These parents will come down on me like a nuclear bomb.
I can't make a mistake. I gotta be perfect.
And that pressure has turned me into one thing that I never wanted to be.
A bitch.

Before I even began to speak to the principal, he told me, in a voice that was highly defensive, that he was standing by his teachers and whatever they had to say about their students' grades and behavior. If I was calling to complain, I had to take that into account right off. Just so we both knew what the lay of the land was.

Having never encountered school administrators quite like this before (I was only in my twenties and wasn't yet a mom), I was a tad taken aback. "Sir, I understand that," I said, to put us both at ease. "I already know that there is a problem with the student I am calling about that goes beyond your school. I'm simply calling to see if there is some way we can all be on the same page with regards to his homework, since he doesn't let us know that there is any until it's too late. We want to make sure he does it, and we just need your help in making sure he does do it."

I could feel him relax on the other end of the line. I was apparently a rarity in that I didn't think that what was happening with this kid was necessarily the school's fault. And it wasn't.

We talked about setting up a system in which I could contact his teacher for a bit to check up on what work he needed to be bringing home, and I got some good recommendations on what he needed to be tutored on beyond the school hours.

Cooperative moves. That is what is needed to raise children. It is also something that seems to be a major afterthought in the way public education is put forth to everybody these days. I look around at all the experiments kids are being subjected to in the school environment, at the teachers who are expected to say, "How high?" when asked to jump to the latest thing with not much training and pay to do so, at the parents who just want what's best for their kids and, deep down, would really prefer not to be nailing either their kids or their kids' teachers to the walls, and I can't help but think that our educational system has become like communism...

...it's a great idea until people enter into it.

I'm tired of seeing the teachers getting very little respect for what they do. I'm sick of seeing that fewer people want to make sure we keep our good teachers or at least give the beginning ones the chance to develop their skills without making them leave for more pay and benefits elsewhere doing something else entirely. Teaching is no longer "the best profession for a woman", or for anybody else.

And the schools and the state will get even less respect if they decide to enforce this. The only consolation is that the DA's office here can't keep up with the prosecution of the perpetrators of more serious crimes, forget the prosecution of parents of habitually tardy children. Then again, they may grab hold of this one in order to boost their numbers. New Orleans, Louisiana - Murder Capital of the World, but God forbid your child fails to attend school on time. We'll have our mayor cold-cock you for that one, missy.

Fine, then. My chin is up and at the ready. If I'm in jail, though, who in hell is gonna make sure my son at least gets to school, huh???? The Walking Id himself?

In the middle of all of this are the children. Not as a concept to be bandied about when one wants to make a case for school choice. Not as pawns to be shuttled about in this game called "school admissions roulette". Not as a way to manipulate parents and teachers against their will...but as individuals who have every right to be educated regardless of where they are from, what they look like, whether they are boys or girls, whether they are disabled or no, or what their home lives or family incomes are.

Most parents and teachers are committed to educating the children. It's the people in charge of the purse strings that I get angry about the most. It is those people who are using the parent-teacher commitment for their own gains. I really really really want to point fingers at specific people, like the real Paultards - Vallas and Pastorek, but they are symptomatic of what has been going on for some time in forty states and has only just come to this city. It is the folly of this impulse that G-Bitch remarks upon in one of her recent posts:

The idea is that the public sector cannot and does not work and only the skill set of private business and MBAs can save ___, in this case public schools. These advocates forget that not everything is a commodity and not everything can be treated as a commodity. People as commodities leads to personal violence, slavery and child abuse, among other things.

Take it from those who are deeply involved. Keep yourself informed. Document everything - every last complaint, every compliment, every ailment, eve-ry-thingggg. Apply for as much as you can with regards to your child's schooling, but always keep other options under the table, even if it will cost you for a bit. Support your teachers as best you can unless they have given you serious reason to believe they are not worthy of your support - then get other opinions from other parents, document everything once again, and try to work together on this for the best of all parties. There is no one formula for educating every kid, but school isn't necessarily a laboratory, either. Let's get some more pay to the teachers as well, so that we can give the good ones a chance to rise to the top and pass their love for what they do on to the kids. And involvement doesn't have to mean "in your child's and/or teacher's faces" - it means "be aware".
All we are left with if things are not getting better is resorting to throwing things against the wall, abusing drugs and drink heavily, or praying. Or all three in succession.

And I really don't think that's gonna work.


*Harlan Ellison, "Eidolons", from Angry Candy

Unless otherwise noted, all other dialogue in italics is from School of Rock. I love Principal Roz!