As a kid growing up in the sixties and seventies, life was fun. Sure, we were in the midst of Vietnam and Watergate and I have vivid memories of young men and women demonstrating against our government but still, life was fun.
School was also fun. We still had to worry about math, science, reading, and history but for the most part, teachers made it as enjoyable as possible. Some were better than others but almost all were patient to a goof ball, class clown, who went to great lengths to avoid doing homework at all cost while having trouble sitting still in class. There was no Columbine and gangs were non existent except for in large cities.
Today, rarely does a day go by where there is not a news story about some kind of school violence. As a teacher, this troubles me greatly because I know it was not always this way.
In 1984, when I began teaching at Clifton Middle School in Monrovia, California, life was much different than it is today as a high school teacher in Hemet, California. When I began teaching, droves of "boat people" were arriving daily to southern California and filling our schools with children from far off places. Almost all came with a sense of hope for a better life despite their fears.
Our school was filled with more ethnic groups than I could count and yet it was rare for a fight to break out on campus. I took pride in the after school intramural program I established that brought many of these groups together in competition. Everyone respected the no fighting policy and I never came close to having to enforce it. I was equally pleased with the school fair I spearheaded which brought our students and faculty together in projects that resulted in food booths and games set up on our school's blacktop.
In 1986, my wife and I moved to a small town in northern California called Red Bluff where many of the students were often country bumpkins. While not always the greatest students, these young men and women were very polite. On more than one occasion, after a student was rude to me in class, several others would come up to me after class and apologize to me for the treatment I received. They always assured me it would never happen again and then they would find that rude student and "teach him a lesson."
Just the other day at the high school I work at, we had a student assembly. It was promoted for two weeks and we used an assembly schedule where classes that day were shortened. Unfortunately, during the assembly, two fights broke out and at least one student was arrested.
Had this happened twenty years ago, it would have been a major story in the local Red Bluff paper. Sadly, it did not even warrant a mention in Hemet's because they were busy covering the story of another near by high school that had seventeen students arrested after they began to fight with the school's resource officer causing police to converge on the campus and resulting in a school wide lock down. There was also additional coverage of the bomb plot uncovered at another high school somewhere else in this country.
People can blame who they want about our declining test scores and standing on the international level of academics. However, over the last twenty-eight years, I have taught at eight different schools, worked with twelve principals, seven superintendents, and countless school board members and not once have I ever heard any of these people ever say they support student violence and disrespect or suggest when it happens it is the fault of our schools. And yet, it is all too often the schools getting blamed for low test scores.
Poor student academic performance, school violence, and disrespect toward teachers, administrators, and school resource officers are the end result of one thing; a poor home life.
Monrovia, in the mid 80's, was not a thriving city on the outskirts of Los Angeles but rather a convenient place to raise a family for single mothers and unemployed adults. Still, despite this, when I called home on students who were not performing or behaving as they should, I almost always received the full support of the parent. They'd even come in and shadow their kid for a day if that was what was needed. Despite their struggles, these parents believed in education and wanted more for their children than they had.
Today, that is rarely the case despite the similarities that exist between Monrovia then and Hemet now. Parents who do come in all too often do so pointing a finger and raising their voices at the school rather than taking ownership of the problem they brought into this world.
Recently, I had a father try to convince me that the reason his daughter was behaving so poorly in class the week before was because this week she was "getting ready to have her period." Another parent claimed the note she brought to me was signed by him even after I pointed out I had two examples of his signature that were nothing alike. And last year, one mother told me the best part of her day was watching her son walk out the front door in the morning and her worst was seeing him return in the afternoon.
I would like to say these are the exceptions and not the rule but that is not the case. So hopefully, no matter your age or circumstance, when you read the stories about school violence, you will stop and think about where this disregard for our education system has its roots. Sure, the public school system is in need of many fixes but none nearly as needed in far too many homes across this country.
