My Modest Proposal
Every year they send me at least one crop of kids that Dante would have to build a new level of Hell to accommodate. This year there are 36 of them. In the same class. Lazy, mean-spirited, vain, and spoiled. And those are the good ones. Did I mention that they have packed this magic wonderland of dysfunction into a classroom with only 31 desks? No wonder all my vocabulary lists of late are comprised of four letter words. "Class Size Amendment," my ass.
This is what I have been thinking.
No Child Left Behind is a big joke at the high school level, but not for the reasons we think. Here is the real problem. In order for a person to be educated, two conditions must exist. The first is acceptence of the fact that you do not know everything that is worth knowing. And you probably never will. All the more reason to keep at it. The second is that you must abandon your ego. Because the path to being truly educated requires that you must occasionally be wrong, look foolish, and open yourself up to criticism. What 15 year old is up to that?
Teenagers are all ego; the protection of their self-image is as crucial to them as food, light and air. Maybe 2 in 10 have a self-image strong enough, and an insight great enough to see that while it would be so much more fun to eat chips, watch movies, and discuss the pregnancy of J-Lo for 50 minutes a day instead of taking an English class, that maybe, just maybe, some of the wisdom I am trying to impart to them might serve them well later on in life. The other 80 percent? God forbid they should have to pick up a pen, distiguish a noun from a verb, read anything more complicated than an article in
Sports Illustrated or
CosmoGirl. And so they create havoc in the classroom, secure in the knowledge that whatever small attempts at punishment the school might try to mete out, Mummy and Daddy will work very hard to get them out of it.
The way I see it, we need to return to a time when stupidity exacts a heavy price. Literally. So I say that public education should no longer be compulsory after the age of 14. Anytime after the little dears turn 14, if they decide they no longer want to be in school, then they should be allowed to leave. Just pack up and go. No trunacy warrants, no discussion with a guidance counselor. Just get on the bus one afternoon and don't come back. Neat and clean and no bon voyage party. And then make their parents completely responsible for what they get up to during the day. Junior gets bored and decides to roll an old lady for cigarette money? Sure, he goes to juvey...but Mom and Dad get to do some time, too. Why? Because if they had brought him up better, it never would have crossed his mind to knock Granny in the head with that baseball bat to get to her purse. Of course, if they were bringing them up better, the idiot never would have opted to leave school in the first place.
Don't get me wrong. If the kid comes to his senses fast enough, I say we let the dropouts drop right back in again. Anytime up to age 18. But if it takes you any longer that that to get the hint that the homework you neglected, the papers you refused to write, the math homework you left by the wayside, the science text you never even cracked the binding on, that all of that was a set of building blocks upon which you were to contruct your future, then I am afraid you will have missed your window of opportunity. You will find that after age 18, the education that was no longer compulsory is also no longer free. Your past neglect, sloth and outright stupidity will now cost you. And unlike now, where it costs you in regret, it will cost you in dollars and cents. Per hour. Just like college tuition. After all, you are trying to shore up the shoddy foundation you laid in your youth. Have you seen what masonry costs these days?
On a side note, I ranted my plan to few of my colleagues today, and sure, they all laughed. But in every eye, behind the mirth, a tiny little glimmer of
what if?
