Fortunately, there was a slight delay, and I was able to hear the entire speech from start to finish. Unfortunately, about a third into the speech, I reacted so viscerally to one statement that I was unable to absorb any of the following words until the second time I listened. What did our President say, you may ask, that I got so upset about? Did he announce a huge increase in unemployment rates? No. Did he decide it was time for our country to get involved in another war? No, again.
"I am proposing that every state -- every state -- requires that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18." That was the statement that I heard. That was the moment my stomach plunged through the floor of my car. While the audience and most other listeners were cheering, I was numbly driving home, vaguely wondering if I should turn around and retrieve my innards from between the potholes on route 126.
It probably seems like a very, very unusual reaction to a statement advocating more education, especially coming from someone who has petitioned, volunteered, and advocated better funding for our schools, and certainly it warrants explanation.
At age thirty, I have spent close to the same amount of years out of school as in. And most of the time I spent in school, I experienced ostracization, verbal abuse, and physical abuse from my peers. We now call this bullying, but while I was in school most people called it "being picked on."
I don't remember clearly how old I was when it began, but I know by age thirteen the emotional trauma had accumulated enough that barely a day passed without me wondering if I could find the courage to just end everything. If I hadn't realized my atheism at a fairly young age, I probably would have. Even so, there were a number of times when I wondered how I could possibly make it to sixteen. If I had been forced to endure the torture for two more years, I might not have been here to write this at all.
So naturally, the thought of removing the one last avenue of safe escape, after all attempts failed to make school work out, was abhorrent to me. How could our President think this was fair?
Of course, after I stopped and took a couple deep breaths, I remembered the dire need for quality education in the United States. Despite a more urgent drive than ever for America to be have a highly skilled marketplace, only roughly thirty percent of Americans have an undergraduate degree (Saenz). Unfortunately, most children who drop out of school are not fortunate enough to have the resources and drive to self-educate and continue on to college, as I did. For me, college was education's saving grace: the example that demonstrated that school really could be a healthy environment, if properly funded and staffed with quality teachers (while sprinkling in a bit of freedom of choice in educational focus). If I hadn't gone, I probably would have lived the rest of my life under the perception that school existed only as a feeding ground for little two-legged piranhas, seeking out any difference and rending you limb from limb when they find it, with little-to-no redeeming educational value to compensate for the emotional and physical torture.
I've heard stories from friends who faced similar agony, and from friends who endured bullying on a level so terrible I could barely comprehend, even with my personal experience on the subject. I hear about different methods used now, such as: children posting mean photos on or hacking into Facebook, sending messages to large groups of kids instantly, or tweeting disparaging comments. Bullying, or picking on someone, has changed in so many ways, yet still is so much the same. Is it worse? Better? "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" (Stein 187).
Giving schools "the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones" (Obama) is more important than I can properly express, but we absolutely must remember when we send our children to school, this is not a situation wherein blinders are placed on their heads and educational materials are absorbed with no other factors. In fact, in many schools the teachers are the ones wearing the metaphorical blinders, and almost all schools engage in activities which actively encourage antagonistic, group bullying behavior.
In 2004, a few schools finally recognized what is probably the worst sanctioned bully mechanism, dodgeball, as an inappropriate activity, and banned it (Gormley). This wise and kind step in the right direction was heralded as a huge triumph by bruised kids and compassionate people everywhere -- except for a few callous pundits, who portrayed the game in a soft light haze of innocent, clean fun, relative to playing a videogame (Broder). Broder conveniently neglects to mention that, in videogames, children don't form a group and collectively wail on the "weak" kids until they're sitting in a corner, clutching a bloody nose (at least, not yet) while the gym teacher pretends not to notice.
More attention needs to be paid to making school a healthy, nurturing atmosphere. Yes, we need better funding for materials and to attract quality teachers with higher pay. However, one of the measurements for quality teachers and administration needs to be evaluating their ability to discourage and discover bullying behavior, as well as emphasize cooperative athletics and friendly competition. In second grade, when I told the teacher on recess duty that a boy had just slammed my head back into a brick wall, this teacher told me, "you shouldn't tattle: two wrongs don't make a right." I would hope by the new millennium teachers who prefer to use self-imposed blinders rather than intervene against bullying would be screened out, but the news stories of 2010 and 2011 did not trend that direction.
Today was "No Name Calling Day" (Thompson) in Massachusetts. Schools featured programs focused on kindness and children wore black. It's good to see the occasional moment when the public is reminded bullying still is an issue, but one day a year is not enough when children spend the other 364 flinching at shadows. The Facebook group "Massachusetts: Black Out Bullying" encouraged users to change their icons to all black on January 25. A related group, "Stop Bullying," shares news, videos, and photos against bullying on a year round basis. I've observed small organizations cropping up, theme days in larger groups, and discussions in Girl Scout meetings (I talked about this in my post, Broken, which I posted in December), with the focus of educating children against bullying, and teaching compassion and empathy. These smaller, private ventures into an evolved human psyche must be added to our public education philosophy. Otherwise, throw as much money as you want at the school system, but don't expect much improvement.
Works Cited
Broder, David. Dodging back to the playground. Toledo Blade. Web. 15 Jul. 2004.
Gormley, Michael. New York lawsuit kicks dodgeball into court. Cape Code Times. Web. 28 Nov. 2004.
Obama, Barack. State of the Union. The White House. Web. 24 Dec. 2012.
Saenz, Arlette. More Working Women Hold College Degrees than Men. ABC News. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.
Stein, Gertrude. Sacred Emily. Geography and Plays. Boston: The Four Seas Press, 1922. Digitized by Google.
Thompson, Elaine. No name-calling today, or any day. Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.
