It’s High Time to Take Back Our Schools
By Mary Theroux • Monday November 16, 2009 10:52 AM PDT • 15 Comments
A few weeks ago a 16 year old high school girl was gang-raped for a period of over two hours in a poorly-lit courtyard on the campus of her high school during the homecoming dance. While there have been outpourings of horror, sympathy for the victim, funds raised for her future, etc., I’ve seen absolutely no call anywhere for holding the school officials accountable. On the contrary, local media has accepted and reported the crime as “nearly inevitable:”
Charles Johnson, one of the high school’s security specialists said, “We know that courtyard, and we’ve been waiting for something to happen there.”
When we were raising teenagers, not so long ago, it was drilled into us that anything that happened at our home was our responsibility: if a kid got drunk or high at our house and drove drunk, we would be liable, and we took appropriate precautions. Of course, I’m not naive enough to think that nothing slipped by us, but it is inconceivable that we would have had chaperones or security insufficient at a school dance to be unaware of 10-20 boys drinking heavily and assaulting a young woman for more than two hours in a well-known hangout on campus.
Yet such now seems to be the accepted standard for public schools—from a mother telling me about her grade-school child who doesn’t drink anything at school because she’s afraid to go into the bathroom there, to our neighborhood’s high school newspaper routinely reporting on muggings on campus—imparted impassively, shrugging shoulders, as if to say, “That’s the way it is and that’s the way it has to be.”
There’s a very real alternative to continuing to moan and wring hands and call for government to “do something.” We see it in examples like neighborhood watch programs, and more dramatically, the Guardian Angels. In Baltimore, “Grandmothers Against Gangs” was formed; when they saw a bunch of kids selling drugs on street corners, they ran out with brooms to chase them away. In Oakland, residents of one of the poorest and worst neighborhoods decided to take back their street by gathering every Friday night to talk and drink coffee on a corner that used to be ground-zero for drug and sex deals. In each of these instances, crime in the areas dropped: criminals go somewhere all those people—largely poor people, armed only with red berets, coffee mugs or brooms—aren’t.
When the school administration and its “security specialists” can blithely declare that they were sitting idly by, “waiting” for this to happen, it’s time to wrench responsibility, funding, and authority from these hired “experts,” and take it for ourselves: It’s time to reassert control over our own neighborhoods, schools and kids. It’s time for parents, grandparents, siblings, neighbors, merchants, and/or church leaders to organize citizen patrols of the public schools: patrolling halls, bathrooms and the campus to establish the environment we want for our children.
We might also learn some lessons from the exercise that we decide to apply in other areas of our lives: a forgotten legacy of how we used to rely on mutual-aid and voluntary associations to address these and worse problems, with great effectiveness (see, for example, The Voluntary City)—before we allowed the government to convince us that we needed “them” to keep us safe. See also, Neither Liberty Nor Safety.
Tags: California, Civil Society, Criminal Justice, Drugs, Education, Family, Police, Privatization, Urban Issues 
Mary,
In a just and sane world, there would be no public school halls to patrol, because there wouldn’t be any public schools. They are little more than prisons, with principals replacing wardens and teachers acting a guards (unarmed, of course!). Since no one pays the full cost of his child’s education, he has less incentive to demand improvement, so improvement never happens.
The answer is simple and direct: the complete separation of education and state. Government has made a mess of things and cannot be reformed. And, frankly, I’m sick and tired of funding this monstrosity.
Steve Hogan | Nov 16, 2009 | Reply
I second Steve Hogan. The unionism, administrative privilege, over-centralization, compulsory attendance, interest group parasitism (from textbook makers to consultants to disability exploiters), and mystical aura propounded by technocratic elites (i.e. “our” schools), has created a social science nightmare. The incentive structure is horribly maligned in every category you can think of. Then there is the issue of economic calculation that public schools cannot overcome.
Finally, in an effort to end all argument, the proponents of public school fall back on invocations to democracy or creation of opportunity. In other words, just when their positivism is being attacked they resort to romanticism and mysticism. Two fine examples of this lunacy are Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch- check out their statist lovefest of a blog
Bridging Differences
Fallon | Nov 16, 2009 | Reply
Unfortunately, this horror will be used as an excuse for public school officials to make school even less fun and more of a punishment for youth, while doing nothing to address the problem. Public schools are already prisons that do far more to persecute and socialize than to instruct.
Only private denizens, as Mary notes, can do anything to improve the situation. But ultimately, of course, the problem is public schools themselves.
Anthony Gregory | Nov 16, 2009 | Reply
Mary,
You have certainly pointed out the problem with public schools but I don’t agree they need to be taken back. Public schools are a lost cause.
The alternatives are already in place and have been for years. Home schooling. Christian schools. You name it, the alternatives are very attractive and despite the extra cost more and more parents are deciding to take responsibility for the education of their children.
To try to reform the mess that has become public education is a waste of time.
Cam
Cam | Nov 17, 2009 | Reply
If you think you are going to “take back” the schools, you are living in a fantasy world. They are a cross between houses of ill repute and gangsta rap concerts–and this is the white ones. Forget it.
Hammersmith | Nov 17, 2009 | Reply
The take back our schools suggestion to begin policing and volunteering in our schools is ironic. In a functional democracy, WE, through our taxes fund the core needs of our community. Quality education for all was a conservative standard, long ago. A well-educated populace benefits everyone; it’s prudent, it’s long-term cheaper.
Years of cutting or limiting taxes have reduced staffs. Vice principals monitoring behavior, counselors, nurses, janitorial staff, have all been reduced or cut completely. It’s demoralizing for the staff remaining. And for many reasons, we have more children with special needs (it’s up to 14% in Oregon...English as a second language, autism, developmental delays, etc.) that require considerably more time and attention.
Oregon’s had several articles in our paper about how dramatically the cost per pupil has gone up at all levels of education. But, when you factor in the real drop in the value of the dollar (use the data available at ShadowStats.com, which has not been jiggered to give false data, as has the bls.gov), the average spending on public education per pupil has dropped significantly. Factor in the up to $100,000 per pupil required for special needs children, and we’ve short-sightedly capped our educational system at the knees.
Virginia Hammon | Nov 17, 2009 | Reply
What happened at this high school is tragic. However, I believe that we can make a difference in our children’s education. It has to start in the community. One example of this is written about in a book called “Lives of Passion, School of Hope” by author Rick Posner. It showed me what is possible for our public schools as well as changed my mind about what constitutes a good education. Now I realize that a well-rounded approach is the best way to guide kids towards being lifelong learners. I’m motivated to take action in creating these kinds of schools for my children.
Betty | Nov 17, 2009 | Reply
Hello, all, and thank you for your comments.
Please see my earlier posting, “Stop Bailing Out Government Schools.”
The Independent Institute has also done extensive work in this area, as, for example, our book Can Teachers Own Their Own Schools, a how-to privatization guide.
We also offer a privately funded voucher program helping families in our area to send their children to private schools, the Independent Scholarship Fund.
My main hope with this post was to call attention to the travesty of government schools failing to meet even a minimally-acceptable expectation to patrol a school dance; to challenge people caught in this victimization trap to recognize the state isn’t going to take care of them, and they can and ought to empower themselves.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Nov 17, 2009 | Reply
E.D. Hirsch’s book, The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, as well as Diane Ravitch’s book, Left Back, are both great reads on how and why things in the public schools have become the way they are. The remedy? Personal responsibility. Parents who know what their kids are doing (or NOT doing)in school and at home, administrators who actually enforce the district rules instead of being low rent politicians who are more than willing to sacrifice REAL learning for the mere APPEARANCE of learning, teachers who actually TEACH (instead of being coerced by their superiors into finding ways for students to pass), and students who actually do the work and try to learn.
shill | Nov 17, 2009 | Reply
Another reason to my laundry list of reasons why we should do away with public schools. Do our kids really go to school to get an education? Or is a place to learn your pecking order in society and how to be cool? I do not understand how we have let this happen...
Scott B | Nov 17, 2009 | Reply
A news station reported that the attackers were under the influence of ecstasy. If this is true, should not the persons who supplied them with the drug be charged as accessories to the crime?
Roland | Nov 19, 2009 | Reply
And why again are school vouchers a bad idea??? I cannot fathom how a parent of a child that attends a school that lets this happen would not jump at the chance to take their child from that environment...Crazy world???
Marc H | Nov 21, 2009 | Reply
Marc H
School vouchers are a VERY bad idea when they are funded with gov’t money. Once a private school takes gov’t money, it is transformed into a public school, whether the admin thinks so or not. It will lose its autonomy and no longer be responsive to the parents, which is what makes private schools superior to gov’t schools. Through vouchers, the gov’t can quickly and stealthily take over the private school industry and eliminate virtually all its competition. Only homeschooling would remain as the one hold out, and very vulnerable, indeed, at that point.
Private vouchers are completely different and an excellent aid to the poor. I applaud the Independent Scholarship Fund.
Cathy | Nov 25, 2009 | Reply
To Mary,
One quick note about your rather frightening suggestion that there should be “citizen patrols” of the gov’t schools... One of the ways the education establishment has increased its hold on the loyalty of parents is by enlisting mothers to help in the classroom. The psychology of this was made plain to me one day. A friend approached me, very upset, saying that school had utterly changed her child. She used to be a happy, polite little girl but she had turned into a sassy, ill behaved stranger. I said, “I have the answer to your problem but you won’t like it. Take her out of school.” Her reply: “I can’t. I’m the playground monitor.”
Not only is it one more hook into parents, it is a way of making parents damned it they do and damned if they don’t. The logic is: if a parent doesn’t volunteer at the school, then she can’t complain about the problems. If a parent does volunteer, then she is one of the sources of the problems.
Nope, there’s only one alternative: take your children out and separating school and state.
Cathy | Nov 25, 2009 | Reply