Public high schools are a training ground for the mindless drones they spit out to be the population of the "land of the free". Who is causing this; the teachers, school board, or all the way up to the United States Department of Education? The real question, why?, can be answered by asking what has been the effect?
Public high school students are numbered, carded, and herded like cattle by the sound of obnoxious bells every fifty minutes or so from class to class where they are trained to be good productive, tax-paying citizens. The state-run school system systematically conditions its pupils to become accustomed to this sort of treatment; we are denied our basic civil liberties in high schools as we are in the "real world". If you ask me, this is not the formula to produce free-thinking individuals who will stand up to, and defy authority as the founders of this nation did a little over 225 years ago.
From day one in kindergarten, the words "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America" are burned into our naive minds until it can be rattled off like second nature. How many five-year old children even know what the word allegiance means? By the time high school roles around metal detectors, armed guards, mandatory drug tests and Big Brother is constantly peering down through little holes in the wall doesnąt faze us a bit. We have been trained not to actually think about this sort of thing.
At lunch time school-sanctioned military service organizations, like the Army and Marine Corps, have strategically-placed recruiting officers in the school with big, smiling, multicultural banners, adorned with the American flag waiting for the gullible, indoctrinated masses to sign themselves into four more years of slavery to the state. Meanwhile somewhat more controversial student-led groups, ranging from gay/straight alliances to religious groups are denied school sponsorship while the French Club and the drill squad seem to get all the funding they need.
Just how much of my human time and energy is devoted to public schooling? Eight hours per day, (not including sports and extracurriculars) times five days a week, times nine and a half months a year, times thirteen (the years of kindergarten through twelfth grade), and you've got well over 18,000 quality-time hours of training and indoctrination punched in at these institutions. That amount of time from the age of five to eighteen could make a definite impact on one's life.Because we spend a good portion of our childhood waking hours coerced into attending state-run or state-approved schools, the bureaucrats think they might humor us with some "junior civil rights" experiences. The Fourth Amendment reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation" Apparently high school students are not persons because our school security guards can search our lockers, backpacks and bodies without any warrant based on probable cause.
They are empowered to violate our civil right to privacy anytime they think a student is "acting guilty." If a student has a clear plastic bag, or a large amount of cash, or just looks guilty the guards can claim that they have "reasonable suspicion". And there go our civil rights! That might not sound like a huge difference, (between probable cause and reasonable suspicion), but believe me, there is a world of difference. In some schools every student is assumed guilty upon entering the school by being forced to walk through metal detectors which could be considered another infringement on our right 4th Amendment right.
"So what's the big deal?", you ask. "Why all the fuss over some extra rules and regulations intended to protect our students?" The problem is not so much the rules themselves (which happen to be mostly ineffective and degrading), but rather the lasting effect that they, coupled with the indoctrination of the curriculum, have on the students. For example we are required to study other people's interpretation of the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, but never to study the actual documents to see what the intent of the writers was.
The founder of the modern state-run school system was a Prussian dictator. When questioned by other monarchs about why he was teaching every child to read he is reported to have said, "You don't understand; I will teach them how to read but not how to think about what they read." This produces generation after generation of non-thinking, unquestioning young adults. Does it work that way over here? Look around you. Was there any major uprising after George Bush, like his father and Bill Clinton, violated the constitutional limits upon their power by sending U.S. planes to fire rockets which have killed men, women and children in Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan? Why are these men who must first swear to uphold and defend the Constitution allowed to wipe their feet upon it? Is it because our schools have taught us how to read the newspapers but not how to think about what we read?
It has become painfully clear to those of us who take the time to notice, that our public school system is on the way down and it could not be the amount of money being poured into it. Nor could it be the quality of the sometimes incompetent teachers. But I think it could be the way we are looked on by the people who run the state, i.e. as a piece of state property to be "numbered, carded, and herded like cattle" by school administrators and their "security" guards. Maybe if the students were treated as the young adults that we are, we would have a little more respect for the rules.
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