My children were incarcerated this morning...

It is Autumn (well almost) and I drove my girls to their first day back to school.  They are both in high school now which is a relief because any parent who drives their kids to school knows what a pain in the ass that is especially is they go to different schools....but I digress.

Ever since the first day of Kindergarten, I have felt that maybe I am a witness to the incarceration of my children.  Before you roll your eyes at me, consider this:  The children are registered, assigned an "ID number", roomed and then debriefed on the rules and regulations of the school, you know things like dress codes, rules for behavior and consequences for non-conformity.  Once they are at school, they cannot leave without being "released".  Penalties for non-cooperation are detention or expulsion.  They are let out of their rooms periodically to "excercise".  There is no free thinking allowed.  They are scored on how well they absorb and regurgitate the "facts" back at them in the form of examinations.  The students that assimilate the best receive higher marks and graduate.  The adminsitration even tries to dictate what they do with their free time.  I get flyers telling me how to feed my kids, how to montior homework and what time my child should go to sleep.  I have been recruited without my consent to reinforce the idea that the State has control over all of us.....but I digress.

To put in prison or subject to confinement, that is the definition of "incarceration."  Students are not free to leave at will and so, they are confined.  The fact that our students are little mini-prisoners isn't the worst of it for me.  I really can't stand the fact that we have segregated our students and nobody seems to give a shit.  Segregation?  Yeah that's right.  Is your kid an honors student, GATE, RSP, ESL, Special Ed.?  I'm willing to bet your kid has been labeled and sorted all based on the amount of funding each label brings into the school.  If you go into any random class in the US, particularly in secondary schools, you will find the students sorted into dummies and smarties.  And guess what?  Most of the smarties are upper crust, white bread, pups of yups, while the dummies are, mostly, the dark meat.  I think it is wrong to assume that students with these labels have nothing to learn from one another.  People learn from helping one another through problems.  People learn tolerance from working with others that are different.  And the biggest problem are the labels themselves.  Who decides what smart is or what dumb is....according to whom?  According to my school district one of my daughters was "RSP aka dumb" and one was "GATE aka smart".  I refused to have my girls labeled and my decision was constantly challenged by the teachers.  As someone who was lucky enough to school her children at home for two years I can say that both of my girls have an enormous ability to learn and both of them are extrememly smart kids when motivated to be so.  Who decides what subjects are valuable and who develops the ciriculuum?  There is a direct correlation between income level and success.  It isn't hard to understand how a child who struggles at home will struggle at school.  Yet the institution makes no priority to offer real remedies to the poverty in this country...but I digress.

This leads us to "the tests".  The job of the teacher has been reduced to test proctor and correctional officer.  Teachers who complain about the system or who offer new ideas on how to change things do not pass probation.  After all there is no rooom for innovation because institutions like the status quo. Teachers continue to teach to the STAR test because it determines funding, not because they believe in the merits of the test.

In my county approximately 30 million dollars is spent on administration alone.  42 school districts aren't cheap.  And yet they refuse to merge the district into our County Office of Education because everyone wants control of the money.  The adminstrators want to keep their $250,000.00 salaries.  It is not about kids, it is about money.  Prisons are the same way.  We know that the current system does not "rehabilitate" people and that the prison population continues to grow but too many people make money off building prisons so there is no incentive to change.....but I digress.

We must acknowledge that the drop out rate continues to grow and so do prisons.  Kids are easily impressionable and need to have total security in their personal lives in order to learn and grow in a productive, healthy way.  It is possible that our priorities need to shift to focus on children.  It is easily said but can it be done....that is for another blog.