The Educational Penal System

From a comment I read on /. about US kids and the First Amendment:

the thing that everyone is forgetting is this: high school is not now nor has it ever been anything like "real life".

witness: in school, teachers routinely punish the entire class until the party guilty of a particular offense comes forward. in real life, we would call this sort of activity by authorities "terrorism". in school, the mantra of maintaining order is "i don't care who started it." in the real world, we spend billions of dollars on a justice system to figure out "who started it."

This quote reminds me of an especially terrible time that I had in high school.

I was in band, and I was fooling around with the second chair sax player next to me. We were comfortable with each other, but by no means were we close. But by virtue of sitting next to each other every day, we became good acquaintances.

So, we were fooling around, and I accidentally hit her nose a little too hard and it ended up bleeding a little bit. I apologized and didn't think anything more of it.

The next day, I'm sitting in guidance for one of those stupid guidance things. Some faculty assitant comes in and jokes around with the guidance people. My name is called, and they tell me that I'll be up in a few minutes.

The faculty assistant's ears perk and asks me if I can help him with something. I guess if I was older, I would've told him to frak off and not waste my time. Being young and naive, I said sure.

We go out in the hall and he throws me up against the wall. I'm just like, what the frak. Apparently, this guy was the girl's older brother. She must of told him about what had happened and he thought that his little sis was being picked on.

I wasn't really intimidated, just pissed off about the whole situation. I go through the rest of the afternoon with little incident.

After gym, my last class of the day, I'm hanging by the doors to leave for the bus. This other guy comes up to me and says, in a lighter tone, the same thing. What the frak! One guy, fine, whatever. Two guys? I will not be intimidated. Just because I'm some stupid kid, doesn't mean that I'm going to let some punks push me around.

I scream at the guy, "You just threatened my life, that's assault, I'm calling the cops." I storm over to the nearest pay phone and dial 911. I get someone on the line and tell them that my life has just been threatened. It seems like both her older brothers were faculty assistants. They tried to get me off the phone and I just cursed at them. Eventually, they got a bunch of faculty together and took me to the principal's office.

The cops showed up and I told my side of the story. Of course they didn't believe me because I was just a stupid kid and they were faculty assitants. They turned it around and made it look like I was the bad guy.

It wasn't so much the threat of physical violence; but more the sudden realization that you are being fucked (and I mean that in the harshest form of the word) by the system that sent me over the top.

Where was the justice? Why didn't anyone care about me? That feeling of hopelessness and inability to do anything is so smothering.

They don't care about you in high school. They don't care about your grades or your well being. All they want, is to keep the delinquents orderly and off the streets. It's a temporary holding cell where they feed you propoganda and try to program you to behave.

High school doesn't prepare you for anything unless you are part of the counter-culture. It is through your rebellion that you learn what your rights are and what it means to be free. It is through defying the status quo and embracing your individuality that you will truly be able to succeed.