Learning to Smile Politely

I quit watching television in 1985. I remember the exact moment when I made this decision. It was when I saw a senior citizen lady fall to the floor when she tried to spin the big wheel on The Price Is Right. It appeared she sprained her ankle during the fall, and for a long 15 television seconds, she couldn’t get up. The host at the time, the beloved Bob Barker, did not help the lady to her feet.

Learning to Smile Politely
by Local Yocal

I quit watching television in 1985. I remember the exact moment when I made this decision. It was when I saw a senior citizen lady fall to the floor when she tried to spin the big wheel on The Price Is Right. It appeared she sprained her ankle during the fall, and for a long 15 television seconds, she couldn’t get up. The host at the time, the beloved Bob Barker, did not help the lady to her feet. Instead, Barker looked down upon her from his microphone and began a series of jokes at her expense, jokingly scolding her to stop messing around on the floor.The studio audience howled with laughter and the lady eventually struggled to her feet in obvious pain. Barker continued his comedic monologue and asked the grandma if she was going to stop horsing around on national television and get serious about winning some prizes. Incredibly, the senior citizen lady, now limping to protect her swelling ankle, smiled politely and said she was ready to resume play. Disgusted beyond my own comprehension at the time, I turned off the TV and have never chosen to spend my time watching television ever again.

Nowadays, when I read a local newspaper or watch any number of televisions at a local bar, I am amazed at the disturbing values and ethics I see being broadcasted. I know what I am seeing is sick because of the way my life went after graduating from Centennial High School. I stayed in Champaign-Urbana.

During my most excellent misadventures, I was befriended by kind homeless people who attempted to educate me as to what time it was. I met some who had been to prison, some who had been injured, others who had been divorced and banished from families. Many were addicted to drugs or alcohol. Others were straight-edge Christians or Muslims and never touched the stuff. Myself, I picked up a cigarette and haven’t let it go since. They were all clearly defined souls, and each person I met at the shelters or jails or the public aid office or the street were unique and had an honesty beyond the suburban middle class people I grew up with. I guess suffering defines us better than success.

In my mind, however, there was one thing the poor people I met had in common: they were not the kind of people I associated with in high school or college.

Having experienced such a disparate panorama of places and people, ideas and experiences during this strange odyssey after high school, my sense of what should be the priorities of decent human beings has been radically altered. What I see our governments and corporations doing, what I see our news and entertainment industries pumping out by the hour always strikes me as mostly wrong and downright evil. Watching what is considered worthy of national attention makes me wonder if we haven’t all been psychologically damaged by some mass indoctrination. So indoctrinated are we to a status quo, only about 30% of us bother to vote in the local elections. Most of us could care less about the crap we are told is the truth by our mass media. So what is this indoctrination that inspires such indifference, and where did it come from?

My theory at present is that the misplaced priorities of our society originate from high school. I submit that the public secondary schools in North America are structurally designed to either drive you crazy, or cause you to sleepwalk into accepting a crazy ideology- an ideology that could easily lead you to become a member of a studio audience, laughing at a senior citizen lying on the ground with a sprained ankle.

Look at the yearly calendar of any high school in the country and you will see the same insane rituals and ceremonies- traditions they are called- being foisted on young people, who are at the impressionable ages of 14-18. At that age, we are all striving for acceptance beyond our families, trying hard to form our identities. Remember too, the yearly calendar of events at a high school is scheduled by adults who have graduated from college. Attending college does not cleanse you from high school damage. In fact, colleges are becoming more structured to resemble the high schools. The only difference is the university inflicts the same psychological damage on a grander, more dangerous scale. Our private corporations, our media outlets, and our government bodies have become occupied by people suffering from this psychological damage. Thus, I should not be surprised by what I see on TV. It is merely the expression of indoctrinated nutjobs who learned the same twisted values we were all taught by participating in the same damn high school rituals and ceremonies.

Let’s look at how the damage is done:

Smile politely, the best have physical beauty.
Imagine if a high school principle lined up all the girls in the gymnasium and then asked the entire student body to select who they thought was the prettiest. You might question the academic value of such an exercise. And yet, every year in every high school we are asked to select the homecoming courts, and the prom kings and queens. Could someone explain the value of having 99.9% of the other senior females shown they were not number one because they weren’t lucky enough to get the same DNA Suzy Stunning received at birth? Probably the most damaging ritual in high school, this bizarre election serves only to reinforce the beauty standard. Later in life, real studies have shown people considered to be physically attractive are more likely to get jobs, more likely to be helped by strangers, and more likely to become wealthy. The rest of us are saddled with low self-esteem or left chasing after the same clothes, hairstyle, and beauty products Suzy Stunning uses.

It’s possible the beauty standard we grow up with in high school is now inspiring the owners of a new piano bar in Lincoln Square to ask that Homeless Bill, whose social manners are fairly impeccable, be banned from the mall because the owner claims Bill threatens business. How does Homeless Bill threaten business if he’s not doing anything wrong? It must be his appearance. Everyone is forced to learn in high school that there is a best way to look, irrelevant to hygiene, and the high schools promote it with these inane competitions for Homecoming Queen. And we don’t have to repeat what happens in high school if you are deemed ugly or fat.

Smile politely, the best are physically athletic.
Sure, we can tell ourselves that schools are created to educate people for some kind of profession. But when you look at the enormous expenditures school districts spend supporting their sports programs and facilities, and the media attention lavished on those who succeed on the field and court, we learn where the real priorities lie. The opiate of the masses is not religion. It’s sports. So great is our indoctrination to value athletic ability, we will excuse a student from performing well academically just so they can slam dunk the ball Friday night. I remember our best basketball player sitting in the library his senior year, cramming for a test. He was a little nervous because the vice-principal told him if he didn’t pass, he would not be elgible to play later that week. The test he had to pass was, ready?... to memorize the spelling of the days of the week. I’m not making this up. He was later graduated with a diploma equal to mine, and recruited by a small junior college in California. You can imagine how prepared he was for college courses. 15 years later, I read in our local paper that he was sentenced to prison for drug dealing. But man, could he ever jump and shoot the ball.

How obscene is our passion for sports? Look at all the bitching going on about spending a half-million dollars-a-year for food stamps for people living in Champaign earning less than $200 a month; meanwhile, everyone can’t wait to see the $116 million dollar renovation to Memorial Stadium. Perhaps people wouldn’t need to beg for food money if they knew how to fix cars or build houses. High schools today would rather spend the tax dollars on a new swimming pool than create an automotive shop. Sports rule the day and have become the school’s top priority.

The tradition of selecting a group of girls to be the cheerleaders or dance teams for sports events is a combination of these first two propositions. Feminists, the Church, and concerned parents everywhere have yet to eradicate this accepted tradition of hoisting the pretty girls in the air by their panties “in support” for the team. To be on those elite squads, of course, only the athletic and pretty need apply. When I was broadcasting the play-by-play for high school football games years later, I was dumbfounded by the polite applause the parents gave to the sexual bumping and grinding performed by the scantily-clad underage girls at halftime. I was embarrassed by my own thoughts, and could see why pedophilia, child pornography, and sexual assault run rampant in Champaign County. High schools sexualize the girls for display. I guess all those pelvic thrusts are preparing our female students for the good-paying jobs in the strip clubs.

I once traveled to McHenry County to do the play-by-play of the Centennial Chargers football team competing in the state quarterfinals. In the broadcast booth, there was a video crew filming the game for their local cable television station. During the game, they were able to do instant slow motion replay. Centennial earned something like 15 personal fouls during that game. Charger Head Football coach, Mike McDonald, later excused his players as just being aggressive and playing what he called, “smash-mouth football”. Centennial linemen were caught punching their blockers, and yanking on their opponent’s face masks. Charger tacklers were coming in late, spearing other kids on the ground with their helmets. The game’s character was defined in the second quarter when I had to endure a slow motion review of a Charger defensive back putting McHenry’s star running back out of the game. The pre-game reports were that their star running back had injured his ankle in their previous playoff game. After the whistle had blown, the defensive back used his cleats to stomp and kick the running back’s taped ankle. The McHenry announcer looked over at me and asked between commercials, “What kind of football do you guys play down there?” Without their star carrying the ball, Centennial hung on to win the game. The News-Gazette and the parents at Centennial celebrated the school’s first appearance in the state semi-finals- not mentioning that the team had outright cheated to get there. What are we learning now, kids?

Smile politely, you must be in a romantic relationship, dance well, and have money. Nothing is more sexually confusing and financially humiliating than one of the many formal dances scheduled in high school. Starting at 16 years of age when I wore braces to fix my buck teeth, it was expected of me to ask an attractive girl to the dance, dress in a formal tuxedo I could ill-afford, show up at her house with a nice car (if not a limousine), buy an expensive meal-for-two at the fanciest of local restaurants, and dance real cool to pop music with sexually suggestive lyrics. In exchange, she was to lose her virginity to me by at least her senior prom. These expectations are psychotic.

How is someone, who up to that point does temp-work detassling corn for a living, supposed to buy all these extravagances? How is sex supposed to occur? I didn’t even know how to talk to girls let alone get naked with them. While I won’t say the faculty of a high school ever encouraged their students to engage in pre-marital sex; the romantic nature of dancing with a girl, and the underground tradition that girls are expected to “lose it” on prom night, probably explains our 50% divorce rate. The dances in high school do not prepare you for courting and finding a good spouse. And really, most of us aren’t ready for that until our twenty-somethings. And why is everyone expected to be in a romantic relationship anyway? Is the wedding-supply industry donating money to the schools or something?

The dances also re-establish the exclusion of low-income people from society. Most working class parents cannot afford to spend $600 on one night of pleasure for their kid. The high school dance breeds resentment from the kid, whose mom is on food stamps, and they learn real fast that they are less because they are poor.

Equally as bad, is the definition of a good time as a one-night, consumptive bacchanal that the dances have become. No wonder 15% of our citizens are addicted to drugs and alcohol. The average American carries about $9000 of credit card debt, and we don’t care what gasoline costs or does to our environment and international relations. Is it because the high school dance taught us what the ultimate rewards of society are to be: fine clothes and fancy cars, lavish feasts served by cooks and waiters, and thumping sex music leading to a drunken sexual encounter with a pretty girl? Surely, that can’t be the pinnacle of life.

Smile politely, we are at war.
Upon entering high school it was quickly pointed out that there existed another high school nearby who was considered to be our archrival. Whatever happens this school year, we were taught, our sports teams must crush their sports teams because the people over at the other high school,… well, you know,… suck. We weren’t told why they sucked, only that they did, and our student council sold us t-shirts that said, “Muck the Faroons”. Ha, ha. You would think the adults who were our teachers and administrators would have instructed us that blind bigotry toward a group of people we have never met is not a wise thing to do. Instead, school staff fueled our frothing hatred by scheduling a whole week of “Beat Central” group activities, called “Spirit Week”. When the kids from the other school came over in the dead of night in anticipation of the big game and spray-painted on our school building, a bunch of my buddies and I packed a car with spray paint cans at the ready. We pulled up to their school and began to discuss what would happen if we were caught. At some point, I remember saying, “This shit isn’t worth it.” We drove off and got drunk instead. I guess getting drunk was worth getting caught.

The whole cross-town-rivalry-thing was a manufactured, unnecessary group-think that taught us the ways of prejudice along geographical borders. If we lost to the foreigners, our athletes, who had trained all year and risked serious injury doing the best they could; were considered absolute failures. Cheerleaders cried uncontrollably. Coaches became furious and depressed. The booster club demanded the coach start winning or face termination. Beating the foreigners becomes the measure of success. No wonder we later pounded our chests after 9-11, eager to blow up the nation of Afghanistan into a parking lot, forgetting perhaps that what was needed at the time, (and still to this day) was a criminal investigation to apprehend the handful of people who perpetrated that horrible day. Indoctrinated to pledge our loyalty to a team in high school, we learn to despise anyone not part of our team- the foreigners. Patriotism’s dark side is the dehumanization of those labeled the enemy. I didn’t know any kids from Central. When I did meet them later in college, I discovered they weren’t much different than me. I became drinking pals with several “Morons” (as they were known in my high school days), and our “bitter rivalry” was erased from our memories with laughter.

Smile politely, if you don’t comply with the rules, you will be placed in a cage and banned from the economy.
This isn’t an outdated tradition like the ones above, but rather a new school policy that wasn’t around as much when I attended Centennial. The advent of the School Resource Officer and Zero Tolerance teaches the student body the criminal justice system. It has become perfectly acceptable to everyone that it’s okay to correct disruptive and anti-social behavior by arresting the high school student in handcuffs, drive them to the $5 million dollar youth detention facility, place them in a cell, and have the state’s attorney’s office charge them with a felony if necessary. If convicted of a felony, the offender will be lucky if they ever make $15,000 a year doing manual labor for the rest of their lives.

Later in life, we accept the people of poor neighborhoods being quarantined into ghettos, heavily patrolled by police. We are silent as their young men are stuffed into the prisons, caring not a wit if they are subjected to knife fights and homosexual rape as part of their “rehabilitation”. Why? Well, because they are not part of our clique in high school. We don’t recognize the names in the News-Gazette of those sent to prison because we never had a relationship with the kids coming off the bus. They become the other- the foreigners. And besides, you know, people like that are just more violent. Didn’t we see that in high school? As adults we watch, if we watch at all, our courtrooms apply the laws mainly against people of low income and usually minorities. Doesn’t it bother anybody that a white person, accused of sexually assaulting a victim under age 13 can get probation, while a person of color can be sent to the penitentiary for 15 years for possessing 1.3 grams of crack? Where did we learn this was okay? Since something like 80% of the cases processed by the SRO are against blacks; and 49 of the 51 juveniles sent to the department of corrections in 2005 from Champaign County were African-American, the by-product lesson to the white kids is that jail is mostly reserved for people of color.

The experience of having a uniformed police officer roaming the hallways in high school just in case a student needs to be hauled off school grounds, conditions us as adults to accept jailing as a resolution to breaking the rules; and consequently, this country imprisons the most number of its citizens of any country in the world with nary a peep from the freedom-loving electorate or anti-big government proponents. We are taught to fear for our safety, which we learn is usually threatened by angry minorities. We are taught to always cooperate with the nice police officer and snitch out a friend for smoking some weed. And we are taught that every bad act you do can be subject to you being put in a jail cell- if you are caught and if the cop decides to run you in. It’s telling where the culture is going that the Champaign Police Department launched a CrimeStoppers program in the high schools and middle schools where the kids can tip off police anonymously. I went to high school with the deputy chief who helped launch that program. It’s a good thing the statue of limitations has run out, lest I share with police a few stories about him at the parties we both attended. I am willing to give the deputy a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea, a real nice kid in school by the way, since he was only doing what everyone else was doing in the insane world of adolescent peer pressure.

Should the schools be responding to student misbehavior (done usually as acts of random entertainment) with lifetime punishments in the criminal justice system? We learn through negative and positive reinforcement. Looking back, I became an artist because that was where I received major props from everyone. Getting suspended only gave me nothing to do with my time all day (requiring no responsibility for rectifying the consequences of my crime) and shamed me before my classmates. My one week suspension inspired in me to hate school and think less of myself. How much more damage does a public handcuffing, a stint in the pokey and a few court dates do to a young person’s career plans and self-esteem?

Would we dare to track the correlation between contacts with the SRO officer in high school and criminal activity after graduation, we might find a one-to-one relationship. There are too many factors in a child’s life to blame a police officer for future crimes, but let’s not fool ourselves that Officer Friendly in the hallway does anything to deter crime. Their function is to detect criminal activity and apprehend the offender. Influencing a person’s choice to better themselves and help others on a given day requires something entirely different- and jail may only complicate matters. It may be that our zero tolerance policies educate offenders for a life on the inside. Once accustomed to the conditions of the five-by-nine cell, going to jail no longer becomes a deterrent where kids will likely be exposed to an even more dysfunctional peer group than their arguing parents at home.

It happened to be my lot that about once a month, when I came home from high school, it was not unusual to be greeted at the door by the sight of my mom on the floor, bleeding from her face, screaming at her live-in partner to stop as he was hitting her as hard as he could, working out his own abuse he suffered at the hands of his dad long ago. It is insufficient to justify the criminalization of high school students with mere violations of rules and videotape to prove it. There are reasons why people do what they do. Addressing those reasons requires effort and patience well beyond merely summoning Officer Wahala to come down to Rm. 222 immediately. I realize this action is sometimes necessary in the face of a youth gone amok. But if adults are committed to educating all young people to become productive taxpayers, what’s the rush to turn them into tax liabilities? The increased use of the youth detention facility for infractions far less than extreme violence represents a giving-up by those entrusted to enlighten our future citizens. In the minds of many students, once you are not wanted, there is no incentive to cooperate with those who have rejected you. The punished are led to fulfill the labels we have assigned to them.

Are teachers and students under that great a threat that second and third chances can no longer be afforded to an offending student? I must be ignorant to how violent teenagers have become that requires pepper spray to always be readily available. Had there been an SRO around when I was in high school, I would have caught numerous criminal cases. A kid may be on the edge and our response is to send a man in with a gun so the cliff draws nearer for the jump. I don’t understand how local church congregations can expect forgiveness for themselves and not extend the same to our adolescents. The SRO generates criminal records upon our young people, and these records follow them to every job interview, every sentencing hearing. We may be surprised to learn that crimes committed by people under age 25 are actually on the rise since the invention of a police officer stationed on school grounds. The SRO may have the unintended consequence of recruiting new inmates for prisons for that is the paradigm presented everyday by the SRO’s presence.

In this election year, we will once again celebrate the dream that anybody can become anything as Barak Obama could be elected the next President. But looking at the racial demographics of the kids expelled or suspended from high school tells me the SRO officer contributes to making sure the dream can never happen for poor blacks.

Collectively, these high school phenomena condition us to believe and accept stupidity. If our culture seems mean-spirited, greedy, sexist, racist, segregated, licentious, and inhumane; it could be that the public high schools have made stupid part of the curriculum. Thanks to what we learn in high school from the current design of our extra-curricular activities, our “American values” become morphed into senseless vanity, selfishness, and destructive waste. It ain’t cool to be considerate to your fellow citizen, faithful to your spouse, or involved in your government. If you are fat, plain-looking, and not into sports- you don’t count and you certainly won’t be asked to the dance. Just get yours, buy a pepsi, watch the game, and shut the hell up. Should you have a bad day, and who of us doesn’t have one of those, teachers included, you are quickly discarded like trash, banished from the education that could prevent future criminality.

It’s in high school we first learn the narrative polite society expects us to abide by. What is that narrative? Our training in high school seems designed for us to become good little consumers and spectators, obedient and unimaginative employees, and juries that always side with the police and prosecutors. Women are pressured to become beautiful sex toys. Men are scolded into vanquishing their foe in violent competition.

It’s true that the diseases of civilization have always been around since the day after the Incident in the Garden. The bad values and misplaced priorities I’m criticizing didn’t start in the modern public high schools. But why should the schools perpetuate these overrated priorities? The problem with our current high school social traditions is they reinforce certain qualities over others. Those qualities, being rich, physically powerful, and sexually pretty; are meaningless in the big picture. Should the schools be actively promoting situations where a large portion of the student population will easily fail and suffer public rejection? Why would we make a competition out of the visual appearance of our children? Why would we expect our daughters to dance seductively in public? Why would we sponsor activities and systems that create a caste system, breeding separation from and contempt for our fellow man? Why would we expect teenagers to spend wild amounts of money on luxuries that reinforce licentious, consumptive behavior? A limousine to a prom should be shameful during a gasoline crisis, punishable by having to clean the school bathroom.

We might say that what happens in high school is consumer-driven. The students want to play sports, want to cheer at the games, and want to have dances. They want the school bully to stop bothering them. Sounds reasonable, since there is nothing wrong with entertainment and recreation, and certainly, everyone is entitled to be safe. Maybe the insanity I see is a problem of design. I’m thinking of the way we Americans turn every activity into a competition with a single winner, obsess over sexual matters, and punish rebellious behavior with permanent sanctions that do more harm than good.

We can benefit from competition, for iron sharpens iron and competitors can improve each other in a well played match. There are terrific life lessons, socially and personally, to be learned from participating in sports, dancing for self-expression. Synchronized tumbling can be an artistic marvel to behold. Learning how to interact with the opposite sex is a legitimate skill to know. Student bodies coming together for a bigger cause is a good thing. Urbana’s Thanksgiving Dinner is probably one of the greatest high school traditions in the country. Mahomet’s collection of 11 million soda pop tabs to commemorate the Holocaust into gigantic angel wings was an admirable and sobering history lesson. In contrast, how valuable, really, was Centennial’s 60 or so boys making the state semi-finals in a game of football? Who of us, besides the participants, even remember it happened?

There are other ways to compete. Other games we could invent, that when played, are beneficial even if you lose and can involve more people who can’t bench press 250 pounds, who don’t have nice hair and perfect teeth, or can flash hundreds of dollars on the waiter. For example, I bet you one dollar that Centennial can build a Habitat for Humanity house better than can the students from Central and Urbana. Locate the homes side by side and let’s have at it. The fundraising, the discussion about issues of poverty, and the learning to build a home creatively, efficiently, and with sustainable materials could be a school’s curriculum for a year. A ribbon-cutting ceremony for three new houses could be followed by an all-city swing dance at Krannert, admission will be free, dance lessons provided, and all three school’s jazz bands will play, and all three school’s theatre troupes could perform. Now that is a local competition worth seeing, with no real losers. The skills learned and the accomplishments achieved would last a lifetime, and the celebration afterwards would have meaning. More importantly, there would be spots on the team for just about every student in the school.

I have to admit I like sports. I like beauty and beautiful women. I want to be protected from violent behavior. But can we really function as a healthy community if those minor parts of life are to be Champaign-Urbana’s top priorities? As adults, those values get translated into our spending priorities in all sorts of budgets and policy-making decisions. Like, it’s fine to spend $500,000 on a building so the police can practice hostage situations, whereas $50,000 for the women’s homeless shelter is considered to be a frivolous waste. It’s okay to cut faculty at the university to save money, while at the same time, build a $12 million-dollar practice stadium for the football team. It’s reasonable to publicly criticize the public defender’s office for buying a coffee brewer while spending $6.2 million on a clock tower for the courthouse. Don’t these juxtapositions reveal we’ve misplaced the mission statement somewhere?

Worse, the current social values of our society seem to have no end in sight since the next generation of teachers and administrators, those being indoctrinated in our fraternities and sororities, continue the traditions at an even meaner level. They will be favored to become our future “leaders” someday and thus, social policy will again be recycled down to reflect the warped values of beauty, money, sports, and power I see on TV.

As for what should our discipline techniques be, I share this true story. My last speech to be given to the high school student body in my senior year was planned to be another one of my mischievous pranks- the kind of prank I had been suspended for earlier in the year. Having grown cynical about high school, I wanted to go out with a bang, and tell one impolite joke after another on the microphone. It was going to be so much fun telling the entire school how much I thought this place sucked. About an hour before the all-school assembly, Vice-Principal Al Griggs called me into his office. I don’t know how he knew, but he knew I was up to something. Without accusations or threats, he calmly encouraged me in a friendly tone to go out there today and “do the right thing”. “You know how to do it right, Local Yocal,” he said. Months earlier, Mr. Griggs didn’t shy away from expressing how disappointed he was about my bad behaviors. Now, in these moments before what was to be yet another one of my transgressions, Mr. Griggs let me know he sincerely thought I was good. I stood before the student body afterwards and said no negative thing, and did my job as host of a program without incident. My friends came up to me afterwards and asked why I didn’t do something “funny”. I didn’t have the words to tell them that I withheld from the usual because I was moved that Mr. Griggs respected and cared about me. I question whether our use of a police officer and a youth detention center is a sign that we care about the students we discipline.

Culture has changed since I went to high school. Riding on the MTD buses, I see the hostility some of the rougher kids harbor today. Stoned, drunk, and cued on violent rap lyrics only- they can seem menacing to me too. I don’t know how I could possibly ask them to please sit down quietly and read their algebra book. It’s easy to blame them for not playing the game, not doing what they are supposed to be doing. At some point, they have quit listening to adults and fly by the seat of their passions. Why? And why do we assume it’s just the black kids who have these problems?

Let’s admit it Champaign-Urbana, we have a little race problem when it comes to educating our youth, for the statistics don’t lie. Hiring black superintendents can be a step toward healing but it’s unrealistic to believe one hire is going to solve the decades of neglect and indifference. The talent and the genius of far too many black and poor youth are being wasted and discovered when its too late, contained in the many letters and drawings from the penitentiary. Teachers raised in the affluent white suburbs, schooled in their predominantly white high schools and colleges, can’t always relate to some of the very significant differences there are to growing up as a minority in a poor community surrounded by police officers. Many black youth have learned not to trust white authority for they perceive authorities have no clue what it’s like nor care to know. The Brian Chesley misdemeanor case of obstructing and resisting a black police officer initially, [the officer’s only purpose to stopping Chesley was to seek his I.D. and check if the person was wanted on a warrant. The police department later claimed the reason for the stop was that Chesley was trespassing in the park, despite the fact that the park was having a late-night open gym program. Chesley was never charged with trespassing.] and three other white police officers later, [Chesley was beaten and pepper sprayed when he refused to present his I.D.] only confirms their suspicion that the institutions promoted to be our helpers, are out to get black youth. Like the white youth in the 60’s, some become disillusioned, drop out, and tune out. As for money, they copy what Scott Cochrane does and sell recreational intoxicants to a depressed consumer base eager to escape from their own minds. Taking the easy way out, teachers call the cops, students become outlaws. Do we want more inmates or more scholars and artisans?

An interesting conversation occurring lately is that maybe the Supreme Court decision that integrated the schools wasn’t such a great idea afterall. How could we know then that access to better facilities and more supplies didn’t always equal a better education for black children. In America’s hurry to fix a large social problem, we may have overlooked the personal emotional problems that led to the white PTA’s of most school districts in the United States arguing against blacks sitting next to their kids in the classroom.

Integration started like an arranged marriage, where white school districts were forced to accept bus loads of black students. That’s a weird way to start a relationship, and for many reasons, that design has not favored blacks. Our past culture affects our relationship to this day. A white college graduate raised in the suburbs of Naperville teaching a black student from Birch Village can resemble an evolutionary hybrid of the white plantation owner teaching his sharecropper negro slave. The attitudes of white superiority that segregated the races in the first place (which black youth naturally rebel against), and the lack of collegiate academic knowledge (something called the “achievement gap”) among today’s low-income families are hard to overcome - if we allow cultural myths- like blondes are stupid- to be the last word. As open-minded individuals willing to engage with each other, we can- awkward and embarrassing as it is sometimes- truly overcome our diseased culture. Maybe we need new designs of education to open our minds. I know this has been discussed for decades, but to this day, it is rarely tried.

I participated in Dr. Will Patterson’s experiment of Campus Academy in 2006- a school designed around only black middle school boys. That time teaching those African American young men, without the distractions of girls and large classes needing to sit still for a single speaker, revealed to me the unique genius everyone has been endowed with. There is the exciting possibility of a local Black Renaissance that would not only uplift black people from the current mires of ghetto life, but also liberate white people from the stupid 200-plus year history of the emotional kindergarten that is racism, and could finally put the mythical reasons for slavery to rest that our courthouse fails to do week in and week out.

The experience from trying to teach these young men taught me that the obstacles to learning do not necessarily revolve around race, (though there’s no question that growing up in a segregated community like Champaign-Urbana is a serious factor); but rather it is the environment around us that shapes how we grow up as children that seems to be the bigger problem- regardless of ethnicity. Blaming the environment has been dismissed as a liberal’s excuse for bad behavior among righteous conservative circles. And yet, television, constant access to foods high in sugar and corn syrup, constant access to music and movies, video games, cell phones and the speedball, drive-thru culture that comes with it is causing all of us to lose our concentration in this 20-images-per-30 second world of instant gratification.

Our ability to sustain long periods of listening, reading books, problem solving, writing clearly, building, and observing- the essential skills to becoming a professional at whatever occupation- is constantly eroded by big business’ efficient product distribution. Low-income children are not becoming engineers most of the time, not so much because mean white people won’t let them due to their race or class- but because children are more frequently growing up alone in front of a television screen with a big bowl of sugary cereal under their chin. Throw into that environment an alcoholic parent, a divorce, a rough neighborhood where bullies are likely to be, early access to drugs and sex, and few interventions by compassionate adults other than a police officer asking for I.D. to check for warrants; and it should be no surprise that little Demetri doesn’t want to listen to no white lady telling him to sit down and be quiet- even if it’s in Demetri’s best interest. These problems in the environment can happen to families of all races. The demographics of the disciplinary statistics would fool us to assume different.

The school district’s focus on safety (or is it “compliance”?) has led to inflexible policies that don’t allow rehabilitated ex-felons to teach in our schools. Ironic that the government releases someone because they have paid their debt and declared rehabilitated, and then the same government demands they stay away from the children. In many cases, that’s sound policy since even former state’s attorney, John Piland, didn’t hesitate to reveal the prisons don’t correct anything despite the name. In a culture rooted in labels and unforgiveness- we settle for believing the “garbage in and garbage out” philosophy and act accordingly.

Many coming out of our prisons, however, do commit themselves to “being part of the solution- instead of being part of the problem.” In those instances, the school districts have access to a group of mentors who can relate to youth who are scarred by their poor families, poor neighborhoods, and institutional racism. Some of the ex-felons I know (black and white) demonstrate an emotional maturity of forgiveness many churches still need to learn. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous have demonstrated for decades that ex-addicts can teach current addicts how to quit drugs and get high on real life. If the school districts are expelling young people for drugs and violence, wouldn’t it make sense to have some of their teachers be people who are able to say “been there, done that- let me show you a better way.”?

The expulsions rates for African-Americans are ruining the brilliance integration could be. What a crazy cycle we are in: there exist few qualified black applicants to be teachers- when we know our bias toward discipline is exactly the reason why there are no black applicants who have the official qualifications. Black youth are denied solid black role models as the culture has somehow effectively obstructed a vibrant black professional class so desperately needed in downstate Illinois. Our qualification requirements for teachers might have to be adjusted until we can raise up our next generation of African-American teachers. We may need to create endowments that let incoming minority freshman know, that if they qualify for college, and they come back to this high school after college and give us five years as a teacher, we will pay your tuition. High schools need to see their current pupils as their future faculty and invest toward that goal.

The school district’s focus on qualifying for federal tax dollars has allowed the curriculum to be kidnapped from local control. The current administration’s academic priority of the three R’s, which is a fine idea, needs to be contextualized with other skills and interests beyond the realm of collegiate course work and test taking. Going to college is a tremendous opportunity. So is the ability to build a house, fix a toilet or light fixture, knowing how to grow food or knowing how to design and repair clothes. The current values of our society have allowed these valuable apprenticeships to be considered less in our entranced daydream in front of a computer and celebrity culture. Nothing would foster urban renewal faster than if our students were able to repair what they see around them. The high school’s forsaking of the industrial arts is a dangerous precedent and makes future generations, including the one I’m in, vulnerable to dependence on either a distant corporation supplying my electricity or a government giving me green pieces of paper. My only knowledge, still, to operating a car is I turn the key and press the gas pedal. What if I were able to turn a lawn mower into a moped? Such thinking today is considered foolish.

Not everyone is going to go to college nor needs to. There’s nothing wrong with that. Society needs a variety of people fulfilling a myriad of roles besides the person sitting behind the desk processing insurance papers or another beautiful pop singer or star athlete. If we are in the habit of denigrating simple labor, which high school culture fosters, we risk losing the knowledge we may need when Ameren says it’s shutting off service because unknown stockholders are not getting paid enough dividends. As an institution, our schools must resist the temptation of rabid competition and caste systems of superiority- and instead, adopt an attitude of everyone is on the team and everyone can contribute. And anyone is capable of fulfilling any role if they put their minds to it. Successful integration, along many kinds of differences among peoples, depends on an integrated faculty demonstrating what the Model City can be. That a group of scholars (high school teachers) would sanction the selection of Suzy Stunning as the best in class because she’s visually beautiful is not only a misplaced priority for students to learn and an incomplete way to define beauty, but an almost irresponsible way to prepare the next group of citizens to inherit dominion of our town.

It remains possible to navigate through the current diseased structure of high school and still become a healthy person. There are many who escape from the wreckage, avoid the pitfalls, and lead exemplary lives. But it didn’t come easy to me and time must be spent undoing all the damage. In retrospect, we internalize our time in high school and believe it was ourselves responsible for all those embarrassing memories we did as youngsters. The cliques we formed, the hostile attitudes we held toward other groups of people, and the juvenile behavior we try to laugh off as, “just part of growing up”, might not be entirely our fault; and instead, was provoked by the taken-for-granted protocols and systems of high school.
A homeless alcoholic, ex-inmate once told me, “How can you be sane in an insane situation?” High school, in some respects, is designed to be an insane situation.

And isn’t that the real insanity right there in that description I just gave of an excellent friend who always shared with me what he had? How can I summarize my friend’s life, another human being equal to me in every way, as a homeless alcoholic, ex-inmate? Perhaps I learned to think of people in such a negative, shallow manner way back in the day, in the hallowed halls of my alma mater where it’s cool to play smash-mouth football.