Public Education and the Punitive State, Then and Now

In 1984, I entered the first grade in a relatively decent public school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (Thomas Paine and Joseph Priestley country, and if you are not familiar with both of those venerable personages, you should look them up instanter). This particular school was in a district that was about as good as public education got at the time; then Secretary of Education, future Drug Czar and perennial hypocritical windbag William Bennett gave it an award for Excellence in Education around that time (possibly that very year). Over the years, my mind and I survived its pedagogy, somehow. When I left the district in 1996, I not only read (along with a small minority of "gifted" students) works of romantic, western heroism like Cyrano de Bergerac, Shane, and Arthurian legend to counterbalance the likes of Death of a Salesman and Things Fall Apart (those who were not labeled "gifted" were only assigned the leftist and multiculturalist literature): I was actually told (along with some of the brighter non-"gifted" people) that the U.S. Constitution was illegal and that the 1876 Presidential election was rigged. Today, I wonder just what those poor students are "taught."
Anyway, in 1984, before I knew anything about Rostand, Schaefer, Malory, the Articles of Confederation, and Samuel Tilden, I did know a little bit about two girls in my first grade class. This was before I experienced the unattractive truths of the cliques and subdivisions of middle school and high school dolefully described in song by Rush. They did not exist in this first grade class so I actually had friends. Two of my best friends were these girls, Keisha and LaToya. They were black. Their race is relevant only because it was one of the first indications to this sheltered, suburban white boy that, as Wolfman Jack (himself) told Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss) in American Graffiti, "There's a great big world out there." I didn't really know that yet, but I was on my way to learning all about it. I was also learning that I could, at least potentially, get along with people just about anybody, not just the other suburban white boys down the street from my house. I fondly recall the blithe comity of our interactions and wonder what kind of women Keisha and LaToya are now.
I probably sensed it at the time, but years later I learned that at least a few students in my elementary school were not supposed to be there. Indeed, they were not suburban at all. They were residents of a notorious capital city in a neighboring state that was a five-minute drive away from our school (so close yet so far). Their parents illegally enrolled them in our school for reasons that are obvious enough. The parents of Keisha and LaToya (who were not related at all, if I recall correctly) were very likely among that small group of parents. They were breaking the law. (Just like the masterminds of the Constitutional Convention.) And I am glad they did, because they not only enriched their childrens' school experience, but they enriched mine as well. In 1984, it was a technical violation of the law, but it was unusual enough that the law did not crack down on those parents, at least not at first. And when they finally did (if they did), the associated penalties for mulcting taxpayers in a neighboring community (as if that did not already frequently occur legally) did not yet completely resemble the sentences for serious crimes. The punitive state was just getting started at the time, after all.
Eight years later, in 1992, I entered the ninth grade at a school in the same district. The subdivisions (doleful, baneful, and even baleful) were alive and (un)well. I did not have any friends, regardless of gender or race. Until Monday, October 12, 1992.
I know the date because of what happened over the weekend. On Friday, October 9, a new student arrived in one of my classes. The student who normally sat next to me was absent, so he took that empty seat. The teacher asked him a few amiable questions, but this young man was obviously in no mood to talk about the school he had just left. The teacher promptly changed the subject. I exchanged no words with this new student that day.
The following evening, I brooded and babysat while KISS performed at the (barely one quarter full) Spectrum in Philadelphia on their ill-fated Revenge Tour. I certainly could not get to the Spectrum myself, and I knew no one who wanted to go. My parents were unwilling to drop off and pick up my fourteen-year-old self without a companion. (I am almost certain they would have been. Perhaps I should have asked. As events transpired, my first KISS concert was the July 28, 1996 Madison Square Garden concert, but that was a demonstratively different event.)
On Monday, I returned to the aforementioned classroom and saw the new student approaching. He was wearing a T-shirt he had obviously purchased at the Spectrum on Saturday night.
It did not happen quite in time to enable me to attend the concert, but at least I had a friend--a friend who was a KISS fan. The band was experiencing a nadir in popularity (a nadir not ameliorated until they assuaged the notoriously fickle and nostalgic American public with a reunion tour and a return to makeup) so KISS fans, especially my age, were rare. Consequently, when I saw the shirt, it galvanized notoriously reticent me to introduce myself and talk to the new student. I subsequently learned, among other things, that Sean, after a serious altercation in his former school, "moved in with his grandmother" (not really, although I am sure he spent some time there during the week) so that he could attend a better school. For at least the second time in my life, I had a friend I needed, all because of the law-defying mendacity of the friend's parents. When I am on the east coast, I still see Sean from time to time (though it has been years).
A few years after that, in 1995, I contributed an article to my high school newspaper. It was a review of the Halloween broadcast of KISS's appearance on MTV Unplugged. (A lengthier portion of the KISS set was subsequently released on CD and home video.) One parent, whose amount of free time was inversely proportional to her mental capacity, called the school and complained that her tax dollars were subsidizing such an article. It was the first time I was a controversial writer, and it would not be the last. My once-removed interlocutor had a point, in spite of herself, and I could have told her that if I had an opportunity to talk to her. (I heard that she complained that "KISS and MTV," not normally an associative pair to anyone who knows what they are talking about, were associated with "drugs." I could have informed the she-ape in woman's clothing that KISS, especially as constituted at that time, had a long history of anti-drug activism, while The Breeders, who were the subject of an article in the newspaper's previous issue and that she had not mentioned, had a member who was one of the latest victims of the encroaching punitive state, having been arrested for drug possession, if I recall correctly.) I could have told her that she should have been advocating for the abolition of public education (as I was already doing), not the better allocation of her tax dollars, like a spendthrift with a decades-long, one-hundred-dollar-a-day lottery budget who complains when her husband makes a lump sum purchase on a sports car for thousands below sticker price. However, "you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into" is a cliche for a reason, and Billy Beck has much more effective, perspicacious, and perspicuous words for this woman and her spiritual brethren than I could possibly produce right now. You should read all of them.
These days, much has changed. I am (among other things) co-authoring a book about KISS's live performances. (Perhaps less has changed than I thought.) The last I heard, Sean was a cameraman somewhere in the northeast. Public education, based on the reports I receive (and the ineluctable results I can infer), is far worse than it was in 1992, certainly in general if not everywhere, including Thomas Paine and Joseph Priestley Country. And the punitive state?
Take it away, Radley Balko.
The punitive state was well on its way by 1992, certainly far more so than it was in 1984, but I doubt Sean's parents (or mine, or any of us) could have foreseen this in our wildest dreams.
However bereft, isolated, and oppressed my childhood was, it was a shangri-la of camaraderie, companionship, and freedom compared those of my counterparts today. And, while I have a reputation (undeserved, as most of them are) for lacking empathy, no one is more empathic for today's children and their parents than I.
I am so glad that I am not a parent, today.
And, since an entire nation does not seem to be willing to reason itself out of a position it did not reason itself into, children (and their parents) will continue to have their conceptual faculties arrested and their minds (such as they are) shoveled with propaganda while their parents (and their children) will continue to be imprisoned for petty (or non-) offenses.
And America, as progressively fewer and fewer of us ever knew it, will continue to be vitiated.
And the last rays of the Enlightenment will continue to fade.
Unless the people of this country rediscover reason, individualism, and capitalism, vitiate (among other things) Thomas Jefferson's only serious mistake and one of the first (of many) variants of socialism to infiltrate this once free nation, and reason themselves out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
Perhaps they and their children can be saved at that point.