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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
New restrictions on high school graduation go further to infantilize teenagers in the hope of making them perfect adults.
May 13, 2002 | If there is one burning desire that carries high school seniors through their last year of school, that forces their eyes open at ungodly hours and carries them in a fog to class, it is the desire for freedom. To be free is the core ambition; "eat my dust" is the mantra of the hormonal herd as graduation draws near.
Unless you are a senior in San Fernando Valley.
In eight San Fernando Valley high schools -- District C of the Los Angeles Unified High School District -- seniors are required to sign up for some kind of post-secondary education if they want to don a cap and gown and receive a diploma with the rest of their class. Those who are so shiftless, so without focus or ambition that they will take a year off, or perhaps, the rest of their lives off, to travel, or work, or read and eat snack foods, are allowed to graduate, but they must do so in private, and perhaps in shame, for there will be no seat on the stage for these laggards in San Fernando Valley high schools.
As for the whiners, the civil libertarians, the no-account kids who would complain: The district wishes to inform you that you haven't got a leg to stand on. Because the policy -- started at Grant High School in 1987, widened in March 2001 to reach eight district schools -- works.
Last year, when there wasn't a rule in place, about 54 percent of all students planned to further their education after graduation. This year, only an estimated 185 students in the entire district of 3,764 students have failed to sign up for something. That means that roughly 90 percent of the students graduating next month from San Fernando Valley high schools will be heading off to universities and colleges, the military or trade schools, or similarly acceptable career-oriented programs after they receive their diplomas to great applause and adulation.
But what looks like a major victory smells like teen spirit assassination. Never mind the issue of civil rights, or the shaky legal grounds for punishing students for something that will happen long after they leave school. The rule is part of a big picture in which adults are hacking away at youthful autonomy, trying to rein in the natural impulses of adolescents through increasingly punitive rules. At some point, a nation of frightened grown-ups decided that it's in their kids' best interest to never behave like kids. And in order to ensure that the kids make an instant transition to socially acceptable adult behavior, adults in a position of authority are systematically eliminating choice and replacing it with rules.
In San Fernando Valley high schools, for example, the idea, presuming the rule is not just a sadistic finale for battered school administrators, is for students to learn the importance of education. The lesson, however, is that you had better conjure up an acceptance letter from somewhere or you won't get to publicly celebrate the importance of education, which, of course, you already knew or you wouldn't be graduating from high school.
Students interviewed about the policy by the Los Angeles Times spoke of frantically signing up for community colleges, even though they had no intention of attending. Taft High School senior Kassie Finch got a letter of acceptance from Pierce Community College so that she could go to her graduation. Her real plan is to work at her mother's law firm. "I'm not sure if I'm going to college or not," she told the Times. Even to the most darkly Dickensian school principal it might be hard to understand what is wrong with wanting to be a paralegal near your mom for a while.
But the district administrators subscribe to the school of tough love and prefer to invest in superficial victories. "The policy basically says to our community that we hold very high expectations of our graduates," District C Superintendent Robert Collins told the Los Angeles Times. "We feel all our graduates are ready and recognize that to really be successful, you're going to need some kind of post-secondary [education] ... Is the policy harsh? I don't think so at all. A harsh policy is when we ignore youngsters."
And what is the different between ignoring youngsters and leaving them alone? When is a school picking on, instead of paying attention to, its students? Authorities like Collins -- and the politicians, administrators, policy makers and groups of parents who think like him (let us not forget the Bush administration) -- are convinced that when children aren't being watched, they are getting in trouble. Where is the respect, the trust, the humanity in that attitude? And doesn't it suggest that the adults in this camp have no confidence in their own parenting skills?
