WhatIsThisIDontEven said:
So I was called into the office of my high school today to talk to my guidance counselor about college stuff (I'm a senior) and she had all my files and stuff on her desk. There was one folder she never looked at though during the meeting. I asked her about it and she said it wasn't important.
The bell rang and we both got up to leave. I went back to her office once she had left and picked up the folder. It was a report about my "school shooting potential". At my school, apparently, the SSP is based on grades, interests, music choice, and religion. It said this (from what I can recall, I skimmed it)
"Grades: Excellent, excels in science.
Interests: Shows an interest in death and goth culture.
Music Choice: Heavy metal, shows interest in death.
Religion: Atheist, shows lack of empathy.
Comments: Staff are urged to act nicer to NAME to keep him at a stable emotional level."
Which is weird, because I don't have any interest in goth subculture or a death fascination. I do like metal, but so? Also the part about me being an atheist is ridiculous (the school is in a Protestant/Catholic town).
Anyone else think this is a bit weird?
Basically the fear generated by columbine gave the schools an excuse to go on a major power trip. They need to find reasons to justify things like their "zero tolerance to violent expression" policies that have gotten people suspeended or expelled for doing things like taping little army men to an American Flag hat to celeberate "Veteran's Day". I'd imagine like most "adults" they have no idea what the youth subcultures after their time are actually like, and by using terms like "Goth" they are tying you to the types of behavior associated with "The Black Trenchcoat Mafia" (even if that isn't a good definition for them). I'd also guess, that you might be one of the kids on the receiving end of a lot of abuse from either kids and/or staff for whatever reason, and having this paperwork allows them to say "see, we had this kid on watch" if you ever do get involved in anything. They probably figure that since you get your buttons pushed regularly (which is a guess) that there is a chance your going to explode, and the paperwork is easier to write up to back a retroactive cover story (OMG we told the teachers to be nice to him!) if something happens, than say change the fundemental school structure that leads to such things.
In the end the biggest factor is simply that without a constant supply of potential enemies of the school-state, they can't justify their own little power trips. What's more this allows schools to get political when and where they want as opposed to remaining neutral. I look at incidents a couple of years back where schools were kicking students out for wearing American flags during Cinco Demayo which upset the various unassimilated Latino students despite them allegedly being American citizens (ie it's the flag of their own country, them not seeing it as such and backing a foreign holiday to the point of finding their own country offensive during it is a problem). These policies allowed for some strong punkhammering of the students they wanted to target. Ironic given that they justified it by "fearing violence" from the immigrant students, yet ironically none of them were "Zero Toleranced" out the bloody door for generating those fears... meaning it was a political statement more than anything. (look up American Flag, Banned, Schools, as a search criteria, you should get plenty of hits, I've posted links before).
At any rate, remember this, because when your out of school society is going to need people like you to undo the damage of the baby boomers in matters like this. You'll wind up in a rut probably like most adults, but we will still need adults to speak against such things and work on getting the policies reversed. Right now there just aren't enough voices or enough action despite a few battles being won here and there.
Still, I'm wondering if eventually the pressure cooker they are causing is going to lead to a more epic explosion than what it allegedly was supposed to prevent. I'm still waiting for a "columbine type" incident where a bunch of students expelled stupidly decide to take guns to the principle's office, or to d a Board of Education meeting in response for having their lives ruined due to explusion for stupid political reasons. It won't be a good thing exactly, but a lot of the shootings we've seen have been aimed at students due to the excesses the schools have allowed (rules aside) nerds shooting jocks for tormenting them and such. That's being done in the name of maintaining that order is costing those on the receiving end more than a wedgie and a trip into a trash can (maybe), it's costing them their lives and futures. Viewed objectively, there have been far worse reasons for armed insurrection. (do not misunderstand this though, I'm calling it as I see it, more than saying it's a good thing. It's a matter of me expecting something really bad to happen, based on the actions we're seeing more than anything. I'd like to see the school system change it's course on it's own rather than see some kind of anti-teacher/school authority masacre).
