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What's It Really Like?

Randy Comton

Being a kid in today's public schools is a challenge. Rumors, fights, cheating, tattling, bullying, humiliation, and isolation all still exist, often with a new twist. Given the changes that have occurred over the last few decades, many of us may not even know what kids face and feel on a daily basis. Many of us may believe that there has been a dramatic increase in foul language, drug abuse, disrespect, depression, and suicide. One thing we know for certain is that much has changed for kids in school in the last century.

Schools are no longer one-room buildings filled with kids of different ages taking precious time out from working in the fields. Schools are no longer places where all children sit quietly in desks neatly arranged in factory-like rows reading in unison from standard and often biased text books. Schools are no longer places where conflicts stop at bloody noses and bruised feelings. The world of Dick and Jane and See Spot Run has changed for good. As a direct result, kids, now more than ever, need skills for living and working together in an increasingly interdependent world-skills in such areas as handling conflicts, managing intense emotions, and making wise choices for themselves and their community.

In this chapter, we look at some of the key issues facing kids today-how schools have changed over time, what life at school feels like for kids, and what experts in the field believe about students and schools today-and set the stage for showing why conflict resolution education is such a vital movement for making peace not only in our schools but also in our world. Having a solid understanding of where we have come from and where we are heading will give us a larger, more complete perspective for making the best curricular decisions for our children and for ourselves.

Our Changing Educational Models

As our society has changed, so have our schools. Early schools were institutions modeled after the designs and influences of the agricultural age. Short and disrupted school years were created to help socialize children and increase basic literacy. Families valued education, but they also had to balance the needs of the field and the farm.

Later schools were modeled after the industrial age, replete with factory-like replicas of educational efficiency, such as desks neatly lined in rows, standard textbooks, and standard norms taught in a mechanical and efficient way. Discipline was often harsh and obedience swift so as to help establish social norms and social control. At the time, the American dream helped forge a generation of individuals interested in progress, freedom, and tolerance. However, much of the racial, ethnic, and religious diversity that existed in our country was molded into predominantly white, middle-class values. American schools were a melting pot for many cultures and many traditions, and for the time being, the melting pot represented the form that public education followed.

But as times changed, our social structures evolved, and so did school life. The clearly demarcated roles that defined parents, principals, teachers, and children began to erode. The old expectations that boys would be naughty and girls would be nice began to dissolve. The efficient, predictable, factory-like structure of life and school began to complexify, and many of our regular ways of doing things began to change. As we know now, our world and our schools have become "cosmopolitan" in nature, and the computer and the evolving nature of families have forever changed our social and educational patterns of interaction.

Today we are a worldly mix of cultural values and gender roles and expectations, engaged in time-efficient and overlapping activities. We have broken down the timeworn boundaries of the past and created interrelated social structures largely influenced by the information age and its scientific advances. Our simple nuclear families and "nuclear" schools-where all children lived in a predictable family unit and all students learned in a predictable classroom experience-changed. Now we live in multiracial families, single-parent families, and nontraditional families determined not only by blood but also by our interests, our geography, and our creativity. We also live with a multitude of choices in public education, from focus schools to charter schools, from home schools to after-schools. During this time, we outgrew the influences of the farm life and the factory line and instead have adopted the computer network as our model. Our lives are filled with cross-generating beliefs and endless streams of information. The scientific-material-information age-and "cosmopolitan" culture-has shaped schools inexorably-and our kids face the conflicts, the choices, and the challenges that the culture brings.

A Day in the Life

If we are truly to understand what it is like being a kid in today's schools, we can best do so by putting ourselves in their shoes for a day. Consider a day in the life of a "typical" schoolchild; let's name her Carla.

Carla is a seventh grader living in a middle- to lower-class suburb with her mom, who has recently divorced. Carla attends a junior high school typical of other schools in the country: the building has narrow hallways; brick walls on all sides with small, high windows; bathrooms with few amenities and no art; toilets that are often littered with toilet paper; and outdoor landscaping that looks like it could use some financial help.

At 6 A.M., Carla wakes up after some nagging by her mother, spends half an hour dressing, then rushes to make sure she has her books and belongings for the day. Breakfast is on the run, half of it eaten in the car. Carla gets into a conflict with her mom about eating well for lunch and hardly has time to have a real conversation about it because her mom is preoccupied with her own day ahead. By the time she is at school at 7 A.M., she is only half awake and hoping that the conflict that she had yesterday with a friend will go away, that her social life will improve, and that her teacher will notice how much work she did for her project due today.

In the hallway, other students are drifting in. Some arrived before 7 A.M., having been dropped off by their parents who needed to get to work early. Some take advantage of a modest breakfast of white bread French toast loaded with maple syrup provided by the school; others come early to attend a student council meeting or an early morning sports practice session. By the time the buses and parents arrive with the rest of the students, the school starts to hum with activity and the burgeoning social scene. Carla finds her two best friends, Mia and Crystal, and immediately starts talking about her day-the hassle she got from her mom that morning, the assignment she had last night for history, and the overly strict teacher she has to face in math.

Carla drifts from one class to another, each one lasting fifty minutes and separated by a short four-minute passing period. Sometimes her schedule changes because of advisory period. This is a short morning class meant to bring kids together as a "family," but many teachers don't always use it well, and it often turns into silent reading time. Carla likes a lot of her teachers because they try to help her in school, but she doesn't like all the homework they give. All the students have "time-trackers" in which they keep their class schedule and assignments. More than once she has forgotten to look at it and missed something important.

The hallways are crowded, and stuff happens there that teachers either overlook or can't see-such as teasing, harassment, "dirty looks," and verbal threats. Suki and Jasmine are spreading rumors about Valerie for being "loose." Martin is being harassed again by Jon, Darryl, and Ian. They are calling him "gay" and laughing at him. Carla sort of hates it but figures it's just part of life. Sometimes she even says mean things herself, figuring the person really deserves it or that it doesn't bother him much anyway. Her language arts teacher, Ms. DeWitt, teaches kids not to use put-downs, and it works in her classroom; but outside her class the rules are different. And Carla's mother says that this was the way school was when she was growing up and to just get along because, as she says, "boys will be boys. You aren't going to change that."

Classes often seem like a blur, with one or two good classes or favorite teachers interspersed throughout her day. Her teachers have many different styles of teaching; some are old-style and authoritarian, others more willing to listen. She likes teachers who know how to really listen and who are firm but not mean. She wishes secretly that there were more like them. At her school, over ten different ethnicities are represented, and more than seven different languages are spoken at home. The pressure to perform is intense because her school has lower test scores than other schools in the district. This means lots of homework and not enough time to spend with her mom when she gets home after school-something she sort of misses. She has even heard of an elementary school that eliminated recess so that the kids could spend more time on academics. Her mom thinks that she should do better in school, but Carla doesn't care because none of the subjects interest her except for language arts. The language arts teacher uses really good books with stories that mean something to her and her life. Too many of the other teachers just use standard textbooks and give boring tests.

She finds out later in the day that her close friend Jackson got busted for wearing a ball cap in the school. There is a school rule that says no hats can be worn inside the school. He was walking down the hallway when the science teacher, Mr. Markowitz, yelled at him from behind, told him to stop, and yanked his hat off his head. Jackson told the teacher that he would have taken it off if the teacher hadn't been "such a jerk." That got him sent to the office quick, and he didn't like going to the assistant principal's office because the assistant principal has a "holier than thou" attitude while pretending to be friends with the students. Something the assistant principal said made Jackson blow up in anger, and he got sent to "in-school suspension." Carla doesn't know what the big deal about hats is when there are plenty of other kids doing drugs, having sex, and harassing other students behind teachers' backs. And a few of the teachers do their fair share of humiliating students as well. All of the students are changing physically and emotionally in ways that some of the teachers have a hard time appreciating.

At lunch, Carla gets into a fight with Kristen over something dumb. Kristen always has to be right, and the argument really seemed to be about something else, but the bell rang and everybody starting talking about going to the next class, and the two of them never got it resolved.

Carla is on the soccer team, so after school she spends the next couple of hours in practice. Thankfully she doesn't have to deal with bullies on her way home. They love harassing kids when teachers aren't around. Then she goes home and finds her mom there frantically preparing dinner for her and her older brother, who is in high school. Dinner has to be quick because there is a parent evening at school that they have to attend. Carla decides to stay home and do homework, but ends up talking with her friend on the phone for forty-five minutes before actually sitting down to read her assignments and do her homework. She goes to bed at 9:30 P.M., feeling a little overwhelmed and empty inside.

* * *

Carla is only one fictitious student similar to millions of students around the country. Her story is representative of the daily activities and conflicts in her intellectual, social, spiritual, and physical life. Indeed, this story shows only the point of view of the student and lacks many other, sometimes more mature, perspectives and realities. Yet for her there are many daily conflicts that exist in a school modeled after both factory-like education (desks always in rows, classes moving in a predictable and clockwork schedule, and standardized textbook learning) and computer- and cosmopolitan-like education (many ethnicities; busy, overlapping schedules; Internet-based learning).

Life for children in our nation's schools is complex and difficult to manage. They grow up in a fast-paced world where some parents are often too busy seeking the American dream to provide them with the time, the authority, and the attention they so desperately need-or their parents provide them with too much from the American dream, causing the kids to be spoiled and weak in character. It has been said, and is likely true, that children have been a challenge to their elders since the beginning of time. But if we are to create present-day solutions, we have to understand the present-day problems kids are facing: they are rushed; they live in a violent world; they live in a world that is very different from that of their parents; they go to schools that have complex and competing interests; and they live in a world still filled with prejudice, white privilege, and a wide gap between rich and poor.

Kids in a Rush

Chip Wood, a well-known and respected educator and the author of the recent book Time to Teach, Time to Learn , said this about rushing our children: "We need to stop hurrying children. Our school days require time. Time to wonder, time to pause, time to look closely, time to share, time to pay attention to what is most important. In school we must give children the time they need to learn. To hurry the day, to hurry through classes, grades and a timetable of achievements, is contrary to the nature of children and will do irreparable damage to their minds and souls."

The speed of the Internet and the "always open" 24/7 lifestyle that we have created for ourselves in the name of progress has often created lives that move too fast, and we have trouble adjusting to the constant demands and stimulation of input. Simply put, we have trouble setting appropriate boundaries on our time. And the predicted increase in leisure as a consequence of mechanization has not materialized. Instead we have only increased our capacity for wanting more. Our ability to control our drive to have, buy, and be is not yet strong enough to withstand the pressures of speed and created wants and needs. Kids today find themselves rushing to catch up, often at the expense of the slower pace needed for in-depth learning; for the authentic resolution of conflict; and for the development of social, emotional, and ethical intelligence-what some call wisdom.

Our minds may move fast, but our hearts and emotions need time to experience the depth, richness, and complexity of life.

Continues...

Excerpted from KIDS WORKING IT OUT Copyright © 2003 by Tricia S. Jones and Randolph O. Compton
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.