I was born the year Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency and, math being what is, most of my more formative years were spent in the 1980's--which often leaves me mystified at the very real market for 80's nostalgia. I was there, and it wasn't that great.
But they were innocent times, I suppose. At least compared to what came after.
Anyway, most of you may not remember, but in 1982, Joe Clark became principal of Eastside High School in Paterson, N.J. Clark was a polarizing figure. Some people loved him, some people hated him. President Reagan praised him. He made the cover of Time magazine, and he even got a movie made about him where he was played by Morgan Freeman. Heady stuff indeed.
What I remember was the controversy. Clark carried a baseball bat and a bullhorn, which is a clever bit of iconography in itself. He roamed the halls intimidating drug dealers and he expelled 300 students for disciplinary problems in his first week. He referred to troublemakers as “leeches, miscreants and hoodlums.”. Interesting guy.
Now was his approach the right one? I have no idea, but by some benchmarks the school improved--so there's that. But here's my point; in 1989 there had not been a single school shooting in America. With Joe Clark or without Joe Clark. Since then there have been more than I could name or remember.
Of course when you broach this topic everyone has an opinion. The chattering political classes tend to veer one way or the other. The self-identified 'left' lives in fear of inanimate objects and the self-identified 'right' wants to turn the school into a prison. I wont get into my solution for public schools woes right now ( I'll give you a hint; John Galt), but it's interesting to me that in 40 years we went from outrage to a principal carrying a baseball bat to serious discussions about giving handguns to teachers. That's what we call 'escalation', boys and girls. Not just an escalation of the problem, but an escalation of the solution.
Ah, but we're progressing so I'm told. Life is getting better. Society is safer. Crime is down. People are more tolerant and enlightened. After all we have cell phones now and 300 or so genders. The old bigotries and prejudices of the past have been scrubbed away and we stand on the brink of a new age of peace and prosperity and brotherhood--provided of course we can get people to stop murdering our children.
Now I get it. I have opened a can of worms and out of however many people read this we could get at least that many different takes on what the problem is and twice as many about what the solution is. There are so many facets to all this that its hard to even get your brain around it all.
But just don't call it progress, ok?
