"Character Education" Misplaced In Teachers' Hands
By Richard Rodriguez, Pacific News Service, April 4, 2001

High school students, teachers, administrators, by the several recent incidents of murderous rampages by young men, are taking countermeasures on many levels, from armed guards to establishing "character education." At best, these offer little to those who now see high school as a frightening place. PNS editor Richard Rodriguez is author of "Days of Obligation: An Autobiography With My Mexican Father" and the forthcoming "Brown."

SAN FRANCISCO -- Ten years ago, we had all grown accustomed to reading about surveillance cameras and metal detectors in dingy inner-city high schools. Now, we read about surveillance cameras and metal detectors at suburban high schools, where kids drive their own cars and wear labeled clothing they see on TV.

Who would have guessed that so many school districts would employ armed police? Who would have guessed that schoolhouse would grow to resemble a jailhouse?

At Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, this month's campus hero is not the quarterback, it's the school cop, Rich Agundez Jr., celebrated for shooting a teenager who allegedly wounded several teachers and students.

Indeed, one should be grateful to Agundez. But shouldn't we wonder why Granite Hills needs an armed officer patrolling the cafeteria and the library, standing guard outside the chemistry lab?
Ideally, schools should be places where the young are free -- free to grow, to learn new ideas, to acquire new friends, to experiment with new voices, new selves. School should be the institution that takes a child beyond the known, safe boundaries of home to the public realm of adulthood.

There is not a more conforming time, a time more preoccupied by who's "in" and who's "out" than adolescence -- most adults shudder at the memory: the routine cruelties of high school cafeterias and "nobody asked me to the junior prom."

But most adults in America also sense that something is different now. Teasing can lead to mayhem.

An Italian educator recently preached to me: "You Americans talk about 'individuality,' but in order for a child to become an individual, the child has to have a strong sense of family. You need a 'we' to become an 'I.'

"Without a strong sense of family," he said, "American children end up looking for family at precisely that time in their lives when you might expect them to be looking beyond family. They end up joining gangs or chat rooms."

Surveys of young people, inner city and suburb, indicate that what they want most is "more contact with parents."

Where are the parents?

Without parents, the entire education process collapses. For the child who enters a classroom without a sense of surname or the memory of a parent's embrace is in no mood to seek the freedom of school. That student is inclined in an opposite direction.

A generation ago we gave the schools the job of explaining sex to children. Now, politicians and teachers propose "character education" in our schools. This is a euphemism for what most people used to consider essential to child-rearing -- what happened when a parent said "no" to a child and "that's better" and "I'm proud of you."
So in the absence of parenting, we shall teach teenagers not to tease one another. To be nice.
But adolescence is not nice. It can also breed terrible conformities. Who, after all, should be surprised by copy-cat shootings?

There have been so many that we know the ritual by heart: CNN, live. Cops with rifles and helmets. Weeping students. A mother rushing searching for her child's face in the crowd. The day-after shrine of balloons and flowers. And last: the tearful apology of the alleged shooter's parents: "....We are so sorry."

What we know less about is all that comes before. The silence of the new American house at four in the afternoon. Neighborhoods without sidewalks, the appalling TV menu for adolescents, the flat assurance of chat rooms. We do not know why so many boys -- especially boys -- need "rage control" counseling.

What we adults do know is that the white boys who get angry at being called queer or geeky sometimes take out their anger on the whole damn place -- on cafeteria and library and crowd.
Some high school teachers I know expect the violence to spread to girls. Some expect the example of white rage will infect brown and black inner-city schools.

Meanwhile, teachers assume the responsibility of character education, just as their schools turn into parody prisons. Students are told not to tease, but encouraged to report any irregularity.
School officials say they will do whatever is necessary. There's always money for metal-detectors and cameras. And why not hire two cops?

A San Diego 10th-grader in San Diego recently told and L.A. Times reporter that she was happy to have more police at her school in El Cajon. "We need cops everywhere," she said. "I don't feel safe anymore."

I cannot imagine a comment that tells us more about what it means to be a student in America today. And why no one is learning.