Of Drugs, Bullying, and Things That Flatter Your Waistline

The curriculum for my classes during my final year of middle school was very, very strange. For many, many, MANY years the students in this district can expect to be hammerred with constant and obnoxious information about drugs; in middle school the drug propaganda machine went into overdrive. While I know it is important to be educated about such nasty things, it is NOT necessary to be given the exact same speech about cigarettes and beer several times a month, year after year after year. It is also not necessary to teach that cigarettes and alcohol are pure evil (my homeroom teacher once threatened to give a student sessions with a counselor for saying the word 'drunk'), while avoiding teaching the kiddies about such truly dangerous things as, say, crack, heroin, or meth, a drug which is actually a problem in our area. During this drugs-and-alcohol class we had to attend every other day in the 8th grade, we were also lectured by 'bullying' experts, which we probably the most angrifying of all.

For those of you adults that may have heard of these bullying programs and their aims to to eradicate harassment in schools; every program I have ever encountered was, quite frankly, a very, very large load of offensive stuff. Every speaker that came in to lecture us on the topic had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.

Firstly, these people's idea of 'bullying' was the student's idea of normal human interaction, a.k.a. having one's own friends and speaking to people that one knew at least a slight bit. They didn't seem to realize that most people do not enjoy being forced to socialize with people that do not know them; they didn't seem to understand that most children have a certain group of other young humans they tend to hang about with. The fact that people will mutually have no interest in one another because they have never met seemed to confuse said lecturers. If the children had particular friends, this must mean they were inhuman and cruel to the other students that did not socialize with them, and obviously had no regard for the feelings of others--social engineering must be put into place at once. We had two or three "Bring Down The Walls" days forced upon us a year at my middle school. During this silly thing, one was ordered to sit amongst people that one did not know during lunch. (Of course, none or very few of the students complied).

Secondly, these 'bullying' bureaucrats did not punish actual bullying when it occurred. By actual bullying, I mean, for example, someone coming up to you and beating you up for your lunch money, ambushing you when you arrived at school in the mornings, or something along those lines. ACTUAL bullying. When ever such things occurred, their advice to us was to sit there while being beaten up and wait quietly for a teacher to come and assist, or to politely ask your assailant to stop hammering upon you. Under no circumstances should you, say, defend yourself, or anything like that. I did come across a few situations like this during my time in the lower grades. The person being attacked (an innocent party) generally did something to fight back, and pretty much always got punished more severely than their assailant. Why? Sure, the other person started it an all, and you were only defending yourself, but what did we teach you? Ask nicely, wait for the teacher. YOU should have known better.

AND, to top this all off, we had another class, one you have probably heard of, "Family and Consumer Sciences"(FCS) foisted upon us. This class did teach some useful skills, like sewing, basic kitchen skills, etc, but also had some of the most ridiculous units I have ever seen in a curriculum. My class spent about two weeks researching what kind of clothes we should wear. What body type we had. What clothes looked good on us. W.T.F?!?!

While I must add that my high school doesn't seem so dang ridiculous, I must ask the older population out there: Did middle school affairs used to be this bad?