I interviewed for this great job as either a English teacher or a special education teacher in a Charter school which is only two miles from my house. Most of the students and staff are African American and all of the students are non-traditional in that they have dropped out of high school for various reasons. The school is looking for creative teachers who can teach the students individual patterns of learning, and it sounds like there is a lot of room for creativity and co-creation. I would also have to dress up (and maybe wear a tie!) as the school has a dress code. Sounds like a dynamic and strict program that seeks to foster development of discipline, self-esteem and a love for learning in its students and faculty. I am also reading a book called The Contradictions of School Reform in response to the rise of standardized testing, and it is getting me all jacked to teach. So that has me all excited, but what if I don't get the job? I also applied to be an academic counselor at a community college. That would be a lot of fun too. Fun to assist young people in designing their college class schedule, and challenge students to think outside of the box on why they are in college. I also interviewed at a Locked-Down facility for aggressive boys with mental health disorders. They use seclusion and "mechanical restraints" on "clients" (read "adolescent children") who are out of control and acting violently. This place is not a place that I want to work, but what if they want to hire me and the other places don't? This place is run by a mental health corporate group that runs such facilities all over the country ("hundreds" the man said). I was interviewed with three other applicants and at one point they asked us to have a "discussion" about the use of mechanical restraints (which means that they tie students to a bed). The other three all were in favor of such restraints and I brought up the question that was burning me, namely, "if you know that you have the ability to tie a student down, does it alter or influence the quality and nature of your interactions with them? If so how?" Well I got the shut down by the executive director who was sitting there (a white guy with a twitch in his eye). The other interviewer "understood where I was coming from", but in effect said that "these kids are dangerous and violent. You can never trust them. They are socially deranged (or something like that). Hypothetically," he went on, "let's say one of these kids wanted to kill you. Well that kid would pretend to be your best friend for maybe six months until he felt that you trusted him. Then he would arrange for you to take him out of school ale and he would try to do his thing. You can never trust these kids." I am thinking, is it in the best interest of a private (for-profit) corporation to think that their clients are rehabilatate-able? Wouldn't it be more in their interest to "institutionalize" these kids, which they do, so that the kids go on to spend their whole lives in institutions? The interviewers even equated these kids to prison convicts, implying that these kids would probably end up to be adult convicts. Where in all this is HOPE? Sounds like a pretty hopeless place. Paulo Freire writes that a humanist is one who trusts others unconditionally. A dominant group or an oppressor will not trust its oppressee because then the oppressor will lose the identity of oppressor. Take away the 'underclass' and the 'upper class' will no longer have anyone to judge themselves against. The wardens of jails and such mental health facilities as the one I visited must subjugate and never trust their clients because then they will be out of a job. They are using the effects of their actions to justify the continuation of their actions. If you rob people of their humanity, it is much easier to deny them their rights or the possibilities of becoming free or powerful, or able or healthy. Places and governments that objectify a population or group of people as "evil" or "un"-healthy (as in having 'mental health disorders') can safely classify them as "other". In our society, in our western culture, which lives under the "either/or" dichotomy of good or evil, healthy/unhealthy, ordered/disordered, good/bad, we are expected to stand on the side of good and continuously redefine ourselves and resubstantiate ourselves as being on the side of good so that we know that we are good. How do we do this? By declaring what is different as "other." Muslims, Osama Bin Laden, felons, criminals, children with mental health disorders, all of these are "not like us"; they are "other". We objectify "not us" as the opposite of "us" within this either/or framework. And then we have permission to do anything we want to them, because they threaten our understanding of ourselves, when they proclaim their humanity or get angry with us and violent against us, who are good. "If only they could be more like us ... " Why can't children with mental health problems or "dis"orders be the definers of an "and/as well", an inclusive framework? — offering potentials for all of us to better understand our humanity as multifacted, tenuous, uncertain, vast -- and maybe dependent on our interdependence, of all of us on each other? Maybe kids who are parentless and help-less and hope-less choose violent behaviors as a way of screaming for help? Maybe that is all that they know, and it is up to us to assist them in learning other "non-violent" alternatives for action and responding to stimulus that is bothersome? Maybe fundamentalist religious leaders are angry at American disregard for their own self-determination and feel that we are not listening to them so they must act out of desperation. Bin Laden did not come out of nothing, he is a response. Somehow this seems related to the way that America criminalizes our African Americans and poorer classes, immigrants — and troubled children. We criminalize and demonize them. We fail to offer the humanizing action but rather choose one that seeks to maintain power over others and to not give up our own identity as oppressor. Look at all the men in Washington, just like the men who run the Locked-Down facility: they are the most privileged people in the world and are afraid of losing that power. Is anyone else feeling overwhelmed by all of this as I am?
|
______