Dehumanization in Schools

April 8, 2010
Dehumanization in Schools In my experience, discipline in high schools has always been over the top. From what I heard, it has gotten so much worse since I left. Now the students need not only uniforms (just a strict dress code really) but also I.D. tags that they have to wear around their necks like cattle. They are herded from one class to the next with teachers and rent-a-cops waiting down every hallway to prod along the stragglers. Even when I was there, a student needed a good reason to be anywhere, and even with hall passes they were hassled by monitors on patrol. In the morning when they first get there (at the ungodly hour of six A.M.) they are subjected to metal detectors, random searches, and the occasional patrol of drug-sniffing dogs. There is absolutely no trust in the system, because after all, they’re just children and are not ready or able to make their own decisions, barring the fact that once they leave High School they will be completely responsible for everything in college.
You might argue that the kids do nothing to belay this attitude, that they all act immature and generally stupid, but that is only the minority of students. If they are treated with disrespect and mistrust, that is how they will act. For example, in college the professors treat their students as adults, not like the teachers claimed to do in high school, but the professors actually believe in their students maturity. In high school, the teachers claimed to treat their students as adults, but really they treated them as sexually mature children. A student had to work hard to earn any kind of trust, and even then it’s limited. A student has to ask permission to do everything, even use the bathroom. Often there was no time to get that out of the way between classes, especially because they locked the lavatories then. In my old high school, they made a sign in/out sheet so they had a detailed record of where you were going, why and how long you were there. It is absolutely demeaning! It’s enough to make anyone angry, and whenever a student made a stink about it, the faculty chalked it up to a tantrum. Not in so many words, but the feeling was there.
The students who raise a fuss are better than the ones who don’t, though. The ones who don’t fold under the pressure of the teachers’ authority and basically become good little robots that do their scantron tests and stay quiet when the teacher stops talking. Those students make up the majority of the population in high schools. The other kind usually calls more attention to themselves and make it seem like there are more of them then there really are. That makes the teachers and their higher ups think that we all need more discipline than we actually do. The more discipline and restrictions they pile on the students, the more the rebellious minority will try to rise up and cause the faculty to apply even more. It’s a vicious cycle. Meanwhile, the majority of the students are being slowly crushed under it all. Students are being called untrustworthy, irresponsible, and just one of the many. Not outright, no teacher can actually say so without risking being sued nowadays, but they say it with their numerous hall passes labeled for every need, threats of detention upon lateness, and uniforms. That can’t beat down a strong person, but not everyone is strong. If you treat someone like just one of the many, like they’re nothing, after awhile they will start to believe it.