Father Knows Best: Bud, The Boxer

Eddie Jarvis, a bully, has it for Bud. When Bud gets into a fight, he calls Dad on the cell phone. Dad arrives and takes over the fight for Bud. At school. Bud's Dad becomes belligerent with police. Bud's Dad is in big trouble.

It sounds like an episode guide for some mid-1950s greaser TV morality play. It isn't. It isn't exactly what we mean when we discuss the importance of parental involvement either. Nevertheless, the school is abuzz with the event, from the students to the staff room to the janitor. It's too bad that 2000 people peaceably "getting along" and learning today didn't have any news impact, yet Daddy's boxing adventure did. It's human nature. What doesn't fit, what is out of the ordinary, is what calls our attention. It's what makes the nightly news, partly because it is an aberration. Yet, it has a significant impact on the teaching and learning going on in the building. Administrators will be snarled with the repercussions of this for weeks to come. It's expensive in time and personnel. It has racial, ethnic, and social impact as well that will linger on for some time to come. Perhaps only until the next drama.

Yet those dramas build into a story about what this school is and who the students are. A colleague related how a few days before, out in public, he was asked where he taught. "Oh, that's a rough school isn't it?" His reply: "Yes, we do have a lot of Caucasian students." Clever. Think about that one.

Perhaps this is a morality play after all. Schools are expected to be some kind of enclave exempt from the rest of society. But social problems, attitudes, habits, enter our doors each day, and no metal detectors can screen for problematic attitudes. There are violent schools because we have a violent society. There are guns and weapons in schools because our society is soaked in guns and weapons. We have an educational "achievement gap" between race and ethnic groups, because we have an achievement gap, and an equality gap, in the society we have built. How can we expect the schools to fix inequality and educational inadequacies without talking about the same issues in the broader society? Don’t schools fail where our civic life fails? Has society made its AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress under the so-called “No Child Left Behind” Act) toward closing the inequality and opportunity gap?