Are Public High Schools Humanizing or Dehumanizing Students and Teachers?

That's the title of the current issue of The Teacher's Voice: A Literary Journal for Poets and Writers in Education. Steve sent me a link to this the other day, and I'm just getting around to checking it out. Pretty cool.

These two are pretty poignant, I think.

"The Name Game" by Yolanda Nieves

American youth have become public enemy no. 1 on

which to pin society’s woes, while taxpayers and

government leaders avoid the real issues of shifting

economic and cultural realities.

-Henry A.Giroux

The truth is they are here:
Hip hopper

avante guard loving

heavy-metal guitar smashing,

Goth frightening

reggae and reaggeton rapping

folk and country, grunger

flash back ‘70’s disco dresser

an active refusal to socialize to dominant values.

Anarchist. Marxist-socialist

Pan-africanist

orthodox, unorthodox

flag-waver

gun-toting, hero-worshipping

Catholic and Protestant

sun worshipping

Wiccan. environmentalist

Che t-shirt wearer

all in your face.

Refugee, immigrant

homeless, documented, undocumented

Buddhist, Taoist,

Hindi, Moslem

atheist, agnostic

mute, blind

autistic, dyslexic

EMH, ADH

pro-war, anti-war

ex-leftist child guerrilla

majority minorities

a condition of our democracy.

Boy-George impersonator

Cher wanna be

transgendered, bisexual

homosexual alternative lifestyle

bar hopper

tattooed body modifier

independent news blogger

they will not disappear.

Alcoholic, recovering addict

bipolar, depressed

just released from the psych ward

patient

artist, con-artist, drug-dealer

thief, gambler

foster child, runaway

left-handed, right handed

bastard and prostitute

neutrality is annihilation.

Chess freaks

sci-fi delusionals

parentless single parents

police brutalized

elote sellers

tax evading taxpayers

future voters of America

grass rooted and homegrown

oppositional, anti-procedural

gifted and illiterate

this public school homeroom is a

national convention convened-

free thinking is a serious possibility.

"Doing Anne Frank" by David E. Poston

Against the background of the mass-murder of European Jewry,

the book presents a vivid picture of a group of hunted people

forced to live and survive together in almost intolerable proximity . . .

Report from the curriculum wars:

On the literary front, the call to arms is

"How long will you spend on that?"

After years of skirmishing,

our dirty little war has come before the Board,

and things are getting hot.

In the war room, at the big table,

the volleys of words fly.

All the curricular atrocities—

9th graders reading Orwell, the horror of The Odyssey too soon—

have us bobbing and ducking and squawking.

What else are we to do?

Our canon fell to ruin years ago,

and now we have no lists, no lists at all,

. . . Written with humor as well as insight,

it offers an extraordinary picture of a girl growing up

and conveys all the preoccupations of adolescence

and first love.*

so we are mano a mano for the honor of Our Text.

We go nose to nose over Dorian Gray, over Jekyll and Hyde,

over Caesar, over Shelley’s misguided Victor

—"Cyrano is ours!"—

but for deciding when it's done.

Rest assured,

Anne Frank's been done,

while LaKeeshia slept on the back row in 9th grade

dreaming of her own poor edition of Cyrano

who did her until her belly swelled, and now

she lays her head on one of my desks because Jontay cried

all last night and would not let her sleep

or dream of first love. Ah,

the preoccupations of adolescence

are done.

Follow orders. Move on.

*from Benet's Readers' Encyclopedia. 2nd ed.