Being present and accounted for at Village View

In our infinite wisdom, parents always believe they know what is best for the child. Nowhere is this more evident than our tacit approval of the clampdown that has taken place at Village View in the past two years. I applauded it initially, given the lack of parental rules which allowed easy access to all areas of the school, sniveling school district support of "No child left behind", blind eyes toward teachers lacking the tools or the understanding of how to inspire children, and the willingness to subvert the quality of education in the mad rush to secure extra state and federal funds.

I never advocated a total lock down of the school, which is having an adverse effect on the kids. That has happened, however, and kids are no longer being allowed to retain the essence that makes them children in the first place. Suddenly, we have children coming home with unhealthy anxiety, concern, mood swings, generalized fear, comments about their teachers that we cannot ignore, and a general unhappiness that should not be prevalent in a place of learning.

The teachers themselves, some already suspected to be complicit in the effort to assist the increase in school visibility for the state and federal educators, are mostly reduced to robotic procurement devices, with little to inspire children. Certainly there are exceptions, but a recent school assembly to present student awards illustrated how teachers who are most able to connect with their students can quickly lose faith in their own core inspirational beliefs.

Witness the changes that have taken place, no longer in subtle fashion, before, during and after school. The children no longer have fun. Laughter has been replaced with silence. This place of learning has turned into the rule equivalent of an armed camp. Bells ring, and kids are frozen in place. At lunch, kids eat looking straight ahead, and do not turn toward others behind them. Orchestrating this is Aaron Jetzer, replacement for a deer in the headlights style principal who was beloved, but unable to effect any changes that brought the school into the new century.

This oversight has extended to parents as well, as we are subject to police radar on Sisson while driving our children to school, special parking places for parents that have paid for the privilege, holding parents captive for chastisement by the principal at awards assemblies for our children, while highlighting our apparently mediocre efforts to give our children a broad social experience by including them in after school activities. There is a lack of effort by our school to increase the quality of the food that the children can purchase at lunch, lack of effort to create an environment of childlike curiosity that should be a driving focus of the school itself, and lack of effort to act as the catalyst for the furthering of the Village view community.

What I do see, is a sense of entitlement on the part of many parents here. I see parents who display that sense of entitlement in the school parking lot, at assemblies, and at poorly orchestrated events supposedly for the betterment of the children. I see few leaders, creators of community, or those who understand children beyond their own selfish interests. I see exclusion by certain factions of the PTA. I see protection on the part of the school for teachers who do not provide any inspiration to our children. I see anxiety in the eyes of many students, less concerned about learning and more concerned about being held back. I see a blatant attempt by the school and the district to lure more funds without generating an environment of curiosity that would allow for greater development of our children at this level.

I suppose this should encourage some who like this rather Orwellian view of our school. With all the controls in place though, we may end up failing ourselves, even as we believe we know what is best of our children.