MEGA SCHOOLS: How safe are they?

I am fully aware that I am a dinosaur. So with that in mind let me school you on schools.

The Mega Schools are inherently unsafe for a myriad of reasons. There was a time when every town had it's own school. Some of these schools were of the one room variety and other might be a larger building. In these schools everyone knew everyone and the parents knew each other and whose children were whose. At some point, in the Fifties, the counties decided that they would start consolidating schools into Mega Schools in an effort to "save money". This was just an excuse for the school boards, i.e the government, to consolidate their power and influence over the 'education' of the children. This eliminated most parent participation in the education of their children. This consolidation of power led to a heavily unionized Liberal teaching staff whose main concern was to indoctrinate rather than educate. The result has been an increasingly dumbed down populace to the point a high school education might be the equivalent of a sixth grade education 60 years ago. Today's college degree is not even the equivalent of the high school diploma from the same time period. A Master's Degree is the current equivalent of the high school diploma and a Doctorate the equivalent of yesterday's college diploma. Why do you think so many jobs require a Master's Degree or a Doctorate?

But back to the safety issue. These huge Mega Schools created a void in the education experience. It is easy for a child to feel alone in a school with hundreds of other children with which that they have no commonality. These schools, also, have lost that close connection children once had with their teachers. I still remember my science teacher from Brighton School, Mrs Holdridge. She was a tough taskmaster and I learned a lot of science. She went on to the Mega School and taught there for a few years. She was the only real connection I had from the Brighton School as I started mid term. Nowadays, the teachers are like replaceable parts that wear out every couple of years leaving the children with no continuity. One of my teachers had been my Dad's teacher many years before. In addition, these children are bussed in from many disparate neighborhoods and that leads to kids having little common experiences, friends or references on which they may rely. It is difficult to have friends when everyone seems to be from somewhere else. My own experience from school was similar to what I have described. I went to Brighton, AL school for one year. All of the kids were from the neighborhood. The next year they split several schools up and sent 1-6th grades went one place, 7-9th grades went to another and the 10-12th grades yet another. The cohesiveness of these communities was destroyed. When once you could walk to the school to speak with a teacher it was now a drive. Most people then only had one car, if they had a car at all and that car was used to get the spouse to work. The parents were completely removed from the education experience and now any parent that complains about the lack of knowledge being imparted is considered a troublemaker. So without any commonality in the students experiences, except being ripped out of their neighborhoods by an all powerful government education cartel, some of the students get lost. These lost children are prone to violence just to display their own frustration. I know in my case, I became a loner and the most common experiences from Pittman Jr. High and Hueytown High school were fighting, disrespect and depression. Had they left the school in the neighborhood, I would have spent six years amongst the same children and teachers. As it was, I lost complete interest in school and barely graduated. I participated in nothing, and wanted nothing except to read library books (we didn't have video games) and be left alone. You can find these same traits or actions in way too many children today. The impersonality of the school experience has destroyed and is destroying our children.

In short, our kids have extremely loose ties to each other, the community, the staff of their schools and their parents. Is it any wonder some of them have no problem killing at random. None of those people are friends. YOU WANT SAFE SCHOOLS? Move them back into the neighborhoods.