Smile

Last Monday I woke up in a pretty good mood.  After an enjoyable weekend of Mother’s Day gatherings, I couldn’t help but look in the mirror and say, “You, mister, are a pretty swell guy.”  After all, Friday evening was spent at my parent’s house, and on Saturday we gathered around with my wife’s family.  Sunday, of course, was actually Mother’s Day, so the kids and I did our best to pamper my wife as much as we could.  Pies were purchased and cards were signed, all in an effort to give back to the women who had given us so much over the years.

“Yes, indeed,” I thought to myself Monday morning.  “I may not be the best son/son-in-law/husband/father in the world, but surely, after this weekend, I am on the short list.”

But then I logged on to Facebook.  Monday morning’s Facebook greeted me with dozens of digitized photographs of people and their moms.  Numerous “friends” had posted pictures of them hugging their moms, pictures of them smiling with their moms, and pictures of just their moms, most of them complete with status updates that basically said something like  “just want to take time today to say happy mother’s day to the best mom in the world.”

Needless to say, I felt terrible.  I felt terrible, because although I had spent time with multiple moms over the weekend, I had not taken that next crucial step in our contemporary culture.  Pathetically, I had not digitized that precious memory and then share it with hundreds of hundreds of people.  I am a jerk.

After some reflection, though, I began to reconsider the source of my shame.  Did I feel bad about myself because of Facebook, what with all its bits and bytes of happy people doing happy things, or did I feel bad because I had, just moments prior, felt good about myself for merely doing the right thing?  So what if I had gone the extra step while making the macaroni and cheese by putting three table spoons of butter in the crock pot when the recipe just called for two, and why should I take pride in making sure the steak didn’t burn on the grill?

These actions took place, certainly, as my cholesterol level can attest, but they had not been archived.  They had not been uploaded.  These events were, in a word, lost.  Without a picture shared or even a tweet twote, did these events ever even happen?  The online community won’t ever understand how delectably the salmon had paired with the grilled yams, which is such a shame, because, just so you know, they were delicious. 

Granted, there is a certain degree of irony in all of this, as this column is being read on the Internet.  Thus, the aforementioned Mother’s Day events have indeed been shared with the World Wide Web, but by now it is too late.  Mother’s Day was over a week ago. A week!  In cyberspace, no one cares if you even scream unless it just happened, or, better yet, is happening in real time.

It seems we have meandered into this weird cultural labyrinth where joyful little moments—a dinner with old friends, a child’s first bike ride, a hug from a loved one—seem somehow less valid unless they are uploaded very quickly onto the Internet.  For example, if you are about to enjoy an appetizing piece of meat you have spent hours preparing and then additional hours cooking, then you had better take a picture of it and let everyone know before you ruin the beautiful thing by actually tasting it.  If your kid has just stolen their first base in little league, it now seems that you have a responsibility to at least get that information online before a relative has the bad luck of hearing about the accomplishment second hand by the happy little kid who stole the base in the first place.

“You stole second?  Last night?  And I’m just hearing about it this morning?  What is this, 1987?  Go get me my smartphone, why dontcha,’ so I can take a selfie of me slappin’ ya’ dad in the ear!”

Thus, it only makes sense that eventually—and by eventually I assume last week because I don’t have a smartphone—a software company will design an app with preloaded status updates you can attach to pictures and just send on their way.  This way after you take the picture you won’t have to burden yourself with the task of thinking about what you want to text.

I assume these PSUs—preloaded status updates—could be categorized by icons for even further efficiency.  About to drink a copper-colored craft beer with an aromatic head?  Try, “I can smell the hops from my seat.” 

Need people to know that you are enjoying yourself at your twentieth Pearl Jam concert?  Why not click on “Feels like Eddie Vedder is channeling 1997!” 

Is your adorable little kid being cute…again?  Just attach “laughin’ at the kiddos” to that sucker and let the world know about it.

 Why?  Well, because it’s 2014.  You have to.

Next week, I will gather with old classmates to celebrate our twenty-year high school reunion.  Many of us have not seen or spoken to each other since 1994, but thanks to Facebook, many of us do have an idea what each other has been up to these last couple of decades. 

And that, for the most part, is a good thing. 

We will gather and look at old pictures—in yearbooks, in photo albums, in stacks.  These are pictures of a lost world.  These are snapshots of young people who did not smile for anyone except those in the room.

Those young people are gone. 

Discipline

The seven of you who read my columns on a regular basis may have noticed that I very rarely write about anything that is locally relevant.  My columns often focus on semi-amusing anecdotes about my children, or they will offer the reader fairly vague commentary on a global issue too remote to really make anyone upset.  Recent events, however, have inspired me to discuss an issue that is extremely local, quite relevant, and, most importantly, almost certain to make some of you angry.  You are welcome.

Effingham High School, where I do my best to teach English on a daily basis, has recently come under scrutiny concerning its discipline policy.  Many parents are upset by an environment that they feel is too aggressive.  Some parents, in fact, have chosen to discuss their concern directly and publically to the school board, and for that they should be commended.  Most people, when something bothers them, simply whine about it and more often than not take out these frustrations on innocent bystanders.  Letting your voice be heard at a public forum in a reasonable manner is an exercise sorely lacking in modern American discourse, where it has become much simpler these days to merely hook a few expletives to a semi-coherent, generally misspelled “status update,” or “tweet,” and then send it on its merry way while hiding safely behind a computer screen.

One argument being used to suggest that EHS has a stricter-than-necessary discipline policy is the amount of suspensions being assigned.  Although the number has actually declined in recent years, on the surface the value might still seem too high in relation to the total number of students.  However, like most statistics, this number is a bit malleable, and, like all statistics, it needs to be taken in context. 

For the sake of argument, let us assume a school has a total of 55 suspensions in one academic year.  For a school the size of EHS, which has a fluctuating enrollment of approximately 830 students, that number might be a bit alarming.  After all, taken at face value, one might assume that EHS suspends 15% of its student body.

That is not the case, however.  This number represents the total number of suspensions overall. As a colleague mentioned to me earlier this week, if one were to take three or so students out of that equation, the number of suspensions would drop dramatically.  In other words, the number of students choosing to disregard the rules so often that the administration believes it is finally necessary to remove them from that school is much lower than 55.  Since gardening season is upon us, we’ll use this analogy.  Just because 55 carrots were eaten out of your garden in a year doesn’t mean you had 55 rabbits in your garden; it most likely means you have a few very hungry rabbits.

 This number also does not take into account that EHS, like most modern high schools, uses a progressive discipline policy. This means that only under extreme circumstances would a student be removed from their education for an isolated rule violation.  Suspensions are almost always the end consequence following a series of poor decisions. 

Another argument being forwarded is that the modern high school seems much stricter and more regimented than what we remember. The argument suggests that the modern student has more rules to follow than their counterpart from decades past.  This is mostly true.   Students today do have more rules to follow.  Today, people in general have more rules to follow.  Six months ago I could legally answer my cell phone while driving and learn that I needed to pick up some milk on the way home.  Today, thank God, answering such a call is against the law. 

Society has changed.  For good or ill, we put a much greater emphasis on safety than what we used to, and we seem much more willing to use litigation to make our schools safer.  Schools have always been a reflection of the society of which they serve, regardless of that society.  For example, I have to be “buzzed” into my daughter’s preschool just to pick her up, regardless of how fancy my tie looks that day. 

In closing, we need to ask ourselves:  what is the purpose of schools anyway?  If schools exist to prepare students to succeed in and contribute to an increasingly complicated society, then we do them a tremendous disservice by disregarding inappropriate behavior.  We live in a universe that functions amidst immutable laws.  For every action there will be a reaction.  That’s not public policy; that’s just physics.   That’s not a discipline code; that’s just life.

Teaching our young people to take responsibility for their actions isn’t going to hurt their self-esteem. Teaching our young people to take responsibility for their actions is perhaps the most important lesson we can ever teach, and it’s a lesson much easier learned before graduation.