Dignity Suffers When Students Become Inmates

Sometimes, judging by activity on high school campuses across the United States, it is hard to believe that I live in the most free and unfettered democracy on the planet.

In our zeal to make our high school campuses safe, we have turned them into quasi-police states. Each morning at my school and schools throughout California, students are greeted by the sight of patrol cars, armed police, security guards with headset walkie-talkies and administrators wielding bullhorns.

Oxnard High School has more than 3,000 students, too many for a handful of administrators and campus supervisors to provide adequate supervision to ensure their safety. So although 90% or more of our students are trustworthy kids, they must endure a “high security” environment designed to keep less than 10% under control. At times, keeping a lid on our growing student population seems to be the paramount consideration.

To understand the daily experience of many of our nation’s high school students, imagine the following circumstances at your place of work:

Imagine having a burly security guard who looks like he’d be at home in a wrestling ring come into your workplace and, in front of your colleagues, escort you out for questioning. Imagine security teams checking your “papers” every time you went to the restroom. Then imagine having to hunt for an unlocked restroom bacause there weren’t enough security teams to supervise them all. At lunchtime, envision being huddled together in a central area with thousands of other employees so that your activities could be properly supervised.

If you can imagine yourself experiencing these events, then you have just imagined what high school is like for countless kids.

Because of overcrowding in most of America’s high schools, herding rather than educating becomes the daily nightmare administrators must face. Frankly, I’m amazed that so many of our students are able to get to their lockers, use the restroom, fight the crowd and still get to class on time. Sadly, I know that many don’t get the opportunity to eat because they spend their entire lunch period waiting in line just to get their meal--a meal that might be the only substantial one they have for the day.

Our high schools are simply too big and understaffed. Educators should not be forced to invest enormous amounts of time and energy in crowd control. In the name of safety, we should not be treading on the dignity and integrity of the vast majority of our students to control the behaviors of a few who become more difficult to police as school populations grow.

Surely as citizens of the world’s most powerful and wealthiest nation, we can afford to build more facilities to adequately educate our youth.

If our youth are continually subjected to a climate best suited to military installations and prison facilities, how can we be guaranteed that as a adults they will support a government that fosters free and unfettered democracy? If we want our children to grow up to be independent and responsible adults then we must invest in providing them with schools where educators can be at liberty to treat their students as citizens rather than as inmates of an overcrowded facility.