Photo Credit: The Daily Call.org

Dynamic Schools is set in Bozo Land, 

 a wasteland in a valley that turns beautiful when it rains, but even if it doesn't, it bears a lot of potential.

Because I don't dare name the school district, it's just called Bozo.

Why am I doing this? First, no teacher respects any person beneath them. It doesn't matter if the person beneath them has a ph.D. If you are working for a teacher or working as a substitute, nobody pays you any quarter, because you are hired and fired at will.

Second, to give an example, we pay dues to SEIU, but in fact SEIU has become like a building in need of serious renovations, but all the absentee owners care about is dues because they have a huge burden paying all the retirees. I mean, if you think you are going to get representation over an issue, such as a wrongful evaluation, it won't really happen. How do I know? A big hint is they won't list any email address except email addresses for Bozo School District Human Resource specialist. That's a big help, sending your issue back to HR, when in fact HR is the one taking the evaluation and putting it in your file.

Third, the hubris in Bozo Land about who is a teacher is astonishing, but not really. Everything in this land is breaking down, because the system is overloaded with debtors and all our manufacturing takes place overseas. Under the rentier economy, unions have shrunken to the point that teachers are about one of the last remaining middle-class strongholds. Being a teacher, you are identified as middle-class and respectable.

I saw a couple teachers this summer in a van driving back to the airport in the Southwest. These teachers had discovered they were teachers (one to another) and all the way back, they jabbered endlessly about their exciting jobs. Little did they know or care that there may have been more than one qualified teacher present. Their narcissism really showed because this quasi-homeless person claiming to be a lawyer sat in the front seat. They warmed up to his clever talk, never dreaming he might not be whatever he said he was. Again, all they care about is the appearance of success.

So this exemplifies quite clearly what is symptomatic throughout the nation (even the capitols), that people are behaving more and more like rats running inside the Labyrinth called Play to Eliminate.

This make more-brag more-spend more-display more-identity formation is sort of an obsessive-compulsive manifestation of capitalist braggadocio that leaves all working professionals like ghosts. Teachers and principals, especially, are completely out of touch with other human beings, especially homeless people, who they blame for their problems. Their consciences are assuaged once a week when they attend church.

Fourth, in Bozo School District, it's very hard for parents and outsiders to monitor or change anything. Parents are herded into "coffee time" or "open-house." They are not invited to actually sit and watch in the classroom, ever, and they have all kinds of reasons they give, such as all the red-tape it takes even to become a school volunteer. Those inside the system, like the temporaries, low-grade staff, or maintenance types, are relegated to niches so narrow that no one recognizes them for anything beyond their proscribed duties. (An exception is an Intern, who being managed by university institution, is awarded credit). Is this really how an open organization is supposed to work?

In an open organization, everyone in the community contributes to the welfare of the children, and all the functions attendant upon fostering a warm, caring atmosphere. Communes and communities are supposed to function like that because we are all born with and have many gifts that we develop throughout our lives. Sure, we may not be experts, but in a real community, the citizens jams.

Bozo SD, like Bozo Land, and like the nation in general, uses specialization as an excuse to confine individuals to specific functions. That's why schools are not communities anymore; they are institutions.

Once an institution becomes a proto-fascist, semi-martial law organized bureaucracy, only those at the top, those in the know, people in privileged cliques, have a say in what's going on. This scenario sort of reminds you of the movie, Shawshank Redemption, where the top brass are really into corrupt things like embezzlement, or other disgusting things like drug running.

In places like Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and anywhere the mob can infiltrate, schools, particularly middle and secondary schools have become training grounds. How many of the teachers and administrative staff are knowing participants in the school to prison pipeline is a guess. But there are clearly marked stations, and it includes criminal classifications and police participation as well.

Maybe that's why they work so hard to keep people in their places and suffocate the voices of those who have not only legitimate academic qualifications but street-wise experience. They really don't want people like me who can see and identify and figure out what is going on behind the scenes.