True To Our Schools

THUMP! THUMP!

The backpacks hit the floor with the whomph of a 500-pound bomb detonating inside a Baathist bunker. My children are still in elementary school, but when loaded up with textbooks and notepads, the bags they haul weigh at least 20 pounds. The backpacks are too heavy to be easily carried for long distances; they must be rolled on little wheels.

I myself did not own a backpack in elementary school. I didn't need one, because I never had any homework. I vividly remember the nasty shock of my first overnight assignment: It arrived at the beginning of the seventh grade. Until then, I'd walked to and from school with empty hands.

There's a common assumption among conservatives that the story of modern civilization is one of continuous decline. Depending on whom you ask, we hit our peak somewhere about 1955 -- or 1890 -- or maybe even the Middle Ages, and ever since it's been all downhill. This is not an assumption I can share. I graduated from high school a quarter-century ago, and as I compare my educational experiences to those of my children, I have to admit: My educational cohort probably represents something like the absolute nadir of the North American educational system.

My elementary school in the Toronto suburb of Willowdale abolished marks and grades in 1966 -- by happy coincidence, the year I entered elementary school. It was strongly believed at the time that assessing children according to some arbitrary standard would crush our little spirits. Instead, the school would evaluate how well each of us was fulfilling his own inner potential -- and not surprisingly, it nearly always reported that we were doing just fine.

I arrived in junior high school -- middle school, as many Americans would say -- in the fall of 1973. The year before, the school had eliminated the last pitiful remains of its dress code. The girls used their new freedom to dress like Depression-era coal miners (denim overalls, slouch hats) or British Columbian lumberjacks (checked shirts, Greb boots). The boys preferred the heroin-addict look: tight black T-shirts, torn blue jeans, long stringy hair. I remember one unfortunate who transferred in mid-year from a less affluent school: On his first day, he wore a white-collar shirt neatly tucked into his corduroys -- it took him an entire semester to recover from that horrible mistake.

The first thing I learned when I entered high school was how to procure a false ID. It was incredibly easy. The nearby University of Toronto issued international student cards that entitled the bearer to discount prices at European museums. The application-takers asked you for your birthday and typed onto the card whatever date you chose to give them. I promoted myself from 16 to 18 and received a flimsy, typewritten document that got me safely past the few bartenders who remembered to ask for it.

I graduated in 1978, and proceeded to a university that rather haughtily described its dorms as "colleges." I vividly remember a stern lecture in the fall of 1978 from the master of my college: "I don't," he said, "want to catch any of you smoking marijuana." He set us all a fine example by postponing his marijuana-smoking until after midnight.

What is the opposite of zero tolerance? Maximum tolerance? My high school -- generally regarded as an academically rigorous institution -- permitted me to opt out of both physics and biology, to skip trigonometry entirely, and to graduate without the ability to read a single note of music. When I read about these kids who get expelled for bringing Midol to school, I remember the boy who sold Quaaludes undetected in the locker room.

Of all the families I knew, mine was the only one to restrict television-watching in any way -- nevertheless, I probably watched at least twice as much as my children or any of their friends are allowed. I look back on those years now and wonder what on earth the grown-ups thought they were doing.

Of course, my children's generation will probably wonder exactly the same thing. My generation of parents -- at least that subset of parents who are married and middle-class -- is grimly determined to deny their own children the amazing liberty they themselves once enjoyed.

We were rarely tested. (I remember one teacher who put a big red checkmark and the words "Good try!" on every student's quiz sheet.) Our children are measured and scored like prize heifers.

We did little work. (I belong to the New Math generation: I absorbed the times tables only accidentally -- I still have to do a computation for 11 x 13.)

We were lightly disciplined: A 30-minute detention was considered a savage sentence.

We slept in. School in those days started at 9 a.m. Today, elementary schools often start at 8:20; high school, at 7:30.

Above all, we were let alone. If boys and girls were left unsupervised in after-school basements, it was not exactly because the adults were neglectful, but because those veterans of the hard years of Depression and war could not imagine what a more indulged generation of children might be doing down there.

Well, my generation of parents can imagine it -- and so we put our little darlings under Stasi-like supervision. We buy them helmets for their bicycles, for their tricycles even. We schedule their days from dawn to dusk with sports and music lessons and extra tutoring. We pass laws requiring shopkeepers to scrutinize ID cards before selling cigarettes or beer. Their teachers can sniff substance abuse at 50 paces. And then of course there is the work: the mountains and mountains of work.

We tell ourselves that all of this is for the children's own good, and surely much of it is. Their schools are drug-free, they know their times tables, and they won't get injured if they fall off their safety-engineered jungle gyms. But would I trade places with them? Reader -- would you?