Schools Can’t Do It All

On Dec. 12, an informational meeting was held at Lawrence Junior High School regarding the Chatsworth area middle school issue. I was unaware of the reason for the reconfiguration. I assumed that it was to gain more space for the overcrowded conditions.

However, when I got home, I read the literature handed out outlining “Caught in the Middle” and “Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century.”

What a crock!

Does the board really think the parents are so stupid to believe that our lives must again be quickly uprooted (the first time was earlier this year with the impulsive year-round school calendar) because some report shows:

“Because of the feelings of inadequacy, confusion, moodiness, self-consciousness, and the rapid physical, emotional, and psychological changes taking place in the early adolescent there is a need for every middle grade student to feel connected and feel a sense of belonging.”

So, the board will take immediate action to rectify these “adolescent characteristics” by disrupting the Chatsworth community even further this year by putting ninth-graders into high school and sixth-graders into “middle school” while the magnet students at Nobel will remain in a 7-8-9 configuration because they are doing just fine?

Wow! I repeat, what a crock!

The school board has created its own monster by busing in elements generally not found in our community. These elements include gang members violating property, people, and creating an overall unpleasant situation. So here comes the board to make things better.

Children have gone to school through these “problem” years since the beginning of time and organized education. I can’t see that the “middle school” is a solution to the “adolescent characteristics” quoted above. It is merely the board’s way of shifting the burden onto the high school.

The literature does not mention that nowadays children in our society are coping with dysfunctional families, living in one-parent homes, or with a stepparent they can’t stand, or with unemployed parents, or parents who both work. With any of these situations, the child does not get the parental attention that children were afforded decades ago.

Things have changed with this generation, but please don’t placate us by saying that “middle school” will heal these problems.

I see on the news that AIDS awareness is an issue at the high school level, and that condoms may be made available.

Are they ready to pass out condoms to ninth-grade boys? Just what are those people thinking?

MAUREEN BRATMAN

Chatsworth