Tales from the Inner Ring

tune in, turn on . . . but don't drop out just yet

         Back in the early seventies, Alternative School was a place where teachers would turn students onto learning just as students turned each other onto pot.  Since the place was run like a college campus, with an open-door policy except during the three hours a week one took classes, only seniors with suspected susceptibility to the turn on got accepted.  So I actually graduated from an old mansion the school district had condemned for a new school; complete with a gazebo, terraced gardens (where we could smoke--tobacco at least), and classes which wouldn't let us get away with scholck papers.

         Since this time was practically the 60s, where we might have been Slouching towards Bethlehem but "the GNP was high and [sorry I don't have the book for a better quote--and that Didion forgot to mention we were still a creditor country] it should have been a spring of great promise", I'd taken a few shots at some great opportunities:  selling to electronics manufacturers, retiring to raise my son and teach some programming skills.  After CLC folded, something like Enron, and most of the lower-level programming jobs went offshore, it was time to finally take the plunge back into what I'd always wanted to do:  teach.  Districts in my area pay pretty well, so about the only way to get in is to sub: by the day, as a long-term sub, or a 'building sub', where you go in the school every day.  First day out, in a neighboring District which touches the city, I walked into a building sub job in an alternative high school: no mansion this time, but a trailer out back.

         And this school wasn't for the kids who wanted to get more out of school, it was for the those on the last step from getting kicked out of school.  Not the dumb kids, no.  Maybe just the kids with too much reality.

         They usually don't have the middle-class families to rebel against, like we did in the day.  In fact, there's almost no real rebelliousness at all.    Sure there's some passive aggression, a few kids will tell you to f off, and many haven't got the idea that they can jump on a computer and knock a year or so out in just a couple months.  (What mimeographed packets and workbooks did for us in the day). 

         Their real problem is that they've bought into the material culture which started in the 70s.  All they lack is the opportunities we had back when this country still produced wealth . . . and they know this fact, whether they say it or not.  We could "live off the fat of the land" pretty easily.  Kids may laugh I'd say I had to fight for a raise to $2.10 and hour, but that would buy 7 gallons of gas.  Today:  what, $21?  Most kids' parents{/} don't make that.

         About the only constant is kids talking about getting high until the whole subject becomes, well, boring.  Just like back when the turning somebody onto the lifestyle the evangelism of the time.  Except that our kids can't afford to be that generous.  One time people would have greeted discussion of legalized pot as with a chorus of "the times they are a-changin".  Now:

         Hey I heard somebody talking about legalized pot.
         No.
         Hey, if they legalized it, you could get it right at CVS.
         CVS-brand pot.  that's ______-up man.
         Hey wait a minute.  They could put it on sale.
         Yeah, think how cheap it could be.
           That's _____-up man.  If the price gets that low, how are we gonna make any money?

Well, maybe they could advise some people on economic reality for starters . . .