Prison Exercise Yard: Photo by Jon’s pics
Student: “Ms. Stucco says I have to quit Project Global Cooling to go to the Class Council Representative meetings every week.”
Me: “And you explained to her you’d been volunteering on this project all summer, that you’re an important player in it, and that it’s community service in a big way?”
Student: “Yeah.”
Me: “And she said ‘No,’ pure and simple?”
Student: “Yeah.”
Me: “So what are you guys going to be planning in the Student Council that’s so important she’s forcing you to drop all other activities?”
Student: “The Haunted House for Halloween. And the next Student Assembly.”
Me: “The Haunted House….so, like, getting the pumpkins and doing some Halloween thing in the gym?”
Student: “Yeah.”
Me: “And the Student Assembly: what are you planning for that?”
Student: “Introducing the Sports teams. And raising school spirit.”
Me: “And how many people do you have meeting twice a week to plan a Haunted House and a 40-minute assembly to introduce the basketball players and give a few speeches and such?”
Student: “Seventeen.”
Me: “Seventeen?”
Student: “Yeah.”
Me: “Seventeen people meeting twice a week for the next 20 weeks to plan a haunted house in the gym, and an assembly to introduce sports teams? How long can it take to come up with a plan to introduce sports teams?”
Student: “I know.”
Me: “I hate school. Look at how trivial it makes you, even when you want to make a difference in the real world.”
Student: “I don’t have any choice. Ms. Stucco won’t let me out.”
Me: “And look how powerless you suddenly are. You’re 17. You’re a young adult. You know physics, calculus, and history far more than most of your teachers, but have zero power in school despite that. ‘She won’t let me.’ I hate school.”
So, your advice: I want to suggest he quit Student Council, since it’s clearly one very school-blindered, trivial waste of time for all these poor students seeking election in order to show they can handle power effectively - like adults do.
Another idea is to instead advise him to wage a bit of a rebellion inside the Student Council, by asking the very sensible question - “Is this the best we can do? Jack-o-lanterns and basketballs? Can we give the StuCo some teeth? Extend it into the real world? Isn’t it pathetically fay right now? Trivial? Irrelevant? Infantile?”
The sad thing is, it’s institutionalized. The Rat-Race for college admissions puts a high premium on silly bullets like holding a class office. College counselors, administrators, parents, students, teachers - the whole school culture - treat the Student Council like it’s an honorable thing. In reality, it limits the horizons of the 17 most motivated leaders from each grade level to the paltry world of the schoolhouse. It’s outrageously trivial and infantile.
I don’t know if it’s “consensus trance,” blind traditionalism, or winking condescension (”Let the kids play like they have power”), but it smells really bad to me.
(Luckily, we’re filming for a documentary of “Project Global Cooling.” The student above is going to interview next week as the first casualty in a conflict between “real worldliness” and “schooliness.” The documentary is shaping up to be about the psychology of schools as much as anything else.)
And I can’t help but think: if I were a college admissions officer, and I read a college application essay about how a student chose to sacrifice a prestigious but trivial office for the sake of one less prestigious but more substantial?
I would like that applicant. A real person, with real principles, instead of a budding careerist: what a concept.
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8 Comments
Wow! My initial reaction is: tell him to quit Student Council, but…how much “power” does Ms. Stucco have in the school? How will the student’s parents react if he decides to resign and focus on Project Global Cooling? How “strong” is the student: will bucking the system cause him undue stress?
Students shouldn’t be faced with this type of “choice” - how does your Administration feel about the whole issue?
No easy answer. Sorry.
“Our children will not survive our habits of thinking, our failures of the spirit, our wreck of the universe into which we bring new life as blithely as we do. Mostly, our children will resemble our own misery and spite and anger, because we give them no choice about it. In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.”-June Jordan
I wonder about a middle of the road approach, a third way?
Is there a way for the student to show the Stucco teacher the work he has done on Project Cooling, the website, and emails he’s exchanged so he can see it is purpose.
And then work out a compromise?
To me it is not just about Stuco or the halloween decorations–it’s about any sponsor that thinks their event is more significant than any other event, and isn’t willing to compromise and share the student with their other interests.
To me, that is the aspect of “schooliness” more than the significance of the event. We want to be supportive of the whole child.
I understand there are times students have to make a choice–you can’t sing the solo in the concert but not be available for rehearsals, for example. You have to be able to have your “ensembles” together. But that doesn’t seem the case in this situation.
He may have to make a choice, and sure, I agree that colleges will look on either activity favorably, and would look on his making a choice favorably. It shows good habits of mind.
But I’d also support him making it in a calm and mindful state of mind.
Another choice I can see he has is talking to the principal about it, and saying that he’s not sure how it’s being handled is fair to students who want to participate in more than one thing.
Sorry he’s in this unfortunate situation!
Thanks Diane and Carolyn (Diane, that quote in your comment is fantastic) - More background: I told him to seek a third way with the StuCo sponsor, giving her full background, etc. He did. She just said “No.” (Later, she told me, “I might let you have him after second semester,” and that language rankled to no end. It really is the language of slavery.)
The problem is, she’s a good person, means well, etc. She just seems completely unaware of the implications of her approach and actions here, and in channeling student leadership generally.
Carolyn, your suggestion that he talk to the principal is a good one. I think I’ll talk to the principal as well.
But “school spirit, sequestered style” - meaning one-hour pep events occasionally, or the random hallway decoration campaign, or sports team glorification - is big here. So who knows.
Here’s hoping that you all find a solution!
Wow. I never thought about student council from that perspective. I thought its intention was to have students experience being responsible for school events SO they can have less trouble when they plan real world events. I didn’t know that it could actually refrain us from doing real world work.
Come to think of it, what school usually values is, in fact, trivial in real world. So someone is the head of the basketball team, and the school president. Heck, let’s even say that they scored perfect on the SAT. But so did everyone else. I am willing to bet that there are replicas of these “perfect” students in every school.
It is not my point that planning for these school events is entirely meaningless; in some aspects, it does give us the chances to collaborate with other students, and learn to work as a team. However, it shouldn’t be too much of a commitment that we are not able to explore outside of the school.
And I think that’s what colleges really want from students. They are looking for possibilities, not “perfect students.”
-Lynn Hong, your old student
How bizarre, that picture is from Lincoln Castle where my Year 10s do their GCSE History coursework…
That’s the way I thought about student council when I was in school. The leadership took it so SERIOUSLY (think Tracy Flick), it seemed all out of proportion to the activities.
The teachers running student council seem to have a stick up their behind, even then. With so many real-life ways for students to gain leadership experience, why does this relict of the past still hold sway in modern high schools?
Linda: Amen.
I just discovered something fun: this post is the top Google result for the search, “creating a student council.” Maybe it will make other student councils less juvenile, and open their eyes to the possibilities for real leadership in the real world that student councils COULD embrace.
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[…] council meeting times. That sent me into my second rage against the schooly in my post, “Student Council: Creating Tomorrow’s Followers (or, “Smells Like School Spirit”)“: Me: “So what are you guys going to be planning in the Student Council that’s so […]
[…] student council meeting times. That sent me into my second rage against the schooly in my post, “Student Council: Creating Tomorrow’s Followers (or, “Smells Like School Spirit”)“: Me: “So what are you guys going to be planning in the Student Council that’s so important […]