My Old Quarrel With School Bureaucracies

Why do I loath bureaucracies so much?

I’m normally an even-keeled, positive person.

But when I run into “one-size-fits-all” rules, policies, procedures that block, demean, don’t fit, and serve no purpose, I am quick to get hot under the collar and take it personally.

It bothers me more than it should.  

Case in point….

My son is registering this afternoon for this coming year in high school, and somehow they scheduled him to have no English and no Social study classes during his junior year.

Which makes so much sense. (yes, I’m being sarcastic!)

We had them all figured out with the counselor last June and turned in all the right paperwork on time.

And here is the result.

Which is why it’s probably a good thing his mother, rather than I, went with him.

I would be furious and probably start an argument that wouldn’t do me or my faith any credit.

My wife’s bugaboo is medical bureaucracies.   Mine are school bureaucracies.

I don’t mind calling doctors offices and insurance companies, have patience on the phone, and usually get a great result.

But when it involves my kids and the school applies a policy that is counterproductive and even downright nonsensical, I’m ready to fire off a tough-worded letter to them and get into this fight club mode.

So now I’m going to do what I have counseled other people to do:  I’m going to ask the Holy Spirit to pinpoint where this came from and connect the dots.

I’m going to tell my school bureaucracy part of my story.

The goal is insight, and a freedom from the tyranny of reactions by using reactions to expose the “issue behind the issue.”

I’m laughing as I write this because I know exactly where all this is coming from:  my bad experiences with elementary school, and with Jr. High school offices and administrators.

I began kindergarten as a kid who loved learning, and I left 6th grade with a very bad attitude towards school.

For one thing, as a bright kid with a touch of Aspberger’s, all the so-called socialization pressures at school were a torture.

The drive to conformity and get everyone to achieve a certain academic level, to fit into the proscribed box by a certain time, didn’t work well for me.

I pretty much learned all that school was designed to teach me by the end of 4th grade.  And rotted for two years in mediocrity and meaningless repetition of the same information.

Then the worst evil of my life happened during the summer before 7th grade.

It was an incident that struck at the core of my being, that wounded my manhood and left me in emotional agony, deeply humiliated, and terribly insecure.

We didn’t talk about being molested or stranger abduction publicly back in those days.

Jewelry Class??!!

So here I am, midway through 7th grade, and the school scheduled me to take a Jewelry class of all things.

I appealed to the principle and told him I didn’t want to take it and wanted something different.   He didn’t listen and told me, “Too bad–it’s what you’re going to take.”

So I did something I have never done before or since:  I purposely failed a class.

And I did it to protect my sense of manhood, already injured and fragile.

I felt profoundly demeaned, not heard, and abused all over again by an impersonal system run by uncaring, controlling adults who loved their system more than they loved kids.

People who didn’t bother to take the time to ask, “Why is this so important to you?  What’s all this about?”

The iron entered my soul and I learned the wrong lesson:  school bureaucracies are the enemy!  One-sized-fits-all systems are not equalizers but the very height of injustice! Curse them!

Which meant that anytime anything similar affects one of my kids in their dealings with school I am tempted to fight this battle all over again and win no matter what.

But what I really need is to bring this ancient wound to Christ, openly name it for what it is, and ask for a dose of love from the Ultimately Abused Person who died on the Cross for me.

And then, as a beloved child, to forgive these old injustices from a position of riches and bring closure to them once and for all.

So that’s what I’m going to do right now.