The sheer mass of letters in response to Camille Paglia’s Welcome to my world is hard to believe (13 pages worth of them), but even more amazing is their single-mindedness: nearly all the letters are on her shredding of the modern high school environment, and every single one of them, save one, emphatically agrees with some part of her comments. This came from everyone from disaffected shop teachers and craftspeople, to religious homeschoolers, to Lies My Teacher Told Me readers, to people advocating the destruction of standardized curricula. Now, most of the comments ranged from off-target to painfully reactionary, but I think this should really indicate something: high schools really suck. Nearly every single letter had the same theme of alienation, boredom, and stifling while in high school–whether from post-grad degree holders or dropouts.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot that’s good about high schools today. I had a great high school experience. I wouldn’t mind teaching at one of them myself. But there is a lot that is actively cutting against that good. And most of it has to do with the petty authoritarian structure of high schools. Students are forced into class, they sit and fill out forms, bells ring, and like good little rats they find their way through the maze to the next classroom. Guidance counselors track them into the course line-up that most befits their socio-economic background, goon squads of idle administrators patrol the hallways lest anyone consider spending their time outside of approved venues. Since I left my old high school, they’ve begun requiring student ID cards and greatly tightened up a once nearly unenforced closed campus policy.

The best parts of my high school career were the times when I was really free from this kind of micromanagement. My senior year I had a Early Release car tag that was supposed to only cover the last period of the day, but was effectively permission to leave campus whenever I pleased. Lax enforcement of attendence and tardy policies for seniors made it even better. I stuck with all my classes and learned a lot–and I really enjoyed it, because I was finally being treated like a responsible human being capable of making my own choices. I really look askance at the administrative response to school violence, which has been to tighten up and lock down their little bureaucratic fiefdoms as much as possible for the sake of security. That locking-down means even more locking-down of imagination, critical thinking, even more conversion of vital young girls and boys into boring docile bodies filling out forms. It’s taking what should be an academic community and turning it into a prison.

The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (not the same as the more famous branch of Mormons / LDS) has decided to change its name to Community of Christ in order to better differentiate themselves from those other LDS guys.

I am really, really tired of every modern social bloc (be it BoBos or Generation X or Generation Next or Internet capitalists or modern cheesecake workers) being declared some kind of messianic Third Way which will somehow fundamentally shatter the old categories of left and right. I am even more tired of summary swipes at affirmative action, the assumption that distrust of the government or the two-party system is somehow dangerous to the future of American democracy, and the incessant claim that voting for representatives (as opposed to, say, petitioning, boycotting, and even gasp! direct action) is the only way to make political change. Nevertheless, this analysis of the politics of Generation X is an interesting look at several of the phenomena going on in today’s generational divide.

Oh my God, a Salon.com columnist has actually said something intelligent. Mad props to Andrew Leonard for, well, making the exact same point I was making: the kitschy appropriation of rhetoric and images from liberation movements, by foundering Internet corporations, is both outrageous and pathetic. As Leonard says (emphasis added), the Internet can have many benefits for democratic interactions between people,

But Napster, the company, is not about promoting democracy. Napster is about making a buck, or, to be precise, a whole lot of bucks, by exploiting a new distribution paradigm. The company’s use of ’60s rhetoric — such as its plan to hold a teach-in on April 2 to educate people on why it should be allowed to stay in operation — in the service of its commercial interests is repugnant and crass. And our personal right to be able to get stuff for free online? Come on, people. We’re not talking about stopping bombs falling in Vietnam, are we?

As a side note, it turns out that the Napster march will be on April 3–which happens also to be Michael Tchong’s self-declared Take Back the Net day. As it turns out, I’m not the only one that noticed the incredibly offensive appropriation of the name of Take Back the Night, one of the world’s oldest and most powerful marches against sexual violence. Tchong has quietly changed the name of his campaign to Back the Net Day. I hope he got to read some really nasty hate mail first.

In happier news, an anonymous group which may or may not be the ELF has claimed responsibility for destroying a dealership full of SUVs. The Hear-Hear Award goes to their communique for saying gas-guzzling SUVs are at the forefront of this vile, imperialistic culture’s caravan towards self-destruction. We can no longer allow the rich to parade in their armored existence, leaving a wasteland behind in their tire tracks.