It’s recently dawned on me that I spend all day lying to children…what a shit job.

Telling them they can be whatever they want to be. Telling them that they should listen to their parents. Not being able to tell them how it really is. It’s all really just veiled lies.

A lot of the time they should take what their parents say and do the opposite. Like the little girl who lives in a hotel with her brother and unemployed mother, all three of who come in daily wreaking so badly of weed that it’s difficult to have her in my tiny room. They have money for weed, bad tattoos, and new kicks, but not for proper housing.

This is the girl who legitimately thinks she has the right to curse out a teacher who “disrespects her”. The reason she’s even with me in ALC is that she cursed out my wife (not even one of her teachers) because my wife told her to quit wandering the halls and get to class.

I want to tell this girl that it’s impossible to violate her respect because she’s earned none. She’s 12, doesn’t pay taxes, doesn’t make good grades, has no job, and has a mother who’s a drain on the economy and seems proud of it. If a teacher corrects or even yells at her, she has not been disrespected because the only rights she has are to be safe and healthy, neither of which “get to class” puts in jeopardy.

But I can’t tell her that, because then her mother will trapse in here with the “how dare you” speech, to which the logical response would be “no madam, how dare YOU”.

I can’t tell these kids that they’re doomed and their only hope for salvation is to learn a trade or get an honest job.

They won’t be rappers.

Sandra Bullock will not adopt them and get them to the NFL.

I can’t tell them that (in the interest of believing that they can all be doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs) we sacrifice the children with REAL potential to excel by creating an ineffective learning environment with children who cannot and will not be quiet or cooperative.

Ladies and gentlemen, the public school system is NOT a free education for all.

It is free parenting by underpayed government employees in service to a demographic of people who were not ready or capable of being in charge of a house plant, nonetheless another human life.