EPIC FAIL!!!

I recently read the book Legion of the Lost by Jaime Salazar. Salazar was a graduate from Purdue University, who took a stab at life as a corporate executive, and found it not greatly to his liking. He walked away from an impressive salary in a high-rise office building, and ended up randomly touring Europe, not really looking for anything, and just generally hoping to find himself. He ended up joining the French Foreign Legion, primarily because he appreciated that it would be a hell of a challenge, and also because he couldn't think of anything better to do with his time. My male readers will appreciate that this is not all that unusual a choice: any man worthy of the name, or least aspiring to the name, has at some point or another thought ‘could I make it in any sort of hard-core military unit like that? Could I get through the US Navy Seals BUDS course? Am I tough enough to really hack it in a situation like that?’ Men wonder about these things. After all, we are the star of the show, but we sometimes wonder whether or not we've been miss-cast.

In any rate, the Foreign Legion has a distinguished history, dating back to its founding in the 19th century, as an outgrowth of France's efforts to retain the province of Algeria. Since then, it's gained a fairly impressive reputation in military circles, not necessarily for great tactical skill or expertise, but instead a reputation for being hard, brutal bastards who take shit from no one. The Legion has historically been a refuge for outcasts, the downtrodden, and/or fugitives from the law, as completion of a tour in the Legion means a new name and a new life with the full backing of the French government, to say nothing of the fringe benefit of any time you're in any sort of tight spot, all you need to do is call out “Moi la Legion!” and you have a better than average chance of several hard-core bastards - fellow former legionaries - appearing more or less out of nowhere, to help you deal with whatever travail is before you. In recent years the granting of French citizenship to legionaries has meant a great many people from the Eastern Bloc have joined the Legion, simply to get out of the hellholes that they live in. This means that anyone who attempts to join the Legion, such as any given Purdue alumni, needs to be impressive enough to win a spot away from a former Spetznaz commando, or other Eastern Bloc special forces type, who's willing to do pretty much anything for a shot at a better life in Western Europe.

The Legion's well-deserved reputation for creating fighting men who are as hard as coffin nails comes both from the Legion mentality, and from the training regimen, which is exceptionally brutal. Based on Salazar's account, corporal punishment, for any or no reason, occurs on levels that put prison riots to shame. The legionaries’ daily grind of make-work tasks - such as cleaning a military kitchen’s worth of pots and pans without either soap or other cleaning supplies - is routinely interrupted by fist fights with other legionaries, and/or beatings – again, for any or no reason - by the legionaries’ own sergeants. (The Legion’s officer corps is drawn from the French Army, but NCOs come from with the Legion’s own ranks.) On the outside looking in, by reading the book, what comes through is a message of savage brutal pointlessness bordering on despair. Miserable work assignments being done for no reason except to make the worker miserable. Beatings from sadists who the legionary is not allowed to fight back against. And of course, the universal military institution of physical training. Until you puke. Assuming there's anything in your stomach to puke up, since legionaries are never well fed. Having an empty stomach makes you hungry, and the French military leadership wants legionaries to be hungry. They consider that sort of hardness to be a positive character trait for foreigners serving in their army, which is hugely ironic in light of the typical laziness, apathy, and softness of any given Frenchman. In the not too distant past, a story made the French newspapers about how a legionary was beaten to death by one of his sergeants in front of the gathered company. For people familiar with the Legion, the only real surprise of the story was that anyone thought it worth reporting. But it’s not all hard work in the Legion. There is recreation as well. Like an entire squad getting roaring drunk, smash all their beer bottles on the floor, then playing some rugby on the glass shards.

Good times are where you find them.

So I was reading the book, particularly details about the pointless assignments, abuse without basis or reason, and intelligent, qualified people being degraded and abused by their fellows, simply because they were more intelligent and qualified than the people around them. Men really are wretched creatures, aren’t they? But what came to my mind, as I was reading all this, was high school.

Now there are those people on earth who consider high school to have been the greatest time of their lives. Not really having to work, surrounded by friends, and having a good time doing anything or nothing, based on whatever their whim was at the time. Generally speaking, people who feel that way about their high school years were That Guy. Or That Girl. You know the one I'm talking about: the muscle-head jock quarterback, who had other people write their papers when not busy stuffing them into lockers, or any other degrading thing that sounded like fun. Or else the cheerleader Princess, who treated every human being on earth like absolute dog shit, except when she needed their vote for prom queen. After watching a recent episode of Bones, it struck me that That Guy and That Girl love high school because it was endless fun, typically at other peoples’ expense. And if you were That Guy or That Girl, you probably don't even realize it. Booth didn't, and he was clearly That Guy.

Having thought about the matter, I think that perhaps 10 to 15% of any given high school class will walk away from it thinking that it was the best time of their lives. The cream of the crop - or at least that's what they would describe themselves as - the honor students, sports stars, and so forth. But for everyone else in any given high school class, most of the day-to-day routine consists of coping with one level or other of abuse from that top 10 to 15%. The jock assholes need to show everyone that they are in fact jock assholes, and princesses almost universally demonstrate their superiority by stepping all over those they consider beneath them. For those outside the self-appointed elite, especially those at the very bottom of the pecking order, physical and emotional abuse from classmates are daily fare, along with lessons tailored towards the lowest common denominator students, taught by teachers who either have no interest in getting actual results, or lack the tools and authority they need to get actual results.

For the self-appointed elite, it’s a charmed life. But for most everyone else, high school represents the absolute worst situation that they will ever face at any point in their lifetimes. Think about it. If an adult had a job that subjected them to the same daily travails faced by the average high school sophomore, they would quit the job, sue the boss, win that suit handily, and probably never have to work again as a result. But somehow, it's considered completely normal for kids being abused regularly by their classmates to be told to suck it up, toughen up, or get over whatever it is that's bothering them, because they really don't know how good they have it. Hell, people wonder what's wrong with their kids: why are they ditching school, why aren't they friends with the popular kids, why are they doing poorly? People can't or don't see the writing on the wall: high school these days is a cross between a day care and a prison, with the added benefit that the kids have no legal standing to challenge the guards or warden, and that all the adults around them think they're just being dramatic when they complain about how badly it sucks.

The twisted part is that people are actually surprised and confused when the system goes from simple ongoing malfunction in to outright meltdown. As Wil McCarthy noted in a recent blog, it is completely idiotic for people considering the Columbine massacre to ask things like “Why did they do it? What were they thinking?” My God, look at the kids’ behavior! For weeks or months before the blowup, the kids were screaming for help from anyone they thought would listen. Everyone in that school knew who they were, knew that they were catching a hard time from fellow students, and still didn't do a damn thing about it, except look for someone (read: someone ELSE) to blame after the fact. But right up until the bullets started flying, those kids could have been any number of students at any high school in the United States. Think back. We all knew those kids who That Guy and That Girl loved heap abuse upon, because they thought it was fun, and because it impressed their friends. None of us did anything about it, nor even thought much of it. It was just part of life in high school.

The fact that school shootings are as rare as they are is much more a testament to the resiliency (and/or apathetic despondency) of the abused students than a testament to the functioning of the system. But what to do? High school teachers these days have kids for one hour a day. Often times, the kids haven’t learned the things they should already to know to be in the class, and all the members of the class are NEVER anywhere near comparable levels of education/intelligence, which means that all the teach can do is aim lesson plans at the center of the bell curve, trust the top end of the bell curve will get by fine, and try to salvage as much as possible from the bottom of the curve in whatever time is available before the hour ends. They don’t have time to be counselors as well, or to try to beat back the tide of juvenile behavior being exchanged between cliques.

I don’t think that there is any real solution to the situation, except for parental involvement. Which is not to say that we should hope that parents take an active role and pay attention to the daily lives of their teenage children. Talk about trying to get blood from a stone: even if parents did try to get hands-on involved, it’s not going to work. ‘Snitches get stitches’ is a truism in both the school system and the prison system. Mommy or daddy stepping in is distinctly NOT going to improve the social situation of the High School lower class. Instead, the hope is that parents will make enough money to put their kids in private school. You know: the kind of school where class-levels are based on capability, and where teachers actually have the power and authority to do the job they are entrusted with. Doesn’t sound like too much to ask for, does it?

In the meantime, the public high schools will grind along, and – much like the Foreign Legion – will continue to use social abuse and ostracization, and the occasional beating from some over-bearing asshole, to turn wide-eyed young kids into hardened semi-adults. That Guy and That Girl will go on to whatever situation they choose (or that mommy and daddy can buy for them), and hopefully the kids at the other end of the spectrum won’t gun down too many of their classmates in the meantime. And the world will keep turning.