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bluedalahorseGoing to do something I don’t usually do and comment on sitcoms in this post… I didn’t watch last week’s Abbott Elementary until last night, but the episode’s still sticking with me. Even though I teach in a very different educational setting than Abbott, there’s parts of that episode that really hit home. I’ll explain why beneath the cut.
So this week’s episode did much-needed satire about anti-drug programs in the United States—how they’ve historically been ineffective, and how they’re all part of the machinery of the War on Drugs since the 1980s and (ugh) Reagan. They’ve addressed this before, mostly from the perspective of awkward assemblies. (There was one in this episode too.) But the stakes were raised in this episode when a student gets caught smoking in the bathroom.
What really stuck with me was the scene where all of the main teachers admit to engaging with various substances recreationally on nights and weekends. I noticed myself having a reaction during this scene, which when I think about it was like nooo you can’t admit this in front of people. I was scared for the teachers. There is honest to god so much pressure on educators to be overworked moral paragons, you can’t even admit that there are nights where you give up on grading papers and watch TV instead. To watch teachers admit to having edibles on the weekends, and not have the show paint them as villains or somehow worse teachers because of it, well—that was surprising! But… in a good way? Like I think this is something people need to think about, more.
And then to see that that scene paired with the scenes about zero tolerance policies at the school, how a kid with good grades who is “usually not the type” is the one who got caught caught trying a cigarette in the bathroom, and suddenly he has to be suspended for so many days, and all the kids’ backpacks (right down to kindergarten) need to be checked. When Gregory and Melissa try to do an intervention with the kid, and find out what’s going on, and you know they have the idea of what kind of personal connection would help the kid, and you know they have the life experiences for the conversation to be meaningful. But you also see how the system gets in the way of them having that conversation or being fully effective, and “zero tolerance” means the kid gets suspended anyway.
Obviously the episode is about US drug policy and how it further marginalizes kids of color, so I don’t want to downplay that very real message. And at the same time I think there’s broader ideas here that extend to how the US approaches children in general, and how deeply flawed that is. We hold people who interact with kids—mothers, teachers, etc—to intense, unattainable standards of moral purity, and then we try to keep kids morally pure when they are curious about any and everything, and almost everything we do goes against kids developing the agency and critical thinking they need to actually figure stuff out as adults.
Anyway. There’s more to say, perhaps, but this is something I’m pretty damn passionate about, and last week’s Abbott hit a nerve I didn’t know it was going to hit. I wonder how many people feel the same.
So this week’s episode did much-needed satire about anti-drug programs in the United States—how they’ve historically been ineffective, and how they’re all part of the machinery of the War on Drugs since the 1980s and (ugh) Reagan. They’ve addressed this before, mostly from the perspective of awkward assemblies. (There was one in this episode too.) But the stakes were raised in this episode when a student gets caught smoking in the bathroom.
What really stuck with me was the scene where all of the main teachers admit to engaging with various substances recreationally on nights and weekends. I noticed myself having a reaction during this scene, which when I think about it was like nooo you can’t admit this in front of people. I was scared for the teachers. There is honest to god so much pressure on educators to be overworked moral paragons, you can’t even admit that there are nights where you give up on grading papers and watch TV instead. To watch teachers admit to having edibles on the weekends, and not have the show paint them as villains or somehow worse teachers because of it, well—that was surprising! But… in a good way? Like I think this is something people need to think about, more.
And then to see that that scene paired with the scenes about zero tolerance policies at the school, how a kid with good grades who is “usually not the type” is the one who got caught caught trying a cigarette in the bathroom, and suddenly he has to be suspended for so many days, and all the kids’ backpacks (right down to kindergarten) need to be checked. When Gregory and Melissa try to do an intervention with the kid, and find out what’s going on, and you know they have the idea of what kind of personal connection would help the kid, and you know they have the life experiences for the conversation to be meaningful. But you also see how the system gets in the way of them having that conversation or being fully effective, and “zero tolerance” means the kid gets suspended anyway.
Obviously the episode is about US drug policy and how it further marginalizes kids of color, so I don’t want to downplay that very real message. And at the same time I think there’s broader ideas here that extend to how the US approaches children in general, and how deeply flawed that is. We hold people who interact with kids—mothers, teachers, etc—to intense, unattainable standards of moral purity, and then we try to keep kids morally pure when they are curious about any and everything, and almost everything we do goes against kids developing the agency and critical thinking they need to actually figure stuff out as adults.
Anyway. There’s more to say, perhaps, but this is something I’m pretty damn passionate about, and last week’s Abbott hit a nerve I didn’t know it was going to hit. I wonder how many people feel the same.
