So, in their infinite wisdom, the Alachua County School Board had sent out this communication announcing changes to the backpacks allowed by middle/high school students for the upcoming school year. Here is the text of the email we received:
What a great idea!
So the goal of the school system is to promote the safety of students, staff, and these pesky other people like parents. Silly me, I thought the goal of the school system is to educate students and prepare them for life after graduation like, oh I don’t know, be able to go to college, or God forbid, become productive members of society.
Since safety is the goal of the school system, the school systems are well on their way to make the schools look like educational prisons. Campuses aren’t supposed to feel welcoming to the students, but we have to make sure that we have the chain link fences and locked gates to keep all those ungrateful little minions safely locked away for 6 hours a day in these educational facilities. Why do we stop there? You know what else we should erect in the name of safety? Guard towers! Panopticons! Moats filled with alligators, after all we are in Gainesville! Any of those little ingrates parents lovingly call their children can easily be cast into those moats to fend for themselves. You already have their tax dollars and it’s one less mouth to feed, so that sounds like a win/win to me!
Maybe you don’t want to go that far, but want to just see what these miserable teens are bringing to school in the hopes of actually getting an education (we can easily dash those hopes by forced indoctrination as prescribed by the glorious leaders in Tallahassee….they shouldn’t be allowed to think and grow to begin with….way too much trouble). These clear backpacks will show everything they bring to school. Especially those teenage girls who may need to bring special supplies to school a couple of days a month. Who cares if they might be embarrassed or otherwise want to keep their private issues private. We live in a post-Roe world now! We live near several fairly in-bred states here in the South where them womenfolk are meant for breeding, not educating them to live their dreams of becoming teachers, astronauts, doctors, scientists, and maybe even lawyers or politicians (we can’t all be productive members of society). They need to be toughened for that birthing that the glorious Supreme Court believes that they are good for.
But why stop there? Are we afraid of things that are in the backpacks that can be used as weapons. You can use books as bludgeoning weapons. We don’t plan to educate these thankless wretches anyway…remember safety first! If they don’t need to focus education, you can remove these other things that could hurt people, like compasses, binders, pencils and pens, calculators…those seem pretty useless in an education setting. (Now that I think about it, since these chatterboxes are nice and safe in our custody…er school, they don’t need keys to get home, phones to contact parents in an emergency). God forbid we even let them learn off of laptops…those are just prizes for anyone to grab and steal since anyone can see where they are in the backpack).
Backpacks shouldn’t be the only thing that are clear or banned. Them female rapscallions don’t need to have purses that may again hide things like tampons or pads…you know those tampons could be used to stuff up someone’s nose in a fight. Those need to be clear as well. No need for privacy in this day and age. What else? I’ve got it! This may get some of your knickers in bunches, but we should also have clear clothing as well. Leave nothing to chance. Some of those boys will be exposed for those weapons they think they have, but resemble more of a pea shooter. Nothing to chance for the sake of security.
You know what, those non-biodegradable plastic backpacks will do wonders for the environment as well! We need to get more petroleum into the ecosystem. We don’t really care about leaving a better world for these petulant humans-to-be. Screw the wildlife as well as everyone goes to Amazon to go and by the cheapest piece of junk to save on the expense of the multiple bags these students will go through in a school year. The post-industrial age has done wonders for climate change, what a few more thousand clear (plastic) backpacks. We can help that ice melt just a little more to help Gainesville get that oceanfront property again!
(H/T to Jonathan Swift and his 1729 Essay)