Chapter Six – The Broken Body of Our Education System – A Principled Principal is Hard to Find
Ah, the principal. Everyone remembers their principal, right? He (or she) is the head of the educational body. He was the guy whose office was seen only by the most disciplinarily helpless classmates. He had a paddle hanging on the wall in the reception area as a reminder to what would happen if you got out of line, and in the case of one of my classmates, a special paddle with her name on it. Most kids were never on the receiving end of that paddle, but just the knowledge that it was there, ready to be used, kept most of us in line. He also stood in the hallway before and after school greeting every child he saw by name, asking how their day was, how their parents were doing or how their pet dog was doing after tangling with that porcupine last week. Somehow, with some seemingly supernatural sense, the principal knew everything that was going on, at any time, inside and outside of the school.
His words over the intercom were few and far between, but when they were spoken, you knew they were important. I remember that I was in fourth grade when the principal’s voice came over the intercom to announce that President Reagan had been shot. Not a sound was made by student while he spoke, telling us that this was a strong nation, and we would survive whatever came our way. Not a sound was made by a student as the thirty seconds of silence that he asked for passed. It wasn’t that specific news that held our attention, either. It was the man who spoke it. We listened so well, because this was a man we respected, and we knew that if it was important enough for him to speak to us over the intercom about, it was damn well important enough for us to give him our undivided attention as we listened.
The principal was many things. A manager, supervising the teachers in their day to day job of educating, a maintenance man, changing light bulbs and working on boilers, a counselor, always there to lend an ear to a child in need, and a teacher, filling in for teachers who couldn’t be there. He was a politician, balancing the needs of his school with the requirements of the school board, and an arbitrator, keeping the peace between angry parents and harried teachers. He was a man with an important job.
