recently:
03.07.02//for my DS3 immuity challenge, go to the entry before this one.
beats !!

sooo. today was "diversity day" at my school. positive side of this? no classes. negative side? everything else.

my school is one of those schools that tries really hard to be politically correct. they want to seem concerned with the current events, and try to appear as if they are active in informing the children. they want students to go home to their parents after school and say "well, mother, guess what we did in school today! we had an assembly about what happened on september eleventh, and although i cried, afterwards i felt educated, and proud to be an american."

but even our principal knows that it's damn hard to be wholesome and have touching speakers and thought provoking slideshows, while still preventing the students from leaving (let alone keeping them interested). so, he attempts to do things that are informative and inspirational, that the students will also enjoy. this, friends, is impossible. it's either too informative, or too enjoyable...you can't get a good mix of the two. let me explain.

a month or two ago, we had an assembly on why drugs are bad. we had a speaker come in: a young, attractive, african american man, who was a former addict. it was awesome. after his performance, he got a standing ovation. want to know what i would have said to my parents, had they asked about it?

"well, mother, today in school we had an assembly about drugs. i learned how to inject heroin into my forearm, as well as hearing a detailed explanation of what it is like to have your clothes peeled off of you after living on the streets for a year." wholesome? i think not.

we also had an assembly for Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. this was one of those too informative ones. there was a slide show, students from our school who wrote speeches on what a great man King was, and a reading of Maya Angelou's "Still, I Rise". by the end of the two hour long presentation, half the students had left (it was so bad they didn't care whether they got a cut or not), and of those that were still there, 99% were asleep. was there a standing ovation? no. applause? maybe from the 20 people that were present and concious. obviously, it wasn't a hit.

diversity day wasn't a hit either. we had a presentation from a group called "Hartbeat", who performed scenario's of racial and sexual discrimination, and then asked us "what's wrong with this picture?". the only thing that kept people from falling asleep was the really really hot guy in the group named steve.

and this mentally disabled kid tomas.

tomas, is hysterical. i love him to peices. everyone that knows him loves him - and practicaly the whole school knows him. so today at the assembly when he made quite a negative comment on the performance, he got too many cheers to count. not because we agreed, although we did - just because we love him so much. here's what happened.

the group finished performing a scene, and the girl was like, "was there any thing wrong with this scene?" and about 3 kids said in a half asleep, monotone voice "yeeeesssss", and the girl was like "can you tell me what?" and then in chimes tomas, yelling at the top of his lungs so the whole auditorium could hear...

"IT SUCKS!!!!"

"what sucks?" says the surprised, and quite stupid girl.

"THIS WHOLE SHOW SUUUCKS!!!!!!"

tomas was immediately escorted out of the premesis.

the whole school roars up in laughter, and screams of "YEAH TOMAS!!!" "TOMAS IS FUCKIN' AWESOME!!!" "YOU BET YOUR FUCKIN' ASS IT DOES", and other such crude things erupt from all corners. finally, the teachers manage to calm the students down. but that was a moment i know *i'll* never forget.

after the assembly, we were forced to go to classes in which we learned about different races, religions and sexual preferences, got to share our own opinions on the same issues, and learned about what hate crimes are and how they're prosecuted. that was my favorite class. where we overviewed the entire act making hate crimes illegal, phrase by phrase. that took an hour... an hour of playing snake on my cellphone.

needless to say, i ditched the last two classes.

wow, school! another great attempt to get involved! i can't wait until diversity day next year!