<i> ‘No Explosives, No Extortion’: Welcome to Public School

She has spent years at a private school, where the list of disciplinary infractions begins with “No chewing gum on campus” and goes on to forbid such things as “being disobedient or disrespectful” to teachers and using “profane, vulgar or obscene words.”

So I should have prepared my daughter for culture shock before she started public school this summer.

“No smoking ... stealing ... fighting ... extortion,” she read from the disciplinary code of her new campus. “No use or possession for sale of narcotics ... no explosives ... assault or battery ... possession of weapons--knives, razors, guns.”

She looked up at me, wide-eyed. “Do you think they made a mistake?,” she wondered. Guns, drugs, smoking ... in middle school? At her Christian school, the worst classroom conduct she ever witnessed was when Jeff threw a spitball at Angela.

We left public school years ago, when budget cuts raked our neighborhood campus, cramming second-grade classrooms with 32 kids and leaving bathrooms and lunch tables uncleaned for weeks.

But private school came with its own trade-offs and costs. While there was much to love about the cloistered safety of my middle daughter’s Christian school, I came to worry that her intellect was being stifled by its rigidity.

Middle school should be a time of discovery. I’d set my daughter on course to make good choices. Maybe seventh grade was the time to let her spread her wings.

It would be a risky move, by conventional wisdom. Middle school is where children are most vulnerable to influence by their peers, as they move away from parents and seek the approval of friends instead. Experts warn that the kids with whom they affiliate will help shape their identity and form expectations that they will then live up to--or down to.

Summer school seemed like a good transition--a chance to feel the place out, maybe make some friends, before 2,000 kids jam the campus this fall.

From the very first day, she was fascinated by the school’s eclectic atmosphere. “The kids, they’re so different,” she told me. “The way they talk, the way they dress .... They all seem so ... so free!”

Free wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. I knew just what she meant, and it worried me. The gaggle of girls in Gothic dress; the curses that echoed across the halls; a boy with braids and baggy pants, pinning a buxom girl up against the wall.

How must this look to a 12-year-old who still calls sex the “s-word” and says “Oh, my gosh!” when she’s mad.

At her old school, we never had to worry about kids stepping across the line. Parents wouldn’t let their daughters wear short skirts or sons pierce their ears, never mind what the school code said. And when a boy liked you, he didn’t hoot at you across the quad, but offered to carry your books upstairs.

But so far, my daughter seems happy. The campus is orderly and well-tended. The teachers are nice, the office staff helpful, the students friendly and polite. She’s already building a circle of friends--mostly girls from our church or her soccer league.

Every day seems to hold adventure, every afternoon there’s a story to tell. Some scare me and hearten me at once, like the one about the boy who had a cigarette lighter in class. My daughter kept glancing from him to the sign-- “Report Weapons on Campus” --trying to figure out who and how to tell. In the meantime, a classmate summoned the teacher and the lighter wound up on the principal’s desk.

My daughter misses morning chapels, the student store and her science teacher. But I am the one, I realize, who misses the comfort of conformity.

But if public school holds peril, it also offers possibilities ... a chance to see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

Before we left, a teacher at our Christian school tried save my daughter’s soul by warning us about public school. “You won’t be allowed to pray,” she told her. “You can’t have your Bible at public school.”

But on my daughter’s second day of summer classes, a boy pulled a Bible from his backpack in math and, when he’d finished his work, read silently from it.

Now, every day, my daughter’s horizon broadens. With each encounter, her universe expands. And lessons are taught not only by teachers, but also classmates, like the girl with fatigues and blue hair.

She had a nice smile, my daughter said, but her heavy, silver chains had emblems on them, which might mean, my daughter’s friends had told her, that the girl was into devil worshipping.

So who should we encounter at the YMCA that evening but a fresh-faced blond, hair dyed bright blue. “That’s her,” my daughter whispered, as the girl peeked around her mother and waved. She was there for the hip-hop class, the same one my daughter was signed up for. And after 45 minutes of “Bootylicious”--the song the class is dancing to--my daughter had made not just a friend, but a discovery, to boot.

“She’s really nice,” she told me when class was over. So what’s with the blue hair and chains?, I asked.

She shrugged. “I guess that’s just what she likes,” she said. And she looked at me like I needed a lesson. “You know, it’s OK to be different sometimes.”

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Sandy Banks’ column runs on Tuesdays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is [email protected].