Chuck Dukowski on Charter Schools

From Juice Magazine, #68 -- OUT NOW:

What's a charter school?

It's public funded, but operating independently. Our older kids went to public school until junior high, and they were kind of sad about it. Milo went to high school in public school and he quit that and went to independent and then he just quit altogether. In the younger grades, they went to these charter schools. It was all kinds of crazy people, from hippies to punkers. It was like freak land. It was cool, but they shut that school down because it was cool. The kids really came out of it self-motivated and able to do so much more. My experience with public school was that it tried really hard to beat me down.

My daughter said, "I'm going to go to the local public school." So she left the charter school and went to this public school for a year, and that was a hellish thing. She had a lot of courage to deal with the lining up and the punishing. It's intense. The thing I remember in school was that I lived for recess and the time before school when we could all play. They don't let them do that now.

There's no mixing from class to class at all. It's all very controlled. There's no free play recess. Your best friends could be going to school, but you're only going to see them when you march from one room to another in a line.

... My daughter toughed it out and now she gets to go to a new nice and friendly charter school. There's one thing I've got to say. The hippie thing brought us some positive things. Those schools that are dominated by hippie people are good. They have them all over. You just got to seek them out.

Bass, lyric - Dukowski.