Opinion: Seems like ‘Lord of the Flies’ is city’s political playbook

by CYRYL JAKUBOWSKI

I’ve been covering news, politics and most things pertaining to the Northwest Side for a long time. As your editor of the Northwest Side Press and the Reporter I have seen some salacious stories drop on my desk over the years.

Some were duds, some turned into local controversies that put the Not-In-My-Back-Yards against development into the public sphere, corrupt aldermen (perhaps all of ‘em), and anything else you may have read in Nadig Newspapers. “Not enough parking!” “What about the traffic?”

But nothing has taken the cake more in my experience than the firing of Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez. It’s not the actual firing. It’s the way this entire situation materialized, from one board of education resigning entirely, to another being appointed by the mayor to fire the CEO, voters choosing part of ANOTHER school board, the mayor appointing the remaining members, to all the screaming and name-calling on social media. It’s a circus, and such a “dirty politics” movie playing out in real life. The Chicago Way. I got confused just thinking about all the parts at play.

And I get the plight of the Chicago Teachers Union doing whatever it can to get a good contract. CTU president Stacy Davis Gates says this on TV and on podcasts.

“We need a contract!” Unabashedly, the union wants a return on its investment in Mayor Brandon Johnson. And the thousands of teachers that will benefit from more money is nothing to argue about. The school teachers deserve the means to teach the kids.

But … maybe they don’t. Not like this. Maybe the taxpayers are tired. Not like CPS has a squeaky-clean track record either.

State test scores show CPS is behind in this and that, 4 in 10 teachers were “chronically absent” last school year (how’s that for a $95,000 median salary), according to the Chicago Tribune, a slew of underutilized schools with dozens of students, and … you know, I don’t even want to look at the stats again, because the kids are not getting smarter. The CTU is getting richer.

I’m a CPS kid. I graduated from Steinmetz Academic Centre. That’s how they spelled it.

Love the school. This was in the late 90s, so they made you take tests, and you had to perform and you were so happy you got a good grade and so “sad” when you flunked a mid-term cuz you were smoking pot with the cool kids or making out with some girl in the stairwell near Barry Avenue.

But the teachers were awesome. They challenged you.

Anyone familiar with public schools knows students had to read “The Catcher in the Rye,” and discuss why Holden Caulfield went crazy, or read the “Lord of the Flies” and watch the movie when Piggy gets his head smashed in, or in some cases make paper models based on equations to make a square filled with triangular pieces.

And in biology, the CPS budget was so tight, they moved on from dissecting a pig to dissecting an earthworm.

And in shop, well, nobody did anything in shop but thought about what they would do on Saturday night.

We read Shakespeare, went on “Adventure PE,” which was a trip to challenge yourself and climb an intensely high pole, ran numerous laps around the entire campus for an hour each week in regular PE, sang and performed weird stuff during drama class, which Hannibal Buress eventually emerged from, and put out a weekly school newspaper, the Steinmetz Star, which I was a part of.

I wrote movie reviews back then. “Fight Club.” “American Psycho.” “American Beauty.” “American Pie.”  There was a lot of “American” thrown around.

But now, more than two decades later, the greed and the politics seem to have taken over, or at least that’s the way it looks like to many Chicagoans. People just notice it more.

So don’t give me this stuff about the kids. Most Chicagoans know by now that “for the kids” is just some lingo the union uses to suck more money out of parents and taxpayers.

I’m not angry. I’m disappointed that all this political stuff played out the way I thought it would.

People come into power, they line their pockets as much as they can … and everyone else? Well, screw those people. This happens in every administration. Maybe that’s why many, including the networks and the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, Crain’s Chicago Business and even the state comptroller have chimed in on the debacle. People don’t like what is happening. Plain and simple.

And by the way, “Lord of the Flies,” by William Golding, was a great book. Teachers taught me that at O.A. Thorp Scholastic Academy. I hear that’s where some of the mayor’s kids apparently go. I hope the teachers still discuss that book there.

According to Spark Notes, which is like today’s Cliffs Notes (I did go to CPS, remember),  it deals with “the conflict between two competing impulses that exist within all human beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good of the group against the instinct to gratify one’s immediate desires, act violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce one’s will.”

From Chapter 5:

“The rules!” shouted Ralph, “you’re breaking the rules!”
“Who cares?”
Ralph summoned his wits.
“Because the rules are the only thing we’ve got!”
But Jack was shouting against him.
“Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong-we hunt! If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down!”

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