Adulthood and the PDX school district

You may know that I am, like most people in our country, of European descent. The chute was fairly brutal as I am my own first generation immigrant. (If you are a minuteman you’re welcome to try and grab me, I need trigger time…) I went to primary and secondary school over there and I am used to class being an organized event with the teacher firmly in charge.
Hence you might understand that I have been leery to send my, as of yet unborn and unconceived, children to public school in this country. My fears grew worse today after my latest trip for work.
I took children from Sunnyside Middle School to a tree farm and back. The trip down was acceptable. A bit to noisy for me but I not only have European but Marine standards for behavior. On the way back it was a different story. I was already a little upset because the kids had littered the bus in the morning. Before they even boarded the bus I had to break a fight between a male and a female in front of my stairwell. Those two, which I forced to sit together in the front seat, then proceeded to scream, stand, turn, twist, slap and pinch one another for the remaining of the trip without the teacher sitting right across from them ever looking up from her magazine! Other kids were standing up right in front of the five other teachers without one ever attempting to bring order to the mayhem. Some of the screams were so sudden and shrill that I stomped my brakes a couple of times thinking there was some kind of an emergency. It would seem to me that 6 teachers should have been enough to bring a semblance of peace and manners to a busload of kids. Adulthood might be determined by age but those, while all significantly older than me, failed the test miserably. The only lesson those kids must have remembered is that rules do not matter because no one cares enough to enforce them. Strike one for private school.