I am a communist. CANDYMAN CANDYMAN CANDYMAN CANDYMAN CANDYMAN.

NO CIGAR.

I found the bike of my dreams in Dirt Bike Town. At first, he could not believe I was out there on this bike. He lit up a cigarette and smoked it. “I know you use peyote and I know where you get it.”

Dirty Little Snot. “Is that all you got.” You. Are. Going. To. Blackmail. Me.

I had tracked him to a candystore on the other side of town. The side no one walks around in. A midnight desert coyote song as they stalk Candyman Mom and Pop forever. When does it all come down to bearing witness. I teach adolescent boys with HIV. There is a lot of bearing witness. It was too uncomfortable to witness the addictions running through their brains and veins all the while knowing it was just another small group of children who one way or the other, were going to die. They will not avoid consequences because they are consequences. Emily Bazelon, one of the very best writers at the Times, ends her piece on schools and Covid with a caveat jump from hopelessness to hope.

Let. Us. Look. At. Reality. Education is Babysitting. I am always amazed at writers who create a sense of impending doom, they articulate the problem (like we do not know the problem), they throw in some data, they grit their teeth, and then they go right to hope and hug it. Because we have knotted problems we are totally clueless how to approach let alone solve. We embrace What We Have Used in the past to address issues like climate change. What are we, three.

The teaching establishment saw third-graders make a lot of paper and crayon pictures that told the story of their homes on fire. Fire. Male third-graders employ stick figures with guns, jets, corpses, helicopters, and death everywhere. They cannot tell you why they decided to portray their lives as horror. Ask third graders what they think. They do not actually know what they think outside of parties and cup cakes.

They can however parrot what their parents think. They listen. Their parents see cultural evolution in black and white terms. We are losers. Who see that the death of children should be just another form of collateral damage. Indifference. My own indifference is something I do not want to deal with but replacement parts will go blackmarket. Replace children with more children.

Crank it out and call it education. Rearrange deck chairs. Many third-graders get it. And then they kill themselves. We are always shocked when children kill themselves. More children kill themselves today than have ever committed suicide. At this rate. In human history. We have failed our kids as we insist that education can be built from the brittle bones of a graveyard.