Americans’ attempts at civil disobedience have been decreasingly effective since the days of the civil rights movement.  Some hippie type will probably challenge this notion as being too much of a generalization, and when they do, I’ll send them to talk to the guy outside the grocery store protesting the way chickens are being raised in Israel.

Growing up in Vermont we didn’t have too much to complain about, but we did carry on our state's proud tradition of defiance in the most dire of circumstances, such as when we thought there was a chance to skip seventh period without getting in trouble.

The first time the school erupted in protest was at the start of fifth grade.  The furor was touched off by the news that the school’s “industrial arts” program was going to be replaced with computer science classes for reasons which were not stated, but which probably had something to do with the fact that the occupation of carpenter had been in steady decline for approximately 1,500 years, and by 1991, was ranked just ahead of shepherd on the list of likely careers for Main Street Middle School students.  Despite its practical roots, the decision brought about consternation among students like me because in addition to removing any opportunities to use a drill press during school hours, it also took away any chance we had to flirt with classmates by causing third degree burns through the use of hot glue and a ruler.

Since almost every student liked industrial arts, and very few people had realized the value of computers for viewing inappropriate images, this protest enjoyed broad support.  Even students like me who were keener on power saws than we were on red-faced PTSD sufferers who taught the class and were prone to screaming for no apparent reason, were notionally invested in the fight.

The school was understanding of the outrage and decided that instead of dealing with bedlam, it would open the gymnasium to facilitate an organized protest.  Some kids thought this cheapened the protest and may or may not have used the word “fascism”, but other students who were just happy not to be talking about math, took a seat and watched the festivities.

In addition to a gym floor spotted with pre-teens holding signs, the school had kindly provided a PA system, and an opportunity for older children to express what the loss of the industrial arts program was going to mean to their last few weeks of eighth grade even though it wasn’t going to take place until the following year, at the earliest.  One student named Louie who had once fallen into a frozen river during a fist fight and was thus, somewhat famous, made several trips to the mic to scream some version of his thesis on the matter at hand.  The details of his pitch were complicated, but the crux of his argument focused on admitting that computers could design tables, and then asking, “but who’s going to build it?” (for the record, also computers, I think).

Three years later, some of the same students had a second chance to fight The Power, this time due to the firing of a somewhat-popular teacher.  In most circumstances, a simple firing of a second-year English teacher wouldn’t have resulted in indignation, but a combination of the fact that he taught a class that involved a liberal silent reading policy and an “honor system” attendance sheet, his justified dismissal was viewed as an outrage.

In an act of petulance similar to those that one imagines got him fired, the teacher classily announced his forced departure to a bunch of seventh and eighth graders during a school dance which struck a nerve among the student body and resulted in lots of pretend anger among students the following Monday morning.  The anger rose to a dull murmur after second period and just before lunch, had risen to a slightly less dull murmur.  For some students, such as me, who generally thought the teacher was a schmuck and hated his subjective grading system which was based mostly upon rewarding girls who were likely to be attractive when full grown, the situation provided an opportunity to pretend to be very incensed, and to do very little work during social studies.  For other students, the situation provided a reason to pretend to be very angry, to leave school and stand on the sidewalk holding signs, and to be suspended.

We ended our term as agitators with a .500 record.  Mr. Rich was sent packing, and I was able to spend the duration of my years in middle school unsuccessfully trying to use a lathe.  If I’m being honest, however, I suspect our advocacy had little impact on the eventual decisions to keep the wood-related programming and to axe the snot-nosed English teacher who lacked respect for authority.  Odds were, Dr. King himself wasn’t going to change the minds of the administrators he had scorned, and common sense suggests its never a good idea to steal a job from an unstable man with an arsenal of power tools.