The Time I Corrupted Children with Transformers - or - How Do We Transform Our Society?

I have worked with kids throughout my professional life, both as a paid staff member and a volunteer. I care about youth and their development. Recently news of budget cuts in the School District of Philadelphia have made national and international headlines. The cuts have forced principals to deliver pink slip notices of termination to a little more that 3,700 district employees. These employees are not all core curriculum teachers (math/English/social studies/science) but rather key individuals who make schools functional- assistant principals, nurses, councilors, music and art teachers, secretaries, and mid-day staff who monitor lunch rooms and hallways. I actually cried the other day because my powerless rage had fully taken hold of me.

That being said, whatever role I've had around kids, I take it seriously. The thing about working with kids is that even having fun with them is can be terrifying and exhausting. If you're a parent or already work with kids, you know this. For the rest of you, just know that any seemingly innocuous activity in this world is wrought with peril. A simple stroll to the playground is really a scene from Predator (1987), only instead of invisible aliens hunting intergalactic prey, it's pedophiles. A romping session in the gym is the perfect time for a child to decide, "Hey! Back-flipping off of that giant pile of gymnastics mats is a great idea!" It isn't. And the tears, paperwork, and emotional trauma that follow are my issue to deal with before telling parents that their kid just dislocated his shoulder.

Enter Michael Bay's Transformers (2007). I won't say when this incontinent of corrupting youth happened, although it clearly occurred after the film's release to DVD. I'll point out that I love this movie. I remember going to the movie theater with my dad and my uncle to see it. My dad was basically humoring me and his younger brother but ended up loving it as much as us and the rest of the crowd. How can you not?! A live-action remake of a beloved 80's cartoon! Did I mention it's about ginant alien robots? It's a movie without many surprises and is completely satisfying if what you're looking for a is a festival of explosions and corny jokes. Why wouldn't it be perfect for showing to the young'uns, many of whom were under the age of six when it came out? SO MANY THINGS.

The Autobots are ready to do some damage...to young minds.

The movie starts with some soldiers in a nondescript desert talking about how much they hate sand and want to go home to a presumably sandless land. Then one of the soldiers starts cursing in Spanish. There are no subtitles, but I and several of my students spoke Spanish, so I immediately panicked. Once this string of profanity was over I chalked it up to an assumption of the ignorance of mainstream American audiences; there weren't any subtitles, so obviously no one in Amurrica would understand it. Surely the rest of the movie, in English, would be safe for K-6 ears.

"¡Carajo cabrón!" Translation: PG-13

The thing about the the Transformers DVD is that the actual, physical DVD is marked with silver on grey writing, making it somewhat difficult to read, especially when you're rushing out the door to get to work on time. So difficult, in fact, it makes the marking "PG-13" look like "PG". Apparently numbers are hard to read when written in silver.

Writing on me in silver is a swell artistic choice. It symbolizes how this DVD is "more than meets the eye." It will also make you unable to properly read my rating.

About twenty minutes into the movie the late and great Bernnie Mac makes an appearance as a hustling, fast talking used car salesman attempting to sell a busted rust bucket (one of the main characters, alien robot Bumbble Bee the Autobot, in disguise) to our young hero, Sam, (Shia LeBeuf). At one point he said "Bitch-ass" and I just disassociated from the whole situation. I went to my Happy Place in my head and completely escaped the trauma I was imparting on my kids.

RIP the greatest cross-over performer since Desi Arnez.

All the other staff members found this hilarious. So did I, after a certain point, but initially I was mortified. I was the one who had sellected this DVD and thus I was the one responsible for any kids who may have ended up damaged or spewing curse words. This was on ME. I shouldn't forget to mention that there were, in fact, many DVDs avaliable on site for the kids to watch. I went out of my way to try to get a movie they hadn't seen before. I felt like a total ass. The other reason I was so mortified is because this ISN'T THE FIRST TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED TO ME. Earlier in my career with kids, my supervisor thought it was a good idea to show a group of middle school students Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001). I won't get into a detailed plot, just know that there was at least one scene with male and female full-frontal nudity in a whore house. Granted, that time I wasn't the person who made the movie choice, I was the teacher present and showing said whore house scene to the kids. I wasn't held responsible but I did feel responsible. Fear of lawsuits aside, there is a certain level of urgency felt to "get it right" with kids, especially other people's kids. Most of our adult behaviors, beliefs, and skills are cultivated in youth. Damaging a kid's phsyche at the age of eight could impact whether they graduate from high school at eighteen, seek abusive relationships at twenty, or rob liquor stores at thirty!

Don't worry; I will write an entire post about this movie at some point.

Midway through Transformers, we stopped the movie for Snack Time. I already had a plan to go back and say "Oh no! The DVD was somehow damaged since we left for only 30 minutes! Guess we'll have to watch something else." But my supervisor popped by during tha time and told me not to worry about it, that they had probably seen worse stuff on tv or with their parents. Fortunately for me and sadly for society at large, this is more than likely true. In light of the school district's recent Doomsday Budget (the name of NOT a movie title but the actual name being given to the SDP's 2013-2014 Fiscal Year Budget), I have also realized there isn't a real need to sweat the small stuff like what I may have allegedly and accidentally exposed children to. The real trauma of their youth will be the fact that they are being denied a quality education.

I guess my rage has felt powerless simply because I haven't sought to take action. I see so many of my peers march, protest, write letters, sign petitions, make phone calls, all for what? A news spot here a, an op-ed there, but most of it feels like we're preeching to the chior. If We The People cared about kids as a nation, this wouldn't be an issue. Too often do people think of the problems faced by the most disadvantaged is the problem of those people or of those kids. The thing is, they are our kids. This budget doesn't need to be a "doomsday" scenario if we, collectively, as a city and a country, don't want it to. I'm grapeling with how to shake people out of their complacancy. I'm also grapeling with how much I can feasably do. My mindset has often been that the work I do is itself an act of social justice, but do I have the energy and time to do more? Mor importantly, how can I inspire and convince people who definitely have the energy and time to do more? We have the power to transform our world, but since the great movements of the 1960's so much faith in the process of social change has been lost. Where's our "allspark" gone?