The Politics of Sixth Grade: Endgame -- UPDATED--

Paul M. Fussell, the social critic and author of several excellent books on war and society, once observed that Americans live out their adult lives in a quest to get revenge for what happened to them in high school. Here in small town Taiwan, by contrast, the enmities that began in elementary school have been carried down through the adult years and continue to poison events and relationships that should long ago have healed. Toss in a taste for brazen lying, backstabbing, and the urge to control, brew with delusions of fading patrician grandeur, and even a minor event like the song schedule for the sixth grade graduation ceremony becomes an epic of betrayal and obsession worthy of a Kubrick film.

It began with our principal, who at least meant well. The graduation ceremony for my daughter's sixth grade class, with is split into two small classes, should be something memorable and important, he decided. Speeches, songs, and words from the parents to the children: one of each parent was supposed to make a three minute speech to their children, in front of the assembly.

Much sighing and eye-rolling ensued. Nobody except a few attention-starved parents likes making such speeches, and worse, what about kids like poor MPT, whose parents dumped him on his grandparents and disappeared?

The real issue, however, was the song. The school sits on land that once belonged to a famous local family, and LCC, a member of the clan, was convinced that she had special status at the school and could order everyone else around -- a behavior neither changed nor dimmed from her elementary school days.

There are two classes, A, and B. LCC's child is in A, and my daughter is in B. The parents of B made a few phone calls and settled on a staple Taiwan farewell song that everyone knew (my wife and her friends had quietly ensured that the sensible parents had their kids together in B class). LCC would have none of that. Swinging into action, she called some of the parents, informing ZJM that my wife didn't like the song, while informing my wife that ZJM opposed it. She also told everyone that only her class would sing, but B class could join A if it wanted to. Oh, and FHS, the piano teacher whose kid was in B? She wasn't good enough to play the song. Everyone was assured that the principal and the teachers were on board with all this. They weren't, of course. Some of the parents in B were bombarded by LCC with more than twenty phone calls over a span of a couple of days. Say what you like about Little League Parents brawling in front of their children on the ballfield, but at least the anger is open and public.

It's hard to know what to be more amazed by in this microcosmic mess. The brazen lying that assumed that no one would call anyone else, even though friends of several years' standing had ostensibly insulted each other? The desperate need to control which song is sung by one class, and to deny the other class any part in the graduation ceremony? The assumption of authority that does not exist? You make the call. But when you look at things like this, it is easy to understand why the current KMT administration is allegedly denying infrastructure funds to all districts headed by DPP politicians. It's what they learned in grade school....

UPDATE: Just like in real politics, the speed of events outstrips the ability to describe them. The other day LCC sent a note home in all the kids' homework books, instructing them that "if you love your kids," parents should join in the singing. Wholly conducted with the other class, to the exclusion of my daughter's class. We can join their program -- if we love our kids.

Meanwhile the parents of my daughter's class had originally decided that JYN was going to make the commencement speech. She was blithely informed by LCC to keep it to five minutes, since the other class was going to put up no less than 5 speakers, all of indeterminate length.

In other words, LCC had bent all her energy for an entire week toward one end -- to exclude the parents of one sixth grade class from celebrating the graduation of their children.

[Taiwan]