ROCKVILLE, MD – What started as an informational meeting organized by the Montgomery County Public School (MCPS) Board to inform the community about potential changes to school district boundaries suddenly turned into an impromptu reenactment by a group of parents of a famous scene from “Lord of the Flies”.
Lord of the Flies was written in 1954. Ironically, that was the same year as Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision against the segregation of schools that many parents seem to be fighting for now.
“At first we thought these parents had lost their minds,” stated Clarksburg High School teacher Marybeth Daniels. “Then we realized that they were just acting. There’s no way Montgomery County parents would behave that badly in real life.”
The parents seemed to be reenacting a scene in the novel where the lost boys struggle, and ultimately fail, to maintain rule of law in their new society. But instead of children descending into chaos due to a lack of parental control, the Montgomery County parents descended into chaos over MCPS control of their kids’ school districts.
The performance kicked off with a group of unruly parents holding up protest signs while refusing to entertain the professional studies commissioned to explain MCPS’ proposal to the community. Claiming there was a “monster” of social justice warriors forcing poor kids into their wealthy schools, the parents formed a tribe and vowed to kill the “monster” threatening the survival of their kids’ educations.
As the tribe of unruly parents painted their faces with dry erase markers and devoured cafeteria Sloppy Joes with their bare hands, some faculty and students tried to maintain order. Unfortunately, there was no conch shell to establish speaking rules, so the planned presentations and testimonies were drowned out by interruptions of jeers and booing.
When the scene, and subsequently the informational hearing, ended with parents storming out of the school cafeteria, the audience raved.
“Simply brilliant!” enthused Jill Ortman-Fouse, former Director of the Department of Education. “I especially appreciated the parents’ artistic expression of the savage breakdown of orderly society by constantly interrupting and belittling the educational experts and the teenaged students who had waited in line in order to calmly present their opinions and analysis. Classic Jack versus Ralph with a creative twist!”
“We just finished reading Lord of the Flies this past semester so this performance really meant something to me,” stated Brian Michaels, a sophomore at Montgomery Blair High School. “Now I get the whole point of what author William Golding was trying to say about the collapse of society when people believe they can live without the rule of law.”
Jose Padilla of Walter Johnson High School had a different take. “Everyone else seemed to think we were being surprised with a creative reenactment of Lord of the Flies,” said Padilla. “To me it seemed like they were literally trying to kill each other.”
County residents are eager to attend the next informational meeting, where it is rumored that parents intend to reenact the next scene of the story, where the lost boys started fires, put a pig’s head on a stake, and planned a human sacrifice.
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