Posted on 08/02/2013 9:41:27 AM PDT by jmaroneps37
Anyone that can dredge up the guts to teach in Baltimore's public schools automatically becomes a... Dave Miceli doesn't know me from a hole in the ground, but he's my new hero.
Anyone that can dredge up the guts to teach in Baltimore's public schools automatically becomes a candidate for hero status in my book, especially if said anyone has taught in these schools for 20 years, as Miceli has.
But it was his bold, insightful, no-punches-pulled letter to the editors of the July 15 edition of the Baltimore Sun that put Miceli on my hero's list. I'm reprinting that letter in its entirety.
"Regarding your recent editorial, 'How to end the killing,' your last paragraph made me want to vomit. 'No doubt, Baltimore needs effective police and prosecutors, ample drug treatment, better schools, and more economic opportunities.'
"How dare you accuse, through implication or otherwise, that the need for 'better schools' is a reason there is so much killing. Had you defined the loosely used term, 'better schools,' perhaps I and probably others may not have been so nauseated.
"I have taught in the Baltimore public school system for the past two decades. What we need is better students. We have many excellent teachers. I cannot count the number of students who have physically destroyed property in the schools.
"They have trashed brand new computers, destroyed exit signs, set multiple fires, destroyed many, many lockers, stolen teachers' school supplies, written their filth on the tops of classroom desks, defecated in the bathrooms and stairwells, assaulted teachers (beyond constantly telling them to perform certain impossible acts upon themselves) and refused to do any homework or class work.
"Need I go any further? I won't even bother addressing the other 'causes' you listed. Too inane. In summary, the problem seems to be a total disregard for life that exists not only in our crime-ridden city, but also in all of the major cities throughout the United States.
"So, go blame other root causes, but please leave our city police, prosecutors and teachers out of the finger wagging."
Touche, Dave Miceli! Finally, someone has cut through the bat guano and had the guts to say precisely what's wrong with way too many public schools — and public school systems — in America today.
That would be "Bad Students, Not Bad Schools," as author Robert Weissberg named his 2010 book. Weissberg, like Miceli, recognizes that American schools won't improve until students attending them do.
You can bet that Baltimore school honchos and some elected officials want Miceli fired so badly they can almost taste it. Oddly enough, what probably saves Miceli from being canned are two things that conservatives — rightly so, in most cases — feel are precisely what's wrong with American education.
That would be teachers' unions and tenure. With his two decades of teaching, Miceli has tenure. Members of the Baltimore Teachers Union — and its leaders — probably don't know whether to love or lynch the guy.
So Miceli probably knew that he wouldn't be fired for his letter, but he's courageous for saying what he said in a city that's majority black, with a school system that's majority black, and where most of the elected officials are black Democrats.
Miceli didn't bring up the issue of race in his letter, but you can bet that, somewhere in Baltimore, someone or a bunch of someones are chomping at the bit to call him a racist for his observations.
That's because, among liberals and Democrats, there is this notion that the poor — especially the black poor — can do no wrong. If you criticize any poor and black person who displays inappropriate, boorish or egregiously bad conduct, you'll be dismissed as a racist if you're not black.
And as an Uncle Tom or sellout if you are. Miceli decided to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. That's why he goes to the top of my 2013 list of heroes.
That should be: What do you MAKE of it? Sorry for error.
Many (most?) inner city blacks have no value for an education beyond being able to count their drug money.
To get better students will require better parents.
This violates political correctness, and offends the sensibilities of black activists.
The liberal line is that schools need more resources, that the lousy outcomes in inner city schools are someone else’s fault, yadda, yadda, yadda.
We’re supposed to be sensitive to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, and never criticize any aspect of ghetto culture. Otherwise, that’s racist.
hhl
Not Really. Get a good principal with balls and give him permission to toss 10% of the kids out of the school.
After he tosses out the first 5% the school will begin to advance, he may not have to get rid of the other 5%.
When I say tosses out I mean out. I don’t mean tutors for the kid, I don’t mean they can come back,. I mean OUT.
I would just like to point out that these “students” were born to and reared by people who were educated in the same system. Since the establishment of the US Department of Education, we have seen a steady decline in academic achievement. The teachers have great culpability, but in this case, it is the last generation of teachers, and it looks like this generation has thrown up its hands.
It is now considered “white” in black culture to do well in school, making it something that many students deliberately avoid to maintain their “cultural integrity”. . .sorry folks, but that attitude started in our schools several decades ago.
And, they blame it on the parents they UTTERLY FAILED TO EDUCATE when they were in school.
Now, we know what could go wrong.
Best regards,
Gail
http://www.backyardfence.wordpress.com
What you are suggesting is illegal. Expulsions can only last one full year, at which point the student is allowed back. During that year, the school must provide an education for him or her. The only way this can be avoided is if the student is in jail.
Then the law is an @ss.
I never claimed it wasn’t. I’m simply pointing out the neat little package liberals have wrapped up for us. Want some more fun laws? Race to the Top, obama’s NCLB on steroids, has student civil rights built into it. That means that schools will be disciplined (read that as less $$$) for disciplining more minorities than whites. This also means that more successful schools within school systems will be dismantled. The effective teachers will be moved to the ineffective schools, and the bad students will be shuffled into gifted programs. You know, so everyone will be equal!
One ‘chomps’ an apple but one ‘champs’ at the bit.
The Children Of The Voting Block
"The problem described in this article could be viewed as a genetic problem of some sort, or you could view it, as I do, as a political problem. My own view is that the variable which correlates most closely with every sort of urban pathology in America is democrat machine politics, and that 97% of the problems which blacks experience living in America would evaporate within five years of the democrat party being outlawed and banned. "
Of curse it is illegal, because it would work.
It is crazy to allow these disruptive students to destroy our educational system.Get rid of the disrupters and the others could learn.
IMO the need is to bring back reform schools. If kids refuse to learn in a regular school let them spend a year in a reform school/.
they attend for their FREE food...and finding the next piece of meat to hump...
blacks don’t understand the concept of parenting let alone PARENTS!
UMMMM...schools better served the black students when the schools were segregated...
Ooooh... I’m tellin’...
You are in trouble for tellin’ the truth.
Or in the case of some kids, it will require parents.
The only people who can correct these problems are blacks. And they probably won’t do that unless whites refuse to take responsibility for the problems.
I know of many black teachers in my small Southern home town who say the same. When there was a separate black high school they had a high graduation rate and many went to college. It’s been going down hill ever since.
As for kicking these kids out, the more “students” they have, the more money they get to pay the unions.
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