Posted on 11/15/2006 7:03:11 PM PST by PhiKapMom
Working in the writing center today has made me extremely angry at the Democrats. I have just worked with a couple of black girls who really struggled at writing. They were intelligent but lacked basic writing skills leading me to believe that their schools never gave them the tools they need. I started thinking about how these girls went through primary school during the Clinton years--the years of supposed improvement in our schools. All Clinton did was to keep schools from being held accountable for anything. All he ever talked about was how much he "cared" about the children. Schools administrators hate Bush and Republicans because they make schools accountable for their failures.
Teachers should be able to write a sentence themselves before teaching kids how to do it. What good does a good grade do a student if their teacher is incompetent? At least standardized tests give us some sense of what kids actually know. I don't think kids should be punished for their standardized test scores, but their schools should be if too many of their kids are failing. Educators seem to hate republicans because they dare to make sure that schools are doing their jobs.
I get to see the results of Clinton's policies everyday in these students and it makes me sick!
Huge waste of time and money these days unfortunately.
Fortunately, I come from a decade where indoctrinating process wasn't quite so bad, or hadn't yet been picked up here yet.
Heck .. even that aids foundation is all about him, IMO ..
Most everyone seems to have forgotten about all the tainted blood from the Arkansas prisons that he ok'd when he was Governor and how it cause the deaths a lot people .. and thousands of others to become sick
Everyone thinks he is a hero now because of his Aids Foundation
I don't see how they got high enough scores on their ACT to be admitted as they have a writing portion now.
This History teacher of mine was an Army Sargeant. Hell, some days he'd show up in his fatigues and scuffed combat boots.
Every time I see him I think of me, me, me!
Whatever happened on that tainted blood scandal?
He might have been crazy, but he was probably one of the coolest teachers I had back then. Every Friday he'd organize softball games in the spring. School basically ended after lunch as the rest of the high school class teachers also either participated or watched. Friday afternoons were cool.
One of the football coaches was also a Marine and he made the Freshman football team march from the lockeroom to the field and back. It was actually funny to watch football players with their shoulder pads marching. That high school had very little discipline problems.
That is neat! Wish more teachers would do that today.
Our high school had very little discipline problems either. If was a safe and friendly environment, even if there was 32 kids in grades 7-12.
Last I heard there was a movie about it .. but other then than ... nothing and Clinton skates
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1560763/posts
It's all just a mess! :-(
It was like a weekly field trip to the baseball diamond on the other side of town. You either walked or rode the bus. LOL
Affirmative action? :-(
Sad but true. Worst part about it is, we're having to scrape the bottom of the barrel for the worst collection of reprobates to educate our aspiring young minds.
Obviously, I don't know PKM's kid, so I can't speculate about what his thought process might be. I can relate something similar from a friend who is a professor at a small Christian college.
The enrollment at this college is largely minority, and he's run into many young people who are similar to the young ladies mentioned in the original post. They are intelligent and have a real interest in learning, but no one has ever challenged them to get things right. The young people who fit this description come from a variety of demographic backgrounds, but this combination seems to be more prevalent among blacks. I don't remember him using this phrase, but when he describes the situation, I'm reminded of President Bush's criticism of "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
I've heard of the problem of many black people looking down on educational achievement. At one time, some writers claimed that studying was considered "acting white" among blacks in school. In my experiences with blacks, I've never seen this attitude, but I don't deny that it could be real in some circles.
Mentioning the race of the young ladies in question may be most relevant because blacks felt so strongly that Clinton was going to help them in education. Many of them really believed that he would "do something" to erase the performance gap between them and the white kids in the suburbs. The fact that these young people whose formative school years were during the Clinton administration didn't learn the basics is more evidence that Clinton failed those who trusted him most.
Ultimately, I still believe that parental involvement will be the biggest factor in a kid's educational success. Either the parent makes learning a priority or not. If the parents don't make learning a priority, most kids won't recognize the value of education until they've lost their best opportunities. If the parents make learning a high priority, they can offset many weaknesses in the schools.
Bill
Thanks for the ping. I'm not surprised though, this has been going on for a long, long time. If you think of these kids stuck in horrible urban and rural (because they are many, many of those too) schools as natural resources, it's a horrible waste.
Thanks! Very well said and you have covered what he has been complaining about.
I see this as one of the reasons the programs to admit minorities that wouldn't qualify otherwise puts them at a handicap in college. My youngest daughter went to a Junior College for a year because her math score was one point below the requirement. It helped her in the long run and I don't see why anyone who cannot meet the requirement doesn't go there as well. Never made any sense to me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.