Posted on 02/04/2015 4:16:09 AM PST by Kaslin
New York's schools are the most segregated in the nation, and the state needs remedies right away. That was Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch's message to New York's governor and Legislature. She said that minority children are disproportionately trapped in schools that lack teaching talent, course offerings and resources needed to prepare them for college and success.
Simply calling for more school resources will produce disappointing results. There are several minimum requirements that must be met for any child to do well in school. Someone must make the youngster do his homework, ensure that he gets eight to nine hours of sleep, feed him breakfast and make sure that he behaves in school and respects the teachers. None of these requirements can be satisfied by larger education budgets. They must be accomplished by families, or all else is for naught.
Linda Ball, a public high-school history and government teacher in Cincinnati, has written an engaging book about her experiences, titled "185 Days: School Stories." Let's look at a few of her days.
On Day 167, Mrs. Ball ordered a student to the in-school discipline room for disruption and being in her class without permission. When the student finally decided to leave the room, he told her, "F--- you," and then he swatted her on the head with some papers. In her Day 10 section, there's a brief story about how respect is earned. Wesley, a student with an IQ of 140, did an outstanding job on a paper about the Enlightenment but completed only half his assignment and earned an F. Jake, a student repeating her class, told Wesley, "I have newfound respect for you today." Failure earns respect.
Here's one result of Mrs. Ball's assignment to propose a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, written by a high-school senior: "I think the 28th Amendment should be about a choice weather (sic) to join school or not. I think it should be a choice not something you have to do. Because school just ain't for someone like me. For example school just ain't for me."
Then there's "Day 44: The Graduate." David, a senior, hasn't learned much since the third grade, but he has been passed along and is about to graduate. Mrs. Ball says that not everyone needs to be able to analyze a literary character's motives or whether the U.S. motives in the Spanish-American War were justified. David should have been spared the torture and given suitable activities. He could surely wash cafeteria tables, run errands and change oil and tires. She asks why educators try to force square pegs into round holes year after year, kid after kid.
The grossly poor education that so many blacks receive exacerbates racial problems. During last year's disturbances in Ferguson, Missouri, some people complained that of the city's 53 police officers, only four were black. Such an observation typically leads to suggestions of racial discrimination but never leads to a question about the ability of black high-school graduates to pass a civil service exam. It's natural for a black man with a high-school diploma to see himself as equal to a white man with a high-school diploma. In his eyes, differences in employer treatment are ascribed to racial discrimination. It dawns on few that the average black high-school graduate has the level of academic achievement of a white seventh- or eighth-grader or lower. The black high-school graduates who have unearned diplomas have no knowledge of their being fraudulent. If black politicians and civil rights leaders know it, they refuse to publicly acknowledge it.
The bottom line is that if nothing is done to affect the home life and cultural values that produce the non-learning attitudes and climate that are the subject of Linda Ball's "185 Days: School Stories," there's little that can be done to improve black education. The best that politicians can do is to give parents and children who are serious about education a mechanism to opt out of rotten schools. That option is something the education establishment fights tooth and nail against
I would wager that a substantial number of minority children in NYC also live in households where education is not valued—School is little more than glorified daycare and information presented in lessons is not reviewed and reinforced at home.
The fallacy of integration is that putting an inner-city child into a suburban school will magically improve their academic performance. If the home environment does not support learning, very little learning will occur.
And then there’s that “acting White” thing.
I find this statement completely at odds with the rest of the article. This has nothing to do with the "poor education that so many blacks receive." It is entirely a function of a dysfunctional culture that makes "education" a useless undertaking for so many blacks.
At present, segregation is what is needed.
Keep the race “issue” off the table—then take it from there.
Lord Obama has a solution.
Dumb public school down to where the average Caucasian or Asian kid does not learn any more than the slowest black kid.
Then FREE Community Collich for all, in order to qualify them for da University. Where for only a half million dollars they can learn enough to follow instructions well enough to earn the latest minimum wage of $20 or so an hour. Or become a politician.
If these schools lack teaching talent, it is because the best teachers transfer to better schools, with the seniority rights accorded them by union contracts, or flee to other districts with fewer problem cases in the classroom.
And if these schools lack college prep courses, it is because they are dominated by poor students and their available resources are given over to remediation and daycare.
Meanwhile, the little Catholic school on the next block is succeeding with a similar demographic by demanding discipline from pre-K forward and maintaining traditional standards in a traditional curriculum -- and doing this for half the cost and with lower paid teachers.
The problem in the public schools is usually not money. The demands for more money are a smokescreen to avoid confronting the real issues.
We also need to finally get over the "all kids need to go to college" nonsense, and recognize that abilities differ. In too many places, schools are trying, or at least pretending to try, to do the impossible, which is both frightfully expensive and futile.
Education be a white thing to da’ homies.
Nope. We've been here before. The white teachers and administrators didn't discipline the black students for fear of losing their jobs for being "racist". Discipline decayed, and that accelerated when some of the white students proclaimed "We have equal rights, too!" and no one got an education worth squat. It turned into a free-for-all.
You can't make water cleaner by adding contaminants--the contaminants don't magically become pure.
you can led a horse to water but you can’t make him drink
you can keep a kid in school but you can’t make him think
urban black subculture is killing America
You can't teach a mixed race group while teaching one group they are the victims of the other and expect a good outcome.
The blacks are “educating” themselves into being a permanent underclass. How can they get good teachers in their schools when blacks despise any black who wants to be educated and white teachers are too smart (for the most part) to work in those hellholes?
The only ones who can help the blacks are the blacks, and so far, as seen by ferguson, they don’t want to be helped.
We need to cut welfare to FORCE them to work and better themselves, or starve to death. Of course any violence on their part should be met with deadly force on our part. They can either work to assimilate, or eventually die out.
I’ve long maintained that education is too important to be left to politicians and bureaucrats.
It’s my job as a parent to educate my children, not the government’s.
Teachers whine that it isn’t fair to grade/pay them based on how well their students do, because it would be unfair to urban teachers.
There is some truth to that, but it has no merit if they refuse to flunk them and expose the problem.
Schools are run by demonrats, and blacks are the most loyal demonrat voters. Thus they have to hide the problem and stick taxpayers with the bill to support generations of uneducated morons, and the schools that un-educated them!
The fallacy of integration is that putting an inner-city child into a suburban school will magically improve their academic performance. If the home environment does not support learning, very little learning will occur.
And then there’s that “acting White” thing.
You are 100% correct. You could take some minority kids out of their so-called "failing" school, put them in Sidwell Friends, and they would proceed to wreck Sidwell, carve their names into anything not moving, disrupt classes, etc. It's not the schools who make them fail, it's the attitude they bring with them. Cut class, disrupt class for those who want to learn, assault the teacher, don't take notes, don't do homework, don't study for tests, and then cry, "You failed me because I'm black!" Yep, seen it all.
To limit the discussion to the schools: the longer one waits to intervene, the harder it gets. If the parochial school, or the right kind of charter school, can get the kids in pre-K or K, and keep them in the system through graduation, the kids will have a pretty good chance. There will be some who go off the rails, but many, probably a majority, will respond to the order, discipline, and high expectations of a good school. Even at the middle and high school levels, there are plenty of good kids trying to survive in crummy schools. They deserve a fair chance.
Voucher the schools, give parents full school choice, and let private and charter schools kick out the troublemakers, who would go to some modern iteration of the old-fashioned reform school. Sustain that for 20 years, and the results would be dramatic. The gangbangers would still be present, though in reduced numbers, but the underclass culture of hopelessness that today shelters and excuses them would be undermined.
Teachers whine that it isn’t fair to grade/pay them based on how well their students do, because it would be unfair to urban teachers.
There is some truth to that, but it has no merit if they refuse to flunk them and expose the problem.
Hey, Walter Williams needs to check his white privilege, right, Al $harpton? Oh, wait, what? Williams is black?
Of course, Williams is so right about this. But the Rats don’t want the necessary cultural changes in the poverty class — black or white. Can’t have them leaving the plantation.
Someone needs to do a TV series about how many black families lived back in the early part of the 20th century when there really was racial discrimination. There were intact families, church attendance, and parents who taught their children to behave properly. Kids knew their parents expected them to do well in school.
There were many who achieved great things despite the fact that they were barred from taking certain jobs, prevented from attending certain schools, and lived in segregated neighborhoods all because of their skin color.
And many of today’s young people may not be aware of the fact that there were several groups during that time who also were discriminated against, e.g., Jews, Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, etc.
Well said.
I also believe that there should be 2 parallel school systems, as there should be schools for students who want to be in school and other schools for those who do not want to be there.
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