"What do you mean you, 'don't want to go back to the new school', Timmy?"
Posted on 10/18/2005 7:24:29 AM PDT by sammycook
Edited on 10/18/2005 7:52:28 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Jonathan Kozol, a former Boston schoolteacher, has written 11 books over four decades in a crusade to help inner-city children that government policymakers gently label "disadvantaged."
In "Shame," Kozol, 69, denounces the No Child Left Behind education law that President Bush pushed through Congress...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
When the pay of public school teachers is directly related to their educational performance, the public schools will improve. Until the unions are broken, this will never happen.
"If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught.", David Ridenour, a public school teacher in a little poor Appalachian school district. He walked the walk.
The "celebrate diversity" mantra is creating more hate and division then racist groups like the KKK or the NAACP could ever imagine. Diversity is the new phrase to divide us by race, gender (and private sexual practices). We are judge others not on their merit or inner qualities but instead by their skin color. Liberalism hit a home run with this one and as long as they can keep the hate and division between us using the Diversity mantra the more this country will divide.
Already been done. Raleigh, NC.
I think it's racist for Kozol to suppose that black kids can only learn well while in the presence of white kids. Does he really think that white kids are going to magically inspire black children to study, absent an at-home environment that supports learning?
If he wants black and white children to sit beside one another in the classroom the black kids are going to have to be bussed more than an hour out to the suburbs of DC, because no white family is going to send children to a DC inner-city public school.
The only solution to the problem is for all the black inner-city schools to be closed. The difficulties they represent are insurmountable. Gang violence, drugs, and the entrenched bureaucracy cannot be controlled, no matter how much money we throw at them. Just close the schools, give parents vouchers, and let them find their own sources of education for their kids. They will, too. Black parents want their kids to succeed.
Didja ever try to teach a room full (30+) of black 8th graders?? It's not funny.
"What do you mean you, 'don't want to go back to the new school', Timmy?"
Did get under the 300 word limit, new that some people wouldn't read the whole article and have been blasted in the past for not including enough. Tried to cut it down but keep the gist of the story
My understanding is that the D.C. government schools consistently have one of the nation's highest per student expenditures yet are consistently among the nation's poorest performers. I suspect similar results would be found in other big city school systems. It's not economics.
You are right. In Boston, spending per student is higher than in Boston's wealthiest suburbs.
Active school integration, whether forced or otherwise, died when Ted Kennedy figured out that his political future depended on appeasing the "Irish" bigots of Boston. Schools will be integrated when minorities realize that their best hope to break the cycle of poverty and poor educational opportunities is to move out of the "hood"/"ghetto"/"empowerment zone" and into predominantly "white" areas. That won't be easy: it will require the courage of a Rosa Parks, and a willingness to incur the wrath of both white and black bigots. In other words, it won't happen real soon.
Well, I suppose it depends on who is actually getting the money. My guess that in DC it isn't really going to the schools.
If parents don't care then there is little the teacher can do. Too many parents use the public eduational system as a dumping ground for their kids.
In my house homework starts when the child comes home. No outside time until it is finished. We go to school events and we have a dialogue with the teacher.
I can't afford to live in those neighborhoods and I make decent money....
No, schools will only improve when parents take responsibility for their kids' education by making sure homework gets done and by being involved with the school.
Yes, that's correct. Students of mostly the same ethnic composition in the same school is the reason they don't learn as well. That theory sure explains why Japanese and other countries with few ethnic groups do so well in academic contests doesn't it? (smirk) Kozol is simply another incompetent, hack radical-lib who has helped screw up public schools for over forty years.
You mean the in the same way that they would tell GWB to learn what the terrorists objections are.... and then address them?
Your analogy fails on many levels, and is downright offensive.
The old adage about every problem looking like a nail continues to hold true. It is maddeningly predictable that a politician will seek to right every societal wrong by giving other people's money to those who are the very root of the problem!
I also partially question the assertion that "Black parents want their kids to succeed." It sounds good; even obvious. But if it's true, then why don't they succeed? You nailed it earlier in your post when you asked the question, "Does he really think that white kids are going to magically inspire black children to study, absent an at-home environment that supports learning?" I think the question is, "How badly do black parents want their children to succeed?"
If any parent expects their children to succeed, they must first commit themselves to being successful parents. A parent who provides no support at home, no atmosphere conducive to learning, no example of the value of education, dooms his children to likely academic failure.
That must have been around the same time some Senator was claiming 100mil blacks were lost at sea during slave-trading... and that the sharks still circle the areas today... waiting for the next load to come in.
One reform I favor is cutting up huge inner city school systems into smaller districts that will be more responsive to parents. This is also a way for cities to heal, one district at a time.
The fact is that much success is happening, and a lot of it is being fostered by private enterprise, Edison and Kipp for example.
In that regard, I believe you're right.... but as far as the grades and learning.... it has a lot to do with the "crab-bucket" syndrome. Too many blacks that try to get out of the poverty are labeled and brow-beat by their peers for trying to be an Uncle Tom. Very sad.
I hadn't heard that term in years.....until I listened to Sean Hannity's show yesterday and heard Farrahkan's hack call Jesse Peterson a "boot-lickin' Uncle Tom"... plus rail on Jesse about reparations. How do you fight the mentality?
I've never bought the idea that proximity makes perfect.
I live where I live in part because of high property taxes (yes I said it) and excellent public schools. If government imposes busing or other social engineering programs on our schools, our families will pull out again. It's not "white" flight but it IS culture flight, and my children will NOT NOT NOT be forced to try and succeed in a school that is populated by those unwilling or unable to learn due to their CULTURE and UPBRINGING. Does it track according to race? Yes it does. But that's the way it is, and wishing it to be different or forcing the unforceable will NEVER make it different.
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