Posted on 02/10/2019 8:24:14 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Bad teaching is a common explanation given for the disastrously inadequate public education received by America’s most vulnerable populations. This is a myth. Aside from a few lemons who were notable for their rarity, the majority of teachers I worked with for nine years in New York City’s public school system were dedicated, talented professionals. Before joining the system I was mystified by the schools’ abysmal results. I too assumed there must be something wrong with the teaching. This could not have been farther from the truth.
Teaching French and Italian in NYC high schools I finally figured out why this was, although it took some time, because the real reason was so antithetical to the prevailing mindset. I worked at three very different high schools over the years, spanning a fairly representative sample. That was a while ago now, but the system has not improved since, as the fundamental problem has not been acknowledged, let alone addressed. It would not be hard, or expensive, to fix.
Washington Irving High School, 2001–2004
My NYC teaching career began a few days before September 11, 2001 at Washington Irving High School. It was a short honeymoon period; the classes watched skeptically as I introduced them to a method of teaching French using virtually no English. Although the students weren’t particularly engaged, they remained respectful. During first period on that awful day there was a horrendous split-second noise. A plane flew right overhead a mere moment before it blasted into the north tower of the World Trade Center. At break time word was spreading among the staff. Both towers were hit and one had already come down . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at quillette.com ...
Students aren't expelled because the Federal matching dollars are withheld if their butt is not in the seat.
Also, the students with the worst discipline are those from broken homes and no discipline at home.
Of course, if the reality illustrates a racial disparity in the disruptors in the classroom, we can't have that inconvenient fact show up.
And leftists set out specifically to destroy the family unit through public policy and other methods.
the real reason schools suck these days is they don’t have public executions.
Make the kids watch 1-2/ year, with the back story being “you see that PIECE OF SH*T writhing and coughing his last breath?
HE WAS A LOSER POS IN SCHOOL, HORSING AROUND, SMACKING PEOPLE AND SELLING DRUGS.
REMIND YOU OF ANYONE YOU KNOW IN THIS CLASS?
You see that? STRAIGHTEN UP or thats YOUR ASS ON THAT TABLE NEXT YEAR!”
i had the same issues teaching high school science in oakland california.
PS - that first school she mentions, Washington Irving High School; - that was corner was notorious for being NOT the place to be when school let out.
Roving bands of very violent ‘yutes’...
Not enough book sales if they use the old primers that taught phonics.
My Mom started working at an inner-city Jr Hi (Baker, now a Middle School) in Denver in 1970. She and her aide struggled hard to bring 8th graders' reading skills up from a 4th grade level to 8th.
With those students who wanted to learn, they made great strides.
Then one day, all DPS Jr Hi Reading Teachers were informed they were switching to a wonderful new reading program, named "Amadon" (spelling?) It had been developed in the L.A. area.
It was a disaster from the start, and their students' progress was almost completely halted. It was a great mystery - at first - as to how this program ever saw the light of day.
Later, someone who had friends in LA education circles discovered that the curriculum had had a single pilot-program test to prove its worth, and had utterly failed.
Given the well-known corruption in the DPS HQ building (eg rampant nepotism among other things), it was obvious to the reading teachers that "money had exchanged hands under the table," with the Amadon people bribing someone downtown so that they could recoup some of the investment they'd sunk into an abject, abysmal failure of a program.
And just like your cousin did, my Mom and her aide secretly defied orders and reverted back to the old reading program which had been working fine. Some materials were reusable - eg books & cassette tapes & headphones & these huge cassette players. But other expendable materials they sometimes had to spend their own money on.
It was obvious that none of the other Jr Hi reading teachers did the same thing as my Mom, because a few years later there was an editorial in the Denver Post that my Mom clipped and proudly displayed at home (but not at work!)
The editorial board noted that for yet another year, Jr Hi reading proficiency had continued its freefall. And they noted that there was a single bright spot among all the Denver Junior Highs, and suggested that the other reading teachers all trek over to Baker JrHi to find out what it was that they were doing different.
Of course, if any of them ever did, Mom would have to be tight-lipped about her defiance of DPS HQ, or else risk her job! :-)
“Why do precious few adults admit the truth out loud? Because in America the taboo against questioning the current orthodoxy on race is too strong and the price is too high.”
It is my firm conviction, and getting stronger everyday, that two groups of people who have significantly different AVERAGE IQ, and whose members can be easily identified as belonging to one or the other group, can never peacefully coexist together.
It may be sad and tragic, but it’s a reality.
The whole system is corrupt. Superintendents that make 6 figure salaries with iron clad contracts to insure against being fired for incompetence. Children taught in one room school houses by teachers without degrees got better educations. The system is not designed to educate. It is designed to produce social justice warriors who know how to put a condom on a banana. If you are conscientious and try to do right you will be fired. Race is only a part of this problem. “They were actually encouraged to be intellectually lazy.” A talent show: “Each act was a show of increasingly explicit dry humping.” This is progressive education. It is encouraged and kept under wraps by the deep state media. Check out: March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament. This is what progressive education produces.
"And God forbid the kids involved were black."
Same for Hispanics *and* Blacks in my Mom's school, which was around 80% "Chicano" and around 15%+ Black students, with the remaining 3-5% being white kids of parents too poor to join the White Flight.
And around the time she started, in 1970, things had taken a steep turn downwards wrt teachers' & principals' options to use physical discipline, so that the charge of "RACISM!" would be hurled at any white teacher who so much as firmly grabbed the elbow of an out-of-control student to escort them away from trouble. Since the vast majority of the teachers were white, and virtually all of the students were brown or black, this led to a mojor breakdown in discipline, as students realized there would never be serious consequences for almost ANYthing they did.
But there was one teacher to whom this limitation did not apply. He was a shop teacher by the name of Floyd Ewing, I believe. He was very tall and very strong and very black. He refused to take any lip at all from his students, even the boys who were very large & strong themselves due to being 16-17 years old but still stuck in Jr Hi (FYI, there was a whorehouse across the street from them, with some of the older students being customers).
Nobody got away with talking/disruption in his class. Nobody got away with disrespect, ESPECIALLY not talking back to him or insulting him. Floyd was famous for picking up students by both shoulders, and ramming them hard into the wall. My Mom said that she and the other teachers were all green with envy of Floyd's ability to get away with what they could only dream about in their happiest dreams.
Reminds me of the tiny principal in Kindergarten Cop who vicariously imagines herself in place of the Schwarzenegger character, punching the lights out of the guy who beat up his wife & 5yr old son.
An excellent set of examples of why, when I went into teaching, I worked for a private tutoring firm instead of the Public Schools. It paid less, a lot less, and provided no benefits, but we didn’t have to put up with shit like this.
I saw what the Public Schools were like when I did my student teaching/observing.
Don't gimmee no "I know so many professionals" crap.
Why do precious few adults admit the truth out loud? Because in America the taboo against questioning the current orthodoxy on race is too strong and the price is too high. What is failing our most vulnerable populations is the lack of political will to acknowledge and solve the real problems. The first step is to change the ”anti-discrimination” laws that breed anti-social behavior. Disruptive students must be removed from the classroom, not to punish them but to protect the majority of students who want to learn.
I worked my butt off to find a public school that is very different from most, and hidden in a well to do urban-rural suburb. It’s perfect, really. Not everyone in it is perfect, but not one urban problem. Well behaved kids of a couple races. No hostility tolerated.
Oh, dear, I just went and looked up that video. Shocked.
But, apparently, everyone “debates” by fast-talking now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKpXQIf9exA
In homeschool world, our students compete in debates, public speaking competitions, etc., often against school students. We never came across that style of “debate,” though.
And pervasive throughout all popular culture
disastrously inadequate public education received by America’s most vulnerable populations. This is a myth.
The question was asked by a recent President of the US, “Is the children learning?” The question contains the answer.
I’m not convinced that there are a lot of good teachers
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