How I Joined Teach for America -- and Got Sued for $20 Million

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | Tuesday, January 14, 2003 | By Joshua Kaplowitz

[Kozak]

One way to start fixing this would be to require the children of all teachers, principals, administrators, and politicians in the city to attend their neighborhood public school. Let the elite live with the disaster they've created.

[Dasaji]

I think I understood his "17 years of education" to mean primary through a college degree - not 17 years of college at Yale. So, this guy is a 22-23 year old who is still young, hopeful and "fresh" and who wants to make a difference in the world. Is that a crime dependent on political affiliation? I remember being a young, hopeful, fresh college grad with a Registered Republican voter's card in my purse feeling the same way.

His eyes were opened through this experience. I think his liberal white parents raised him well enough that he stuck through the year and intended to go back into that hole. How many here would have done the same?

[tom h]

"17 years of college and a graduate of Yale and he can't tell the difference between an apostrophe and a question mark?"

Whoa -- mellow out. His is a well-written piece and it might well have been his editor or the typesetter who failed. Most 23-year olds from Harvard or Yale could not have written such thoughtful, clear prose.

[Puddleglum]

suspect you are probably right about his political leanings, but his article is one that should posted on front pages across the nation.

I agree - and maybe if these school have security video cameras, some video could be shown on TV as well.

I guess we all need to fight for home schooling and vouchers until the public schools learn the consequences of their inactions. As a person who pours a lot of property taxes into the private school pot every year, I think I ought to have a right to take some of it back to send my son to a well-run private school.

[Mo1]

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[AppyPappy]

ONE? ONE? Who cares what ONE guy does?

[AppyPappy]

Yes I did.

[kitkat]

Thanks for saving me the time to reply, Lancey. You said it very well.

I notice this clown didn't mention trying to change the law which is the ONLY way to improve the schools.

I suppose he'd rather throw more money at the schools.

I'm on a limited income and pay $2,000 a year to our school district, although I have no kids in school. And THIS is the kind of garbage they use MY money for.

[ladylib]

Put cameras in every classroom, not just the hallways. In fact, I read somewhere that one school was doing just that.

[cinFLA]

What else do you expect when the middle as well as upper classes, of all races, have fled the government schools and the underclass birthrate is so high that the government schools effectively have few but the underclass outside of the better suburbs and rural areas?

It started in the 60's with mandatory promotion and reduced discipline.

[SauronOfMordor]

If you mean by "underclass" parents that encourage their children to violence by either overt encouragement or careless neglect, then I agree with your definition. If you mean that economics is an excuse then I don't agree with your definition. My parents were not rich, but I would have paid a very high price for disrespecting one of my teachers or acting up in class.

Your parents would have been classified as "working class", rather than "underclass". Underclass generally means belonging to a culture where "work" is an alien concept, where people get by on a combination of welfare, crime, and scamming the "system". In this culture, people look for the "big payoff", whether winning the lottery, scoring a major drug deal, or winning a multi-million-dollar payoff thru the court system.

In the underclass, there is no point to getting an education. In fact, having a child classified as mentally disabled results in the parent getting SSI disability checks for the child. So some underclass parents have a vested interest in having their children be as disruptive as possible.

[txrangerette]

John, thank you for finding & posting
this. One of my close family-members
is a retired teacher. She had some
similar experiences(although not as
horrific as these, mercifully).

AND HER SCHOOL WASN'T INNER-CITY!

Are you aware that Laura Bush recently
said both of her girls are interested
in the Teach For America program after
college graduation?

Uhhhhh...I hope someone in the family
gets real about what they would face.

Thanks again...EVERY American should
see this, IMO.

[Tancred]

I work for a place that deals with "behaviorally-challenged" kids. They go to a non-public school where there is one staff member for every two or three kids. When they're not in school, they live in a residence where you have four kids and three or four staff at all times. In case you're wondering, state Medicaid pays for most of this.

They're all on medication. Some have ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder), some have depression, some are borderline MR, some can't control their bowels and bladders.

We are allowed to use what is called a "therapeutic hold" on the kids--but only as a last resort when they are in danger of hurting themselves or others. Basically, you pin the kid face-down and hold him until he calms down. At other times, the kids can lose privileges--getting sent to their rooms, early bedtimes, no community outings, having their toys temporarily taken away, losing TV and video game privileges, depending on their behavior.

They all come from bad families--abused physically, emotionally, or sexually. The parents usually did it to them, or let someone else abuse them. Assuming they even know who the father is, the parents themselves have had troubles with the law or use drugs and alcohol or were abused themselves or are just astounding ignorant.

But these kids would be just too problematic in a normal school--so removing the few helps both the normal kids and the problem kids, too. It sometimes takes two adults to handle a 9-12 year old kid when he or she goes off. This is in Maine, by the way.

[montag813]

It is so pathetic to see these naive people, particularly Jews afflicted by the disease called liberalism, who hear Conservatives reveal how the educational system REALLY operates, but work for the Democrat party which perpetuates this system anyway, and then are shocked when the reality turns out just as we described it.

Three words: VOUCHERS. CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.

[Free the USA]

Interesting article by a teacher on teaching in an inner-city school.

[ken5050]

Vouchers yes.....but corporal punishment never..it'll lead to a litigation explosion.....and you can accomplish most of what is needed simply by allowing schools to expell the troublemakers..

My own thought..if we can televise trials, why can't we televise classrooms?.....if folks could see what actually goes on inschools.....

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Although I certainly have no sympathy whatsoever for this clown, I do appreciate his eyewitness account of life in the bowels of Democrat-world.

Worth repeating.

[John O]

Something must be done with the school system - I unfortunately do not know what.

Simple to resolve. Privatize the entire school system. Disband the NEA. Require a valid high school diploma for any sort of work that pays wages.

Those who won't learn can starve. After a generation the problem will be licked. Unfortunately it will take this generation of nominally human animals dying out in order to fix the problem. If they live they just reproduce more like themselves. (No matter what the color or nationality, people raise kids the way they were raised. These kids weren't raised at all, their kids will be animal level in behavior)

[ChuxsterS]

BTTT - this article is long but well worth the read.

[ChuxsterS]

I bet this goofy liberal Joshua Kaplowitz ... votes consistently for the same Democrat Party that is responsible for the "Ingrate Society" that destroyed the urban black family unit by replacing the 'father' with a welfare check...

I agree 100% with your analysis. "Great Society" programs have indeed spawned an "ingrate society" of opportunistic victim/hustler's. Race warlords like Jackson and Sharpton haven't helped much.

Joshua probably is (or was) a typical liberal Democrat. I'm hopeful, however, that young Joshua may find this experience reformative.

If he hasn't yet left "the dark side," several of his comments suggest that he's well on his way to seeing the light.

He clearly sees that the system is horribly broken and he identifies many of the real problems: absence of discipline, parents and administrators who aid and abet their wild children, institutionalized tolerance of black racism against whites, supression of politically incorrect ideas during the training/indoctrination program...

A completely unreformed liberal goofball would prattle on about institutional racism, the need for increased sensitivity from teachers, respect for "differently-challenged students," more funding, and smaller class size.