This school district in Indiana spends $10.3k per student & creates beautiful campuses like this
While DC schools spend upwards of 22k per student and 80% of students aren’t even proficient in math pic.twitter.com/YPexd7hUZo
— E (@ElijahSchaffer) February 16, 2023
What a puzzlement! Perhaps it has something to do with a black illegitimacy rate of 70 percent, rampant criminality in poor black communities, generations of being taught that doing well at school is “acting white”, and that racism means they can only depend upon handouts from the government. The Ku Klux Klan could not ask for more punishing and destructive anti-black policies than exist in blue urban centers. Even better, the blacks who live in blue urban centers overwhelmingly vote to continue this system year after year.
Blacks who point out the obvious are reviled as Uncle Toms.
This Georgia legislator is so dumb, he doesn't even know the source of the slur "Uncle Tom." But he knows that he abominates Clarence Thomas, who rose from desperate poverty to extraordinary eminence. Because Thomas is a conservative, this fool thinks he deserves to be smeared. pic.twitter.com/NWLN1MOjGP
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) February 15, 2023
White Democrat politicians are ever willing to stir racial hate to maintain a solid black vote for the Democrat party which runs this atrocious system.
https://twitter.com/brexitleo/status/1626694108797337600
Of course lynching was a habit of overwhelmingly Democrat populations in the South, and Democrats in the Senate fought decade after decade Republican attempts to pass a Federal statute against lynching. One does appreciate the bleak irony of all this.
I could wish I could say I was shocked. ..Not after the attitudes I encountered in the 5th/6th grade room when I voluntold during a college course. I recall that particular course focused on ethnic identity, plus communication amongst cultural groups. ..I recall wondering distinctly whether the kids learned anything of use. …I ultimately decided I didn’t really want to know.
The illegitimacy issue certainly adds to the disciplinary problems the school faces – bad behavior in school, truancy, and noncompliance with school assignments. IMO, the salient problems are the social ideology of schoolteachers and administrators (promoted by teacher’s colleges and their accrediting agencies), which cannot abide fixed standards and recognizing differences in performance; the toxic shame / honor culture abroad in the black population, which generates an indifference to achievement in favor of valuing the indicia of achievement and generates a contempt for authority of all sorts consequent to the notion that blacks are some sort of aristocratic stratum not properly subject to it; the problems which are inherent in public agency as an institution and the problems Americans have as a culture and society in erecting capable public agencies.
You can address the problems with policy changes, but you’d have to figure a way to sideline all the forces which like the situation just the way it is.
Note, the policy changes would have to be commanded by the state legislature and some might require amendments to the Maryland constitution. That would require Democratic pols to actually behave as if the purpose of schools was to educate and not to provide patronage for their preferred clientele. Fat chance.
The Georgia state legislator in question is not dumb. He may have been overpraised and over promoted in his work life, but he got through engineering school. He may be ignorant of particular historical references. All of us are ignorant of 98% of what there is to know. His problem is his social ideology, not his intellect.
You are too impressed Art with academic credentials and work experience. I have encountered people rich in degrees, or rich in work experience, who I would not trust to pour water from a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.
You are too impressed Art with academic credentials and work experience. I have encountered people rich in degrees, or rich in work experience, who I would not trust to pour water from a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.
The assertion I addressed is not whether he has good judgment or is trustworthy. The question is whether or not he is unintelligent. His quantum of intelligence is fine. The problem lies elsewhere. Jacoby should identify the actual problem. (Jacoby also conflates being unintelligent with being ignorant).
Any college graduate in this country Art who does not know that Uncle Tom is a fictional character from Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an idiot, no matter how many classes he slept through.
Desperately divisive.
Those two malicious morons are only two [of tens of millions of causes] reasons America suffers such a high degree of hatred and violence.
Let’s Go Brandon!
It’s all good. The teachers have great salaries and benefits.
They can’t add or read but they have positive self-esteem and know the white man is the devil.
I repeat myself, but where is the Church? The answer is that our hierarchy is a huge part of the problem. The hierarchy is almost entirely in favor of continued victimhood, and thus failure, for the black community, and continued shame for everyone else. I mentioned in a previous post the program in my diocese for “repenting” from the sin of “whiteness” which is equated with racism. The fact is that fatherhood and a life adhered to Christ is the answer to all that ails the black community, but they will never hear that message from the USCCB. Our bishops consistently put their light under a basket rather than on a lampstand.
Any college graduate in this country Art who does not know that Uncle Tom is a fictional character from Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an idiot, no matter how many classes he slept through.
He’s not an idiot. He just had a different reading list in junior high school.
I repeat myself, but where is the Church? The answer is that our hierarchy is a huge part of the problem. The hierarchy is almost entirely in favor of continued victimhood, and thus failure, for the black community, and continued shame for everyone else.
Or they’re self-centered institutional politicians whose attention is taken up with…institutional politics. Our hierarchy is not ‘a huge part of the problem’ because hardly anyone gives a rip what they say about race matters.
He’s not an idiot.
Yes he is. Being oblivious to such a common fact is bad enough. Then making a public speech using an expression he is completely ignorant of underlines the fact. This gentleman was born in 1959. I am sure this was covered in whatever school he was attending.
Our hierarchy is not ‘a huge part of the problem’ because hardly anyone gives a rip what they say about race matters.
Their contribution to the problem isn’t in what they’re saying, it’s in what they’re not saying. The Church is supposed to be the moral voice against such worldly nonsense but shouting the truth from the rooftops would require the hierarchy to remove their lips from the government teat.
“Being oblivious to such a common fact is bad enough. Then making a public speech using an expression he is completely ignorant of underlines the fact.”
Eh, yes, that was rather my initial thought.
“He just had a different reading list in junior high school.”
So did I; Jr High began in ’87 for me. I still had heard of the book by graduation. Never mind college, high schoolers from this Senator’s era should surely have been acquainted.
Yes he is. Being oblivious to such a common fact is bad enough. Then making a public speech using an expression he is completely ignorant of underlines the fact. This gentleman was born in 1959. I am sure this was covered in whatever school he was attending.
I never read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. What I remember of it was a passing reference to in a history text and a brief aside in a history teacher’s lecture. (“You’ve got the book, the symbol, and the martyr, you’ve got the basis for any movement”). The 19th century American literature I had to study was in anthologies of short stories, Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, &c. Never had my hand on Walt Whitman, but my siblings did.
Wm. F. Buckley once asked an aide, “Who is this Harriet Tubman person and how come I’ve never heard of her?”. Well, he went to school in the 1940, when the little sidebar vignettes hadn’t been placed in history texts and no one had thought to devote five paragraphs to her. (She was interesting, just not that important and the text book authors of the time didn’t think you had to have a quota of black faces in your text).
“…the salient problems are the social ideology of schoolteachers and administrators…, which cannot abide fixed standards and recognizing differences in performance…”
Eh, I thought the whole point of having teacher’s unions was to ensure consistent standards?
You know, all State and Federal standards ought be driven by teachers unions to ensure national consistency. Thus we’d be reasonably sure that high grads from all over the States would have a particular degree of expertise across several subjects-matter. Such “basic” and “intermediate” skill sets would, of course be built upon during college per major as appropriate.
I sincerely apologize in advance.
The main functions [top three] of teachers’ unions are to maximize teachers’ salaries and Cadilac benefits, funnel vast amounts of laundered taxpayer dollars to far left demagogues/politicians, and advance the revolution.
And it’s a vicious circle. Most money from education budget increases goes to salaries and benefits increases which raises money available to pay for more egregious leftist pols.
And little Johnnie can’t read.
the time didn’t think you had to have a quota of black faces in your text).
The publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a major milestone on our path to the Civil War by inflaming Northern sentiment against slavery. As Lincoln said when he met the author in the White House: So this is the little lady who made this big war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CoO7KGXlCE
“The main functions [top three] of teachers’ unions are…”
I well understand these have become the practical intentions. They had become so even by when my mother had begun teaching in the later 60s. ..I don’t think the original unions had such cynical motives though.
.I don’t think the original unions had such cynical motives though.
The NEA was as late as 1960 a professional association dominated by superintendents and principals. The AFT was called ‘the Teachers’ Guild’ and was far smaller. Collective bargaining for public employees does not have an antique pedigree. Fiorello LaGuardia was opposed to it. It wasn’t practiced in New York City until 1958 and it did not reach the federal government until 1961. Mutual aid associations for public employees a sensible person might countenance. Collective bargaining should never be practiced. Compensation scales for public employees (their total compensation, not just their cash compensation) should be determined by formulae incorporated into statutory law, not negotiated with goonettes like Randi Weingarten. Disciplinary manual should also be derived from statutory law.
Re: Teachers Unions.
Without getting into specifics, I am maneuvering through an issue at a university where someone worked with the administration to screw the faculty over. What’s interesting is that, since this was done in the service of wokeness, no one expects the union to do a thing to help the faculty. I’ve long thought the teacher’s union was useless in that regard (thank you Trump for getting rid of the need to pay “fair share” dues!), but even the very pro-union and proud union members of the faculty have zero expectation of receiving any aid whatsoever from the union. Everyone knows that the union’s only aims are to help leftist politicians spread wokeness and to launder money while they are at it.
I have never been impressed with intent of unions at large. Most virtue I see from unions…comes from how a collectively bargained agreement can make management “easier”, establishing a set of rules and standards by which employer and employee expect to abide.
Notably, that has nothing much to do with the dignity of an individual.
I have long been very wary of merit-based pay. If Johnny and Suzy grow up with single-parent households and Dad barely admits he has offspring, and most of their classmates face similar straits, ..there’s very little teachers and administrators might do toward students caring about learning. There’s a reason why poorly funded school districts have trouble with keeping competent staff and faculty.
I have never been impressed with intent of unions at large.
You read accounts of how early 20th century industrial concerns ran, you can understand the impulse to organize. I think you can argue that the model of industrial relations promoted by the Wagner Act could have been improved. See also David Witwer’s history of the Teamsters where he discuses how social relations within unions tend to give sustenance to boss rule. He also provides a short history of the infiltration of the Sicilianate mafia into union operations (which began in Chicago in 1928 and in New York in 1930), though without providing much of an explanation of why particular unions proved to be so vulnerable to the mob. I’m a lapsed SEIU member. The people who were active in the union were (I’m guessing) well-intentioned, but it seemed like a lot of transactions costs to give us 102% of what our employers were willing to give us freely.
I used to work in an office which had to report to an administrator who was by all appearances a negligent a**hole. We never unionized. I don’t recall an inspector from the state health department ever inspecting the place. They should have taken a blowtorch to the hind end of the management, him in particular. Regulatory agencies, like courts, meddle a great deal but do not protect us very much.
Art:
I just retired from 41 years in private education (38 in Catholic schools), mostly happy years, but lost two jobs due to office politics. Public school teachers need the protections of other civil service employees and no more. Those who’ve given 5-10 years of good service should enjoy some perks of seniority in job assignment, but tenure has to go. You don’t get to define the job, and while districts would be crazy not have veteran teachers advise on new teaching materials, the people and their elected officers are the boss, and if you don’t like it, get out.
Now that’s what the law should be. In practice, the administration has to show sense. Teachers can run off as much leash as you give them, so you must keep control of the program. But if management gets too tight, you will lose creative folks and have to run your program with time-serving drudges, and unhappy teachers make for unhappy kids who don’t get high test scores (contrary to Calvinist fantasies). You can also lose good teachers to voter mood swings if ideas wildly popular on Monday are “out” on Tuesday, then “in” again the following year. Fickle management can lose good people, too.
Baltimore is a lost cause. Best if it were removed from the United States. Philadelphia and Chicago, too. They are worse than the most desperately poor third world countries. Civil society has collapsed under one party rule.
I lived between Washington and Baltimore for five years in a little town named Savage. I left there at the end of 1993. It has a MARC commuter train station and some retail stores built on the site of a former horse racing track. I found it an oasis of semi sanity between two hopelessly poor, violent, corrupt cities.
To a clear thinking person unbound by political biases, it is obvious that the politics embraced by the voters for 60 plus years has led to this deplorable state. Democrats, however, lack the ability of critical thinking, knowing only indoctrination.
It took me 13 months to find another full time job after leaving DC and more than once I questioned if I made the right choice in leaving. After I found another job, I have never regretted it. Nor will I take my family to Baltimore.
Baltimore is a lost cause.
No, it’s not. It’s just that the political class does not care to implement the policies necessary to repair the city and the voters of Baltimore do not seem to care. Another problem is that the judiciary wing of the political class will often attempt to sabotage what efforts the rest make to put repairs into practice.
The District of Columbia saw a 75% decline in its homicide rate under the supervision of an effective mayor, Anthony Williams. The decline was not matched by an increase in the number of homicides in DC suburbs. East Orange, NJ under Mayor Robert Bowser was another success story.
That is your opinion, Art. I lived 17 minutes from the Inner Harbor. Harborplace is empty. Harborplace Mall is closed.
The district attorney Mosby should be rotting in prison.
If an “Uncle Tom” is a black person who betrays other black people for their own advantage, look at what Maxine Waters, Lori Lightfoot, Al Sharpton, Barack Obama and countless other black democrats have done to betray black people: increased murders of black men due to their promotion of abortion; schools that foster so much chaos but little learning because outcomes must be equal and you can’t punish the disruptives because they’re disproportionately black (thanks Obama!); blacks becoming a smaller minority than Hispanics because of ‘intersectionality’… WHO IS THE REAL UNCLE TOM!
That is your opinion, Art. I lived 17 minutes from the Inner Harbor. Harborplace is empty. Harborplace Mall is closed. The district attorney Mosby should be rotting in prison.
I lived on Charles St. and St. Paul St, on the 3400 bloc, the 3300 bloc and the 2700 bloc.
If you are there now, you are crazy.
I left in 1986. My hometown’s also being trashed.