April 27, 2009

What Obama hasn't figured out yet: "Better Teachers" mean "_____er Teachers"

These days, everybody is in favor of having Better Teachers in our public schools: Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, the whole gang. Everybody is in favor of hiring Better Teachers and easing out Worse Teachers.

Heck, I'm in favor of Better Teachers.

But guess what Obama et al haven't figured out yet about Better Teachers? It's something that James S. Coleman discovered in working on his 1966 Coleman Report.

I'm reading Race and Education: 1954-2007 by U. of Delaware historian Raymond Wolters. It's an academic study that's well-written enough to appeal to a mass audience. It's unusual in that it covers both the well-trodden ground of Supreme Court decisions about race and public schools, from Brown v. Board of Education onward, while at the same time recounting exactly the unintended consequences of what those august deliberations did to real children in the classrooms and hallways and lavatories.

A major figure in the book is quantitative sociologist James S. Coleman, who was given $1 million by the 1964 Civil Rights Act to study how much blacks were shortchanged by the public schools. But his 1966 Coleman report proved disappointing to LBJ Administration. Wolters writes:
The achievement gap troubled Coleman. As a sociologist he was inclined to ascribe the differences in black and white test scores to the influence of the social environment, and he also knew that attributing even part of the difference to racial inheritance would place him outside the pale of his profession and render him ineligible for future grants. For Coleman and for many other educators and sociologist who studied his report, the key variables were family background and neighborhood. There was no correlation between test scores and per-pupil spending, age of textbooks, and a host of other measures. But there was a correlation with family background, the education and occupations of parents, and the number of books in the home. ...

For Coleman, these findings were unwelcome. Personally, he favored more spending for education. And Coleman's dismay was compounded by another correlation that emerged from the data. Both black and white children seemed to do better on tests if their teachers had done well on a standard test of vocabulary. This was especially problematical because black teachers were "on the whole less well prepared, less qualified, with lower verbal skills, than their white counterparts." This led to "the conjecture that [students] would do less well on average under black teachers than under white teachers." If so, "a major source of inequality of educational opportunity for black students was the fact they were being taught by black teachers." Yet this possibility was so heterodox that the Coleman report did not pursue the matter. In 1991 Coleman expressed regret over the decision "not to ask the crucial question." "A dispassionate researcher," he wrote, "would have gone on to ask the question we did not ask." ...

Poring over the statistics, he noted that African American teachers, on average, had slightly more years of formal education than their white counterparts. But the black teachers lagged behind whites in vocabulary and reading comprehension.

In other words, what Obama hasn't figured out yet, although James S. Coleman figured it out back in 1966, is that Better Teachers means Whiter Teachers.

When it finally dawns on Obama that if we actually start firing worse teachers and hiring better teachers, we'll be, on net, firing blacks and hiring whites, you can expect this whole effort to get buried so far under affirmative action that nothing good comes of it.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

71 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's just come right out and say it Steve: Better Anything means Whiter Anything. Unless somebody wants to refute it by showing examples of people willing to net out $100K on their COL for Non-White neighbors.

--Senor Doug

Anonymous said...

OT, but are donors to vdare or S.S. anonymous, or can they be? The one peoples project now has a thread about unmasking vdare donors. is there some law like campaign finance law that its all public.

David said...

Whiter students are a good idea, too.

rightsaidfred said...

Isn't the secret plan of the PC/SWPL crowd to turn black people into white(r) people? Maybe they can make black teachers more like white teachers. The Obama crowd can do anything.

RKU said...

Seriously, though, doesn't this whole thing remind you of the endless different approaches the late Soviet Union tried to make Collective Farms work?

All the theoretical Marxist textbooks said it would work, so if the first 1,327 different methods had failed, well, then, let's try the 1,328th method!

I think it was Phil Dick who said that reality is that which continues to exist even when you don't believe in it...

AllanF said...

The perversity of AA is that it applies the Peter Principle to an entire race.

There are exceedingly few competent black police, fireman, teachers, etc. because those that would be competent at that level have been drafted up to lawyers, doctors, corporate diversity quotas, etc.

So when 8 or 9 out of 10 people one runs into is obviously out of their professional element, it makes people be doubly cynical toward the whole group.

Grant Orwell said...

hatefacts!! what about the correlations with number of times the teacher compliments the students? did you look at that? it's all about self-esteem! you're wrong!

Anonymous said...

AsianER teachers, as well.

Anonymous said...

I'm already looking forward to the Occam's butter knife excuses when objective teacher evaluations come in, and following Obama's plan would lead to white teachers getting a bigger slice of the pie.

If I were a careerist social psychologist or education professor, I'd think of some half baked analogue of stereotype threat that applies to teachers instead of students.

Everyone would cite me to explain the gap. What else would they do? Cite the Coleman Report or The Bell Curve?

Larry, San Francisco said...

What about scripted teaching like Success for All which has been noted to have great success with poorer students. The problem with this approach is that smart teachers hate it since it gives them little freedom. This system then might be appropiate for teachers who aren't that bright and would not mind it so much.

Anonymous said...

"When it finally dawns on Obama that if we actually start firing worse teachers and hiring better teachers, we'll be, on net, firing blacks and hiring whites, you can expect this whole effort to get buried so far under affirmative action that nothing good comes of it."

Mostly blacks do know the score. So do their liberal friends. And in private conversation they talk about these things frankly. But it should not be mentioned in public. That's the rub. Instead of unearthing all the blatant hypocrisy on race, disparate performance and other hot topics (Israel), it would be more interesting to figure out why there is such an emphasis on the public/private dichotomy, i.e. why things which everybody acknowledges privately should not be said in public. Why is deniability such a big deal, even though everybody knows the score?

Obama will parade all these studies, theories and initiatives in front of the public, whilst he already knows the score. And most of the public also knows the score. Nothing new here. This exercise has been played through in most post-colonial environments.

Anonymous said...

OT, but are donors to vdare or S.S. anonymous, or can they be? The one peoples project now has a thread about unmasking vdare donors. is there some law like campaign finance law that its all public.

You just send bucks in an envelope, without a return address. Are they taking fingerprints already?

Anonymous said...

Heh, maybe they should use more Teach for America teachers.

Them be the best!

Nomen Klatura said...

Obama? Figure out stuff? He already does that except that he defines "figuring it out" as twisting it to support his agenda.

Obama's presidency is getting kooky already, Steve. The deep bow to the Saudi King was a creepy nadir in the recorded history of American presidents abroad. And now this weird fly-by the Statue of Liberty and the clumsy teleprompter snafu yesterday. And the 60 Minutes interview where the reporter actually asked Obama if he was punch drunk.

There have been a lot of other episodes of casual weirdness also and it's all beginning to stack up in a weird pile.

What is Saturday Night Live doing with Obama? I don't watch SNL anymore but there is a lifetime of weird comedy already compiled in the first 100 days of this guy as POTUS.

Anonymous said...

I had a girlfriend, who had a friend who was a (white) teacher in black public schools. According to her the students would behave best for a black male teacher; less well for a black female teacher; and not very well at all for a white female teacher. White male teachers were not mentioned, I don't think there were any in this environment.

The number one problem with public education, from my personal experience, is the borderline chaos most classrooms function in. Ideally black kids would have large, tough black male teachers who scared the bejeezus out of them so they would behave and maybe learn a little in the process. Only gifted students, and maybe not even those, need "good" teachers. Teachers mainly present the material, and students learn by their own effort.

Sex segregation would probably help a lot too. None of these things is ever going to happen though. Realistically the only thing to do is lower expectations for what public education is supposed to accomplish.

testing99 said...

Nomen -- Obama might be on drugs again. He wrote about taking them in the past.

I've speculated he might have kicked them for a while through Islam. It would fit. If he can't be praying five times a day with his Islamist pals he might be on the Nose Candy.

He's got a long-time pal and gofer whose job it is to hand him snacks and bottled water. Just saying.

Evan said...

And now this weird fly-by the Statue of Liberty and the clumsy teleprompter snafu yesterday. And the 60 Minutes interview where the reporter actually asked Obama if he was punch drunk. I don't get much news. Do you have links about the second two? Haven't heard about those yet.

Anonymous said...

'Both black and white children seemed to do better on tests if their teachers had (d)one well on a standard test of vocabulary.

Yes, I am a pedant, slap me,why don't you?

Richard ..London

Anonymous said...

This has already come up in D.C., where Michelle Rhee's merit reforms are facing up against the heavily black teacher corps.

Lucius Vorenus said...

The Whitest teachers in the world can't do a dadgum thing with a student population that has IQs down in the 70s.

Since the creation of the Great Society, we've had several generations now of dysgenic fertility amongst American blacks & aboriginal hispanics, and we're getting to the point that basic mastery of the 3Rs [reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic] requires children who are almost a full standard deviation above the black/aboriginal average IQ.

I.e. maybe 75% to 80% of all black & aboriginal hispanic children are now incapable of basic mastery of the 3Rs.

You people just have no earthly idea how bad things are, and how much terribly worse things are about to become.

Anonymous said...

As you have discussed, Steve; the best teachers should teach the best students. So it would be counter-productive to insist that white teachers teach in the ghetto public schools. Perhaps it would be worth it for them to teach in an elite black school; if there is one ... anyone know?

Even there, as you have pointed out, Steve, there are a relatively few, but some hundreds of thousands, very bright blacks. If some of them were teachers their efforts would be most productive in those elite black schools.

none of the above said...

Is there any evidence whether the best answer there is "whiter" or "smarter?"

Lucius Vorenus said...

A little off-topic, but this fellow Luis Caldera is apparently going to be the designated fall guy for the Air Force One dive-bombing incident in Manhattan yesterday [Fran Townsend just called it felony stupidity]; Caldera was Clinton's Secretary of the Army from 1998 to 2001, but check out what he was doing during the Bush 43 Administration:

He went on to serve as Vice Chancellor for University Advancement in the California State University System, the largest four-year university system in the country. Caldera became the 18th president of the University of New Mexico in August 2003 and stepped down from that post in January 2006. Caldera's contract with the University granted him appointment as a tenured member of the University of New Mexico School of Law faculty, where he currently serves.

Caldera served on the board of directors for IndyMac Bank from 2002 until its failure and subsequent seizure by the government in July 2008.


In other words - Caldera's career makes for almost a perfect storm of iSteve obsessions.

Peter said...

I think Thrasymachus is right - black drill sergeant types would be the best teachers for underpeforming inner city schools. You need to match the teachers to the students, you can't pretend there's one way to teach everybody. A sensitive 150 IQ poet type or math geek might be a fantastic teacher at Phillips Exeter but would be eaten alive in a DC public school.

There are certainly far too many women in teaching these days - especially at the public school level. But again part of the problem is that the goals of the public school system simply make no sense - as Steve has pointed out many times. As long as our goal remains trying to train below average IQ kids to go to college and become symbol analysts of some type we are doomed to failure no matter what kind of teachers we throw at the kids.

Anonymous in Canada said...

I'm pretty sure the contents of this blog could be classified as "hate" in Canada. I don't know why I hang out here so much. Some of the people posting comments here do seem to be overtly racist and sexist.

But the thing is, I think a lot of the stuff about genetic differences between races and the sexes is true. I'm a leftist by most standards. But it seems to me that a lot of what is taught in sociology and psychology is just stupid and ignorant because it ignores genetics.

I find myself quite shocked by the racism and sexism I see here. But I was shunned and called a racist on another forum for suggesting that a lot of First Nations people (politially correct Canadian name for native Indians) have a genetic tendency towards alcoholism, and treatment will only be discovered if we study the genetic bases of the disease instead of insisting that it is caused by residential schools (an irrational theory currently very much in vogue in Canada).

I suspect that the genetic differences often discussed here are true. But you have to be cautious with this stuff. Not everything that is true is useful. And true things can be used in hateful and destructuve ways. For example, I am a female and I teach math at the university level. If it hadn't been for the liberal ideas of the 20th century I would not even have been allowed to attend university. I do believe that more males then females are good at math, but the difference is only noticable at the extreme upper tails of the distributions. (And a lot of those male math wizards seem to have strange anti-social personalities, or to be completely mad--for example Newton). There are many females who are much better at math than most males. And no doubt there are many black people who are smarter that most white and Asian people. You have to keep this in mind.

AllanF said...

Interesting anecdote I picked up from my neighbor who is a teacher mentor or some such out here in one of the public schools. It strongly supports the contention teachers make a HUGE difference at every level of instruction.

There are three classes, each with a different teacher, of remedial reading for third graders. At the start of the school year 0% of these students were reading at grade level. Back in February a test was administered to assess the reading levels. The numbers for each of the classes were: 48%, 25%, 4% at grade level. I have no idea the p values, but those look significant to me. I'm sure they are to the kids.

So the mentor goes to the principle and asks match the results to the teacher. Principle gets the 48% right, but swaps the other two. The 48% teacher is a wonder worker with awards and so forth so no surprise. The 25% is a young 2 year experience teacher that is working hard and learning. The 4% teacher has some 13 or 18 years (I forget the number) experience and basically is trapped in a golden cage killing time until retirement.

So here's where the rubber really hits the road. Due to budget cuts at least one of these teachers is being let go. The teachers union is absolutely against any performance based firing. Their solution is to put all the teachers below some threshold of seniority into a lottery and pull names. As much as everyone would want to fire the 4% teacher, heck it would be to his benefit to more to a career that satisfies him, his seniority is above reproach.

NCLB is instigating changes in this regard, but they are coming slowly and with a lot of push back from the teacher unions. It is going to be really interesting to see how it plays out. It pits most teacher's and most administrator's desire to do what is best for the kids against the knee-jerk liberalism of the teacher unions and their fidelity to their members and the seniority based system. Consider, what is a 50 y.o. with 22 years experience teaching 7th grade arithmetic supposed to do if he looses his job? Of course the same can be said for an auto factory worker. The answer if that he should have been weeded out 15 or 20 years ago, but who knows, maybe at the time the district was hurting for teachers and was forced to take all comers. Something to think about.

Anonymous said...

This exercise has been played through in most post-colonial environments.

Yes, but the US has been "decolonized" since 1776, how long can this crap continue?

AllanF said...

"Only gifted students, and maybe not even those, need "good" teachers. Teachers mainly present the material, and students learn by their own effort."

This couldn't be more wrong. Presentation matters immensely. If the presentation doesn't connect with the student the student is not going to learn very well. Simple as that.

One can argue whether it is better for society to allocate the best teachers to getting the under-achievers to par, or allocate them to maximizing the potential of the over-achievers, but to suggest teachers are replaceable cogs is the precise position of the teachers unions. Indeed every union. I don't know any people who think their personal occupation is subject to everyone having the same productivity.

Anonymous said...

You're assuming that there are actually good white teachers willing to teach at these schools. In my experience that's not the case. Teaching has an elastic labor supply. "Good" teachers can get work in districts that won't send them to a ghetto school, or use their skills in a different profession (and good teachers usually do have skills that private industry can make use of). Barring that, many more, being married women, have the option of not working at all.

Anonymous said...

You just send bucks in an envelope, without a return address. Are they taking fingerprints already?If you did that with campaign funds they would not be allowed to accepts. I dont know how it works with political groups.

Anonymous said...

"You people just have no earthly idea how bad things are, and how much terribly worse things are about to become."

You have no idea how (gulp) right you are...

Evil Sandmich said...

A slight modification for non-entertainment related AA:

When it finally dawns on Obama that if we actually start firing worse ____ers and hiring better ____ers, we'll be, on net, firing blacks and hiring whites

Anonymous said...

I contribute illegally to campaign funds all the time. (I'm actually a Canadian by birth. I just act like a US citizen and no one bothers me.) I just get a money order at a convenience store and use a name out of the phone book.

Anonymous said...

But I was shunned and called a racist on another forum for suggesting that a lot of First Nations people (politially correct Canadian name for native Indians) have a genetic tendency towards alcoholism, and treatment will only be discovered if we study the genetic bases of the disease instead of insisting that it is caused by residential schools (an irrational theory currently very much in vogue in Canada).

Indian alcoholism has nothing to do with boarding schools. Indians here in AZ have horrible drinking problems, just look at the Navajo. Also, Mexicans are part Indian and they have massive problems with drunk driving. Clearly the White man is not solely to blame for their taste for firewater.

Figgy said...

And coincidentally enough, from today's NY Times:

Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students, leaving the achievement gap stubbornly wide, despite President Bush’s frequent assertions that the No Child law was having a dramatic effect. Not precisely OT but certainly not far off. Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/education/29scores.html?_r=1&hp

Simply shocking!

Anonymous said...

I think that eventually some rich Libertarian Internet entrepreneur will set up a charity that pays the best teachers a one-time fee to videotape their courses and post it for free, covering elementary school through college. Something like Youtube, except dedicated to comprehensive education. There won't be any believable excuses about bad teachers after that happens.

Anonymous said...

"I contribute illegally to campaign funds all the time. (I'm actually a Canadian by birth. I just act like a US citizen and no one bothers me.) I just get a money order at a convenience store and use a name out of the phone book."

That's nothing. In the US dead people vote dozens of times. Pets too...

Lucius Vorenus said...

Anonymous in Canada: I am a female and I teach math at the university level.

Do you have an account at MySpace/Facebook/Match.com or other [and if so, what is it]?

Alternatively, go register at Spengler's forum and then PM me.

Eric said...

Only gifted students, and maybe not even those, need "good" teachers. Teachers mainly present the material, and students learn by their own effort.

No. The key attribute of a good teacher is recognizing what a student is capable of and setting expectations at that level. Most kids have enough natural laziness that you have to push them to learn. But it's counterproductive to push a kid to do something he can't do.

The problem with the system as it stands is kids on the left half of the bell curve are being taught the same way you'd teach gifted children, and as a result they learn far less than they're capable of.

AC said...

None of the above said:

Is there any evidence whether the best answer there is "whiter" or "smarter?"Whiter is smarter. If you put "whiter" in, you know it also means "smarter." If you put "smarter" in, you know it also means "whiter".

Anonymous said...

About alcoholism...
I think Cochran and Harpending talked about this in their book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion". You're right, it is genetic and has to due with exposure to agriculture. The longer a people have been living in an agricultural society, the better they have adapted to it and one of those adaptions, among many named and unnamed, is handling alcohol well.

The Steveosphere has been around for along time now and your gentle admonishments are routinely seen: a person wanders through and is simultaneously refreshed and shocked and can't help but give advice in order to help Steve fit in better with our current elites and thus mainstream society so as to be more effective.

I used to find it shocking about five years ago, but no longer, and I believe Steve and the others go about this in an ideal manner.

Anonymous said...

That's LOW, Lucius. We all know you're a nark, but pretending to want to ask somebody out on a date so you can shop them? Low, low, low.

dc watcher said...

There are many females who are much better at math than most males. And no doubt there are many black people who are smarter that most white and Asian people. You have to keep this in mind.

we do keep it in mind. It is called "averages." About 10% of the black population have IQs above 100. That means 90% have IQs lower than the white average, with the bulk of those being below 85. The higher you go, the smaller the percentage of blacks relative to other races. The Bell curve median is at 100, the white average, and also near the average for asians and some mestizo and middle eastern populations. The great majority of blacks are to the left, and their own curve is more narrow with almost 90% bunching up between 75 and 95.
so there you are. There's your "many." We can see the effect on society that races have as a whole. Nowhere with a large black population does well. Neighborhoods decline. Once top flight tech high schools (there were several in the Baltimore area until the late 60s) fumble and die or become below average as they become blacks. Blacks NEVER improve the intellectual climat of an institution of learning or applied endeavor, with the possible exception of some sports and perhaps some music. This is not to say that there are not highly accomplished black individuals, but they are so few and far between that if blacks were assessed solely by merit, fewer than one percent of top universities would be black, the same percentage as during the 1950s, pre-affirmative action.
We already know what large numbers of blacks do to a city, a shopping mall, a school, a country. It's not a subject we need wonder about.

Victoria said...

Ideally black kids would have large, tough black male teachers who scared the bejeezus out of them so they would behave and maybe learn a little in the process. . . . Sex segregation would probably help a lot too.

By the 1980s, all of this was being nixed, thanks primarily to feminist power in the education system. If you go back, you can find, during this period, attempts by black male educators to form schools for black boys. These men had seen the light. Unfortunately, their decade and more of striving for civil rights "equality" backfired on them, as white feminists raised hell about "exclusive" schools that would ban girls. I suspect that some form of this "segregated" education is going on, in places where classes can be formed especially for boys, under other guises.

Victoria said...

It figures that Obama would do that since most blacks consider Arabs to be higher up on the social hierarchy.The typical American black doesn't think this. If anything, they look upon A-rabs as exotic and weird. Remember, Obama isn't typical. His would be closer to an African's view of Arabs.

You people just have no earthly idea how bad things are, and how much terribly worse things are about to become.You sound like a black nurse I knew. She practiced during that epidemic of crack-cocaine, when black welfare mothers were leaving their infants behind in hospitals after births. These drug-crazed females would make babies and then dump them. The infants were then put through some kind of medical routine, as they went through the withdrawal symptoms of a junkie. This nurse was distraught about the chemical impact on the brains of all these children, and felt that attempts to educate them would be close to pointless. She wondered if most of them would simply develop as amoral beings.

I find myself quite shocked by the racism and sexism I see here.But you're not shocked by the degree to which you have been conditioned to worry over such things?

steve wood said...

Anonymous:

That's the rub ... [I]t would be more interesting to figure out ... why things which everybody acknowledges privately should not be said in public. Why is deniability such a big deal, even though everybody knows the score?meet Anonymous in Canada:

But you have to be cautious with this stuff. Not everything that is true is useful. And true things can be used in hateful and destructuve ways. ... There are many females who are much better at math than most males. And no doubt there are many black people who are smarter that most white and Asian people. You have to keep this in mind.Smart leftists, especially those with a healthy streak of independent thinking, will privately acknowledge the truth - or at least the potential truth - of many aspects of HBD. But, they argue, what good does it do society to reveal such truths? Other than the simple shining virtue of truthfulness, I mean.

If you believe that every American should be treated as an individual and should rise and fall on his own merits, then knowing that Group A is smarter than Group B is not a help but rather a hindrance to your goal. People will inevitably stereotype all B's as dumb no matter how much they are told to forget the general truth and stick to judging individuals.

The leftists - and lots of other people - would argue that it's better simply not to discuss such matters. In an open society, that means pretending not to know them at all. It's called polite hypocrisy.

none of the above said...

What's shocking is mostly determined by what you're used to. If you grew up during the cold war, you probably weren't much shocked by discussions of MAD, even though this was a plan to murder 3+ billion people and end industrial civilization the day someone's radar got a glitch. But some guy burning a flag, *that* was offensive and shocking.

And so it is, today. It is shocking and offensive to suggest that different racial groups have important differences in average intelligence. It was not considered shocking by anyone when people started discussing invading Iraq on the basis of fantasies about how they were somehow a threat, nor when people have discussed invading or pre-emptively striking Iran. It's just what you're used to.

Anonymous said...

It's important to realize that races have different averages on intelligence and other traits.

But also to realize, as Steve and Anonymous in Canada have stated, that there are some blacks smarter than most whites.

When we realize this we will not incorrectly accuse whites of racism; and we will arrange to educate all races in a manner appropriate to their ability so that they can maximize their potential.

Incorrect analysis of the situation leads to many very bad outcomes.

If we want to assure equality of outcome we can use the government to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. And we can restrict unskilled immigration so that poor (black) US citizens get higher wages.

Lucius Vorenus said...

"Shop"?

Is that some sort of PUA-speak?

PS: I don't know what "nark" means, either.

[DEA Agent?]

Big Bill said...

Anonymous in Canada, you keep reading and don't bother sending in a note. After all, your IP address is recorded and you never know how technically skilled those antifa/ direct-action folks are.

We know you are there. We know you are reading. You are gathering the courage to speak to those around you.

It may take years, given the conditioning you have been forced to endure, but you are getting there.

So just stay with us. Don't bother writing unless you feel absolutely compelled. Certainly don't identify yourself as Canadian in the future, for that just puts a big ol' leftie target on your back.

We are all here getting courage, marshaling our wits and logic, gathering statistics and storing them in our heads, and preparing for the Troubles soon to come. And they are coming, inevitably, inexorably, we all know it.

So get a money order, drop it in a mailbox and donate to VDare or Steve.

You know there is no one left behind the Molson Curtain who can say these things aloud anymore.

Steve Sailer is Radio Free Canada and Radio Free Europe for the 21st Century.

Anonymous said...

Good lord, this is so stupid. Of course smarter teachers can teach better than dumber teachers. And of course White teachers will be smarter on average than Black teachers. Stop.

Anonymous said...

You just send bucks in an envelope, without a return address. Are they taking fingerprints already?

If you did that with campaign funds they would not be allowed to accepts. I dont know how it works with political groups.

VDare is not a political campaign or a lobbying group. They have no legal obligation to disclose the names of their donors to anyone, and I'm sure they don't. I mailed my donation in via personal check, but if you want to remain anonymous use a money order and avoid the return address. If you're really, really paraoid, wear gloves for the whole process.

Anonymous said...

I had a girlfriend, who had a friend who was a (white) teacher in black public schools. According to her the students would behave best for a black male teacher; less well for a black female teacher; and not very well at all for a white female teacher. White male teachers were not mentioned, I don't think there were any in this environment.

The Whitest teachers in the world can't do a dadgum thing with a student population that has IQs down in the 70s.
-----------------------------------

So, what is it like for a white male teacher in a school like this? ; )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F8tqAdvHCs&mode=related&search

Lucius Vorenus said...

dc watcher: The great majority of blacks are to the left, and their own curve is more narrow with almost 90% bunching up between 75 and 95.

Even among adult blacks, the range would be more like 73-93.

And among black school children in 2009, the range is probably more like 70-90.

Zylonet said...

>>And true things can be used in hateful and destructuve ways.<<

You are correct; hurt feelings, which are true in that they exist, can lead to terrible ideas like: affirmative action, hate crimes legislation, MLK Day, massive third world immigration into first world nations, etc. Welcome to the club of realizing that "true things" can drive people to enact crazy policies that destroy nations and destroy the quality of life for millions of innocent people.

>>If it hadn't been for the liberal ideas of the 20th century I would not even have been allowed to attend university.<<

No women attended college before 1900? Marie Curie was self-educated in the late 1800s? All that nonesense about her attending the Sorbonne is false?

>Some of the people posting comments here do seem to be overtly racist and sexist.<<

What is telling is that you post that some of us are racist or sexist, yet you go on to relate your personal situation to general liberal goals about female empowerment. I need not wonder, if you care the discrimination faced by white males or even people other than yourself (maybe super smart Asians). Like most "victims" or "persecuted" it is obvious that you care only for yourself. You speak only when you perceive that the tide is against you. Truth and justice are not for you; feelings would appear to be your shining light.

Anonymous said...

Victoria sais:
"The typical American black doesn't think this. If anything, they look upon A-rabs as exotic and weird. Remember, Obama isn't typical. His would be closer to an African's view of Arabs."

Right, I was referring to the attitude in Kenya and Tanzania. I know the Ethiopians are brave enough to withstand the Arab onslaught on North Africa, which is a reason why they are so poor. Their motive is to preserve their ancient Coptic Christian tradition.

Anonymous said...

steve wood,
Thanks, that's the best explanation I read so far.

Lucius Vorenus said...

Anonymous: I know the Ethiopians are brave enough to withstand the Arab onslaught on North Africa

You meant to say "the MUSLIM onslaught".

Anonymous said...

Good lord, this is so stupid. Of course smarter teachers can teach better than dumber teachers.
This is true to the extent that dumb teachers can screw things up beyond anyone's imagination.

However, for something like the last 20 years I have learned new things by myself. No teachers needed, except for those before me who have figured things out.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous in Canada said...

I'm pretty sure the contents of this blog could be classified as "hate" in Canada. I don't know why I hang out here so much. Some of the people posting comments here do seem to be overtly racist and sexist."

Well, you've just become a racist by viewing this site, and agreeing with some of it. Perhaps you shouldn't throw that word around so casually.

"I suspect that the genetic differences often discussed here are true. But you have to be cautious with this stuff. Not everything that is true is useful. And true things can be used in hateful and destructuve ways. For example, I am a female and I teach math at the university level."

Hmmm. True but useless. The same could be said of much of mathematics. So why do you teach it?

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous in Canada said...

I'm pretty sure the contents of this blog could be classified as "hate" in Canada. I don't know why I hang out here so much. Some of the people posting comments here do seem to be overtly racist and sexist."

Well, you've just become a racist by viewing this site, and agreeing with some of it. Perhaps you shouldn't throw that word around so casually.

"I suspect that the genetic differences often discussed here are true. But you have to be cautious with this stuff. Not everything that is true is useful. And true things can be used in hateful and destructuve ways. For example, I am a female and I teach math at the university level."

Hmmm. True but useless. The same could be said of much of mathematics. So why do you teach it?

Anonymous said...

Steve says:

In other words, what Obama hasn't figured out yet, although James S. Coleman figured it out back in 1966, is that Better Teachers means Whiter Teachers.
There is no doubt in my mind that the public school system was constructed as a disfunctional system to ensnare the middle classes.

Anyone with more intelligence knows that you cannot leave it to the public school system to educate your children. You have to suppliment their education with lots of pre-school work, summer-time home work and an enormous effort to get them into the best summer programs. Eg, MIT summer camps, COSMOS, and so forth.

Caveat emptor.

Anonymous said...

RE: First Nation Alcoholism

Apparently this was a problem that was recognized before the Europeans arrived to the new world:
According to a post-Conquest Aztec document, consumption of the local "wine" (pulque) was generally restricted to religious ceremonies, but freely allowed to those over 70 years old.Apparently, the Aztecs recognized the destructive power of alcohol in their societies, and banned it for all productive (e.g., under 70) members of their society.

James Kabala said...

Victoria: The "crack baby" problem was much hyped by the media in the late 1980s (I remember it even though my age was in single digits at the time), but the fears people had never really came to pass.

Not that smoking crack while pregnant is any way a good thing, but statistics show that it did not lead to the level of permanent damage the was expected. Lucius's statistics also strike me as extremely dubious, since they contradict all other studies on the topic, both from the right and from the left.

Eric said...

There is no doubt in my mind that the public school system was constructed as a disfunctional system to ensnare the middle classes.

That's actually not to far from the truth, and it's well documented, too. The Underground History of American Education is a great read on the subject. Basically the modern public school system was designed to produce workers that were educated enough to manufacture industrial goods, and its creators weren't shy about admitting it.

They never intended the public school system to rival the private schools to which they were sending their own progeny.

dc watcher said...

">>If it hadn't been for the liberal ideas of the 20th century I would not even have been allowed to attend university.<< "

"No women attended college before 1900? Marie Curie was self-educated in the late 1800s? All that nonesense about her attending the Sorbonne is false?"

She did get a lot of flack actually. An American writer described a prank some male med students played on his mother when she was a student during the 1930s. They put the private organ of a cadaver in her hotdog roll. Her son observed, "and women today think they have it tough." doesn't begin to describe her hot dog.

When Dewey began the first library school classes--library school, mind you--at Columbia, circa 1890s, he had to hold them in a kind of closet, hidden away, because he insisted that females be admitted to them. Maybe not a good idea ultimately? The profession would make more money if the Dewey era began as a male bastion. Still, it was good of Dewey to have such faith in women and his decimal system.
Late 19th c., universities were beginning to admit girls, especially those with a teacher preparation focus. George Washington University in DC had female engineering students from the midwest in the early 1900s, as pictured in their yearbooks wearing upswept hair and long dresses. I've often wondered how they did later on.
The "liberal" push for higher female education was a natural development as the economy shifted to one where "information" professions increased. In 1800 less than 2% of the population in the U.S. were engaged in "information" based jobs, i.e. clerks, scribes, lawyers, clergy, teachers, some businessmen, politicians. As early as 1840 that percentage had increased ten times and by 1920, was actually a majority.
The changing gender balance in the workplace was/is inevitable because the workplace changes were/are inevitable. Nobody wants to go back to ploughing with a donkey or hauling all water from a well. Of course these technological advances are mostly due to white male inventiveness (and Asian nowadays), but ordering the physical world always was the male provenance. As a result of such inventions, it is possible to live in a less, well, physically challenging world.

Blacks were discriminated against in "many" universities. There was a scandal at Vassar, early 1900s, when a valedictorian, a beautiful girl, was "outed" by a suspicious roommate whose father hired a private detective. She was discovered to be part-black. A very small part, I'm sure, but enough to disqualify her from graduation. Liberal views prevailed and the lady graduated, finding a job cataloging in a library in Boston. Turns out she was a descendent of the Thos. Jefferson family.

Still, there were blacks attending some Ivy Leagues and other universities in the 19th century. At Oxford, England, Lewis Carroll in the 1880s, wrote of a coal black African student in his geometry class. This man graduated with a degree in mathematics.

There have been "women & minorities" in universities since the mid-19th c. Just because they are absurdly protected now, does not mean that they did not have a harder than normal way to go in the past. At one time, protective laws and even very limited aa, may have made sense. They don't any more but those 40s-70s liberals are with us still and their whole sense of identity depends on them sacrificing whites--other than themselves--to the cause of "social justice."
If society invalidates
this huge, huge, "victim class", it would leave society hollow and empty. And so liberated.

ps, that lunatic professor, Ignatiev, (Before the Irish Became White), is now in Canada promoting a social movement called Family Love, whose goal is to remove the stigma associated with incest. I wondered why he moved to Canado. Gotta go where the victims are, I guess. Or drum some up.

David said...

Lucius Vorenus said

>>You meant to say "the MUSLIM onslaught".

Religious wars are ethnic wars by another name.

Lucius Vorenus said...

David: Religious wars are ethnic wars by another name.

I'm sorry, but that's just rank nihilistic nonsense.

If you aren't mature enough to examine the horror which is the Koran & the Hadith, and draw the correct conclusions from having done so, then go away and bother someone else.

Svigor said...

"David: Religious wars are ethnic wars by another name."

I'm sorry, but that's just rank nihilistic nonsense.

If you aren't mature enough to examine the horror which is the Koran & the Hadith, and draw the correct conclusions from having done so, then go away and bother someone else.


I'm with David on this one. I don't think that dogma has nothing to do with it, but that doesn't mean he's not mostly right.

Lucius Vorenus said...

I'm sorry, but I just can't deal with this Darwinian nihilism which holds that there is no difference between an Arab Christian, an Arab Jew, an Arab animist, or an Arab Zoroastrian on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an Arab Muslim who believes that God told the Archangel Gabriel to tell the prophet Mohammed to tell the Muslim that it's his sacred duty to behead us.

And if you can't see the difference, then you're nuts.

theschoolprincipal said...

I'm having a hard time going through the comments on your site. Civilized and respectful of others it is not. I came to this site because of comments you left on theroot.com. I wanted to educate myself by reading your link, the one that quoted Coleman. Here's my response:
1)I am not a proponent of No Child Left Behind and President Obama's Race to the Top. They have not only not worked but they almost destroyed our public school system. I know this first hand. 2) There are no quick and easy fixes to our problems with America's public schools. Let me elaborate. I came from rural America. I was a good reader but poor in math and science. I did not learn what heat, cold and pressure did to matter (a 4th or 5th grade concept) because my teachers didn't understand it. So I missed out on a great deal. But when I became a teacher I made sure I understood the concepts I was asked to teach, and I taught these things to my students. I am certain that their own children will have even better prepared and better educated teachers. Black teachers who themselves had limited language development as young children will not have as much to offer to their students as many white teachers who had better schooling. But white teachers are "the other," and it's likely that many black children may do much better with black role models. If nothing else, they will look at their teachers and see a career possibility. For those who do, many will be like me and do a better job as teachers. It will take 3-4 generations to solve this problem. It will never be perfect. I do not buy the genetics theory of some of your readers. Genetics can serve both white and black people's children poorly. All children should have the same opportunity to reach their potential regardless of whether their IQ is 140 or 70.As long as America's children are funded according to their zip code, there is no hope of this happening. In the meantime, don't blame those who did not have the opportunity to break the chains of the past.
www.inthetrencheswithschoolreform.com