Here's the banner headline across the top of WashingtonPost.com:
In Washington, wide gaps in school discipline
Donna St. George 6:15 PM ET
Data suggest African American students are two to five times more likely to get suspended or expelled as their white peers, and that the gap exists across the region's urban, suburban and rural school districts.
Fortunately, the Obama Administration is on the case!
Seriously, this article is a classic in the genre of Nobody Ever Learns Anything.
Seriously, this article is a classic in the genre of Nobody Ever Learns Anything.
Quick, somebody get Holder a ball-peen hammer!
ReplyDeleteWeb cameras in all public school class rooms!
ReplyDeleteHow do you think the WaPo might like Greg Cochran's post today on his and Henry Harpending's blog, West Hunter?
ReplyDelete______________________
"Risch’s Conjecture
Posted on December 28, 2011by gcochran9
"As some of you already know, Henry and I have put forth the hypothesis that the observed high intellectual achievement of Ashkenazi Jews is a result of natural selection for intelligence over the Middle Ages. We think there’s a pretty good case. One important supporting fact is that high Ashkenazi intelligence shows up everywhere they live. You see it in Russia, the US, Latin America, Israel, etc. It doesn’t spring from a single cultural milieu: you saw it in Jewish kids raised in turn-of-the-century Vienna, in Israeli kibbutzes, in Bronx tenements, and in Stalinist Russia. It’s not a consequence of Talmudic study – you see the same results in religious and irreligious people of Ashkenazi descent.
"Interestingly, other ethnic groups show a similar pattern. Those that exhibit high levels of intellectual achievement in one country do so in others. Chinese do well in every society, even if they arrived as illiterate tin miners, as they did in Malaysia. Swedes in the h0meland score like their cousins in Minneapolis. Sub-saharan Africans do poorly in every country they inhabit. This suggests that genetic factors may be the main general cause of observed intergroup differences in intelligence and academic achievement. The selective pressures that caused these differences may not be as easy to figure out as in the Ashkenazi case, particularly if they acted over tens of thousands of years.
"As Neil Risch forcefully put it, in an interview with Karen Kaplan on our paper about Ashkenazi Jews, 'What are their theories about those on the opposite end of the spectrum? Do they have genetic theories about why Latinos and African Americans perform worse academically?' A truly perspicacious question – to ask it is to answer it..."
__________________________________
The last line is da bomb.
A couple of years ago, alongside its primary goal of reducing the 'Achievement Gap', my town's school district added the secondary goal of reducing the 'Discipline Gap'.
ReplyDeleteApparently, the teachers and administrators were accusing themselves of an unconscious bias known as 'institutional racism'; otherwise there could be no explanaton for the fact that the black kids got in trouble at two or three times the rate for white kids.
I thought they were being a little hard on themselves, but they are just the kind of people who deserve all the self-flagellation they can muster up.
The predictable response was to look the other way when black kids pulled shit, and to wildly overreact to any situation where a white kid might present an opportunity for 'discipline'.
This of course has led to more mayhem, not less, but DWL's in charge will press firmly ahead to our egalitarian future, no matter what it takes. When it comes, I hope they can blame themselves for that, too.
This is where Twitter format is so appropriate: simply "In Washington, wide gaps in school discipline". That's it, full stop. Everyone knows what follows without a need to read any further.
ReplyDeleteIQ and behavior, aggression vs. passivity, immediate gratification vs. long-term gratification, lack of impulse control vs. patience, self vs. team.....ah, biology.
ReplyDeleteThe NAACP tried to intimidate our District and high school staff by threatening a law suit if the number of referrals for poor behavior by black students didn't decrease by the end of the following school year.
The intimidation worked, to a degree: the District, knowing the NAACP was really playing the legal game for all it was worth, hired "specialists" to give seminars to teachers. These specialists were dimwits, of course, telling the staff that we really couldn't expect blacks (20 percent of the school pop.) to behave as other students did...you know, not cursing at classmates and school personnel, not interrupting the teacher during instruction, not yelling obscenities in the hallways, not causing mayhem in the cafeteria during lunch by threatening to deck those who sit here or there, not stealing from lockers.
Yeah, sure, Mr. and Mrs. NAACP, all kids do these things, but we only write up the black kids. After all, we think it's okay when we're accosted by browns, whites, and yellows, just not blacks.
You can imagine how the staff took to these seminar instructors. When at last one dimwit said, "It's just their culture--they can't help it," the staff erupted, having had enough.
Realizing teachers would continue to write up student for bad behavior, no matter their race, we caught two assistant principals "losing" referrals written up on black kids. You know, just kind of putting them under mounds of other paperwork so they'd not wind up in the stats.
By the end of the year, the stats hadn't changed by much, lost referrals or not.
The school is 46% Hispanic--they aren't good students, but they aren't behavioral problems either.
California's public schools are a mess. I guess you know that though.
Well, here's another instant classic in the genre of Nobody Ever Learns Anything: Sudanese Refugees In Omaha Wrestle With Rise of Street Gangs.
ReplyDeleteShocking.
Keeping in mind that this article is at the Huffington Post, scroll all the way to the bottom and take a gander at some of the ~2,000 comments the leftist rag's readers have left.
Data suggest African American students are two to five times more likely...
ReplyDeleteWhat the heck does "two to five times more likely" mean? Does she mean "two to five times as likely? Then why not say that?
Or is "two to five times more" a greater quantity than "two to five times as"? It sure sounds like it. Help me with the math and/or logic here!
Give her points, though, for keeping "data" in the plural.
Web cameras in all public school class rooms! --Luke Lea
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see the webcam footage from the Mall of America earlier this week...
Swedes in the h0meland score like their cousins in Minneapolis. --G. Cochran
...'cause those Swedes were sure tearin' up the place. Can't get them Air J's in Trollhattan.
(And what's with "h0meland"? Are you makin' fun of the way we talk?)
Just change a few words and this turns into a Steve Sailer story. There is a large audience for these articles, and it's not because readers are concerned about discrimination. These are "blacks are misbehavin' again" articles, not a "blacks are victims" piece that Donna St. George may think it is.
ReplyDeleteWell, here's another instant classic in the genre of Nobody Ever Learns Anything: Sudanese Refugees In Omaha Wrestle With Rise of Street Gangs...Shocking.
ReplyDeleteNot shocking, just seems like more of the same.
Amid the dreary and predictable statistics, every "community leader" had the well rehearsed lingo: we need more taxpayer money funneled into this hellhole.
And we fund this, in a way, as our Congress, with its 8% approval rating, votes money for these refugee programs. Society, meet cliff.
The comments there that I read were uniformly tired of this BS. Maybe there is some hope, or maybe we are too late smart.
This Ivory Coast headmaster certainly knows how to handle rowdy students.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see an "Onion" type parody of these gap/disparity/inequality stories but one involving interracial crime rates.
ReplyDeleteBecause Whitey is really falling behind all the African American achievers in this area of activity.
The gap/disparity/inequality needs to dealt with.
Rev. Right:
ReplyDelete"who deserve all the self-flagellation they can muster up"
Wow! Made my day! I wish I were younger (so I'd have more years to remember that clever turn and "work
it in" into ordinary conversation now and again). Of course, bein' an occasionally fastidious purist of sorts, I'da cut it short at "muster."
@captain jack-
ReplyDeletethese 'welcome 'refugees' stories, followed by 'community shocked by ' stories have been a cycle in journalism for decades now. Perhaps, like the highschool prom it's always fresh to a new generation of lefties.
When blacks run wild.
ReplyDelete'Youths' done it.
When 'youths' run wild and get suspended.
'Blacks' got suspended.
What a lot of people don't understand if if suspensions were really done fairly, black kids should be getting suspended at 10x the rate of non-blacks.
ReplyDeleteI know this from personal experience in integrated public schools. Teachers are afraid to discipline black kids, and black parents don't give a damn and feel offended when teachers or principal complains to them. So, blacks must really mess up to get disciplined. Since blacks know they can get away with so much, they act wilder and wilder, finally leaving school administrators no choice but to discipline them.
Btw, any 'sexism' involved in suspension rates? I'll bet more boys than girls are suspended. Oh my, call the FBI!!! Injustice!!
I find this hard to believe. Isn't public education run almost entirely by liberals from top to bottom? I thought Democrats loved black people, and black people thrive in the anti-'racist' environment provided by wonderful progressives. So, why all this horrible KKK-ish 'racism' by suspending all those poor saintly magic negro students?
ReplyDeleteOh boo hoo, all those angels being suspended from the learning tree. From teaching the three R's to pushing the three K's. From K to 12 to KKK. (I'm trying to give Jesse Jackson some pointers on his speech on this issue.)
ReplyDeleteThe predictable response was to look the other way when black kids pulled shit, and to wildly overreact to any situation where a white kid might present an opportunity for 'discipline'.
...which further encourages young white women to look at blacks as 'powerful' more win-win for cultural marxists. not to mention, more mayhem=more need for control...
Another way to read this story is 'blacks are tougher and rougher than whites, and so it's more likely for black kids to beat up white kids. Since bullies get suspended and since more blacks bully whites than other way around, more blacks get suspended.'
ReplyDeleteThere are two kinds of truth.
ReplyDeleteEye-truth and ear-truth.
Eye-truth is seen through the eyes. It is empirical.
Ear-truth is heard through the ears. It is ideological.
During the reign of Stalin and Mao, communist commissars could see with their eyes that communism wasn't working. There was mass starvation, oppression, cruelty, and waste.
So, why did they remain loyal to the movement? Because the party controlled the ideology, the instrument of words heard through the ears. People have the capacity to see reality but how that reality is processed is largely shaped by ideology(its dogmas and taboos). So, a 'conservative' can see the mess in Detroit but then blame it on 'socialism' than on black pathologies. A conservative is ideologically not supposed to be 'racist'; he's supposed to love blacks(and worship MLK), and so he must blame black problems on everything and everyone but blacks themselves. Such is the power of ideology.
Despite the rise of multi-media in education, education is still centered around words, and educators themselves were taught and indoctrinated with words.
In America, teachers in trouble-schools surely see the reality with their eyes but the words crammed into their ears simply doesn't allow them to process reality as reality. Ear-truth overrides eye-truth.
So, the problem at school must be 'racism', history, poverty, lack of self-esteem, etc.
A white public education teacher in a city school must be the most conflicted person in the nation. They are among the most ideologically earful yet met with eyefuls of reality on a daily basis. How do they square ideology with reality? Some must grow cynical, some must grow mad, some must cling ever tighter to ideology to ward off the demons of reality, some must just quit and walk away.
Time to remove the ideological ear wax and offer eye-exams to all Americans.
I guess if someone did a study that found that Corvettes get pulled over for speeding ten times more often than Continentals, the obvious conclusion would be that the police are biased against Corvettes and must be retrained until the numbers even up.
ReplyDeleteThe article gives some explanations:
ReplyDeleteExperts say disparities appear to have complex causes. A disproportionate number of black students live below the poverty line or with a single parent, factors that affect disciplinary patterns. But experts say those factors do not fully explain racial differences in suspensions. Other contributing factors could include unintended bias, unequal access to highly effective teachers and differences in school leadership styles.
Institutional Racism is a very real phenomenon, and science knows quite a bit about how it originates.
ReplyDeleteCenturies of Individual Racism resulted in Bad White People discriminating against Nice Black People, often by forcefully striking them. This process is called succusion. Succusion re-arranges the molecular memory of the structures in which the discrimination occurred in a permanent manner.
Each year, the discrimination caused by Individual Racism is lessened. This is called serial dilution. Counter-intuitively, however, each serial dilution makes the Institutional Racism stronger, through a process known as potentization.. Eventually, no trace of the original Individual Racism remains in the institution, yet a strong molecular memory persists, giving rise to the Institutional Racism.
Unfortunately, given the white race's long and extensive history of oppressing people of color, the impact of Institutional Racism appears to be now spread globally. Researchers have been able to find very few institutions on Planet Earth that have not already been potentized by Institutional Racism.
I am attempting to get a NSF grant to establish a lunar colony of diverse races in order to establish whether the effects of Institutional Racism are limited to the influence of Earth's gravitational field, or extend across the solar system.
Pinkerton
ReplyDeleteGoing to the zoo presents us with an interesting obsevation.
ReplyDeleteSome animals are locked up for our protection while others can be allowed to roam about and be petted. Yet all of them are confined to the zoo.
Startlement.
ReplyDelete-osvaldo m.
Quick, somebody get Holder a ball-peen hammer!"
ReplyDeleteApparently Arne Duncan has already been handing out screwdrivers.
Amren had a funny piece about a dear Canadian TA,no doubt a New Balance wearing hipster type,who was in a quandry.He had been instructed to be very dilligent in detecting plagiarism in the student papers.He detected 6 cases of very obvious plagiarism.There were 6 black students in his class.The same 6,lol. He was scared to death to report them as the Canadian Human Whatever league would wreck his life if the 6 reported him for "raycizzum".Better they copy whole blocks of writin' off the internet than smash my kids' head in!
ReplyDeleteHas nothing to do with learning.
ReplyDeleteRitualistic language condensed version:
ReplyDeletedisparities...experts say...growing national problem...The problems extend...reforms...Experts say disparities...complex causes...disproportionate...experts say those factors do not fully explain racial differences...leaders...increasingly focused on the problem...grappling... new approaches...much remains to be done...unsettling statistic...proactive...the issue of disparities...increasing concern...As for why the race gap exists, “I think some of it is cultural sensitivity"...harder for black kids...minority families that don’t trust the system...Experts say disparities arise from an array of issues...driven by unconscious bias or unequal access to teachers...An increasing number of studies have looked into whether poverty, family background or other characteristics explain racial disparities...does not explain why poor black kids...
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/11/22/are-hispanics-americas-next-great-stem-innovators/>Are Hispanics America's next great STEM innovators?</a>
ReplyDeleteAnother joke from Forbes, I guess.
Anon 9:55, thanks for that post. Believe it or not, I feel a little better that there are some teachers who see the game for what it is. But the consultant who said, "that's just their culture" wasn't a dimwit. He was right.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a substitute teacher, it was not unknown- but not that common- for black students to play the race card. "You're prejudiced...blah blah..." This was just another one of the lines students would give to try to get off the hook. Here are some other ones. "You're picking on me...You aren't telling the other students to behave..."
ReplyDeleteRe the race card: no point to reply to it directly with a denial. Better to ignore it. Finesse the situation some way.
Here are some responses a teacher could make to more generic "You're picking on me" lines: "I'm talking to YOU." In private: "What would your mother/father want you to do?"
When I later was a regular teacher, and saw the same students every day, no black student ever played the race card on me- even in a predominantly black school. They certainly gave enough lines out of the "You're picking on me" genre, but not the race card. Why? As they saw me every day, they knew it wasn't accurate and would thus be dismissed.
If more black students get referrals, that is a comment not on their belonging to a racial minority, but on their behavior. No teacher likes writing referrals, for a very good reason: the more referrals a teacher writes, the less credibility a teacher has with the administration.Writing a referral is an admission that the teacher can't handle the situation. For that reason, there are very few trivial referrals written.
Web cameras in all public school class rooms!
ReplyDeleteAhem, yes, cameras will be necessary to, er, prevent racism and protect the school from liability due to raciss teachers.
And, er, it'll be white racism to blame if the resulting data is used to create studies suggesting Blacks misbehave at 2-5 times the rate of Whites...
Now please excuse me, I have some Aboriginal children to rescue/abduct.
You see it in Russia, the US, Latin America, Israel, etc.
ReplyDeleteSo, mean Ashkenazi IQ in Israel isn't 104? News to me. So what is it?
The appropriate response to this post is a wry chuckle, not a recitation of biodiversity factoids. Like I said, I'm surprised the discipline gap between whites and blacks isn't a lot higher. In my middle class high school, all the trouble was made by a small group of (white) trouble makers. And if you compared them to the rest of the school, you would find that they were being disciplined at ten times the rate of everyone else. But their infractions involved smoking the the bathroom, writing on the walls, and talking back to teachers. No gang beatings or rapes. No wholesale drug dealers operating in the school yard during recess. No kids being chased into the gym and stomped nearly to death.
ReplyDeleteYou get my point.
But the article is saying that smoking in the bathroom is the sort of infraction for which black students are penalized more frequently than white students. that is the actual point, that white students get more heavily penalized for big things (but there are fewer doing them) while black students get heavily penalized for the penny ante stuff and also big things (but the ratio is not broken out).
ReplyDeleteDuring the reign of Stalin and Mao, communist commissars could see with their eyes that communism wasn't working. There was mass starvation, oppression, cruelty, and waste.
ReplyDeleteSo, why did they remain loyal to the movement? Because the party controlled the ideology, the instrument of words heard through the ears.
You misunderestimate the purpose of marxist nihilism.
A juvenile violence rate at least 3.3 times higher for blacks than whites* predicts a higher school discipline rate.
ReplyDelete*Source US-DOJ, see http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/224538.pdf which understates the black/white violence ratio by excluding cases moved to adult court (more common with black offenders because of their longer rap sheets) and violence which never reaches juvenile court, e.g., not reported to authorities).
"But the consultant who said, 'that's just their culture' wasn't a dimwit. He was right."
ReplyDeleteGenetics and culture are intertwined.
Did you read the post I put up at 9:21, the Cochran post from West Hunter?
No outrage over the imbalance in interracial rape? Where's Holder on that? But I'm sure Holder, were he to involve himself in that matter, will whine about how more black men are arrested for black-on-white rape than white men are arrested for white-on-black rape.
ReplyDeleteBlacks act crazy and get in trouble, but the media narrative is 'blacks are punished more'.
I think there should be courses in school that teach white, Asian, Arab-American, and some Hispanic kids that it's 'racist' for them to make less trouble than blacks.
ReplyDeleteWhite kids need to cuss out and beat up their teachers more frequently. And hopefully more Asian kids will take inspiration from the Vancouver Hockey kid. Justice dammit.
Of course, it's true that black students are more likely to misbehave. But the study found that blacks are more likely to be suspended for insubordination, rudeness, defiance. I work at a Title I public high school, and believe me when I say that kids are not normally suspended for those sins, regardless of race. So the fact that blacks and, to a lesser extent, Hispanics are being suspended more frequently for these particular infractions to such a high degree is indeed weird--until you look at the graphic.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/student-suspension-rates/2011/12/28/gIQAIDoGNP_graphic.html
Charter schools are suspending Hispanics and blacks at a far higher rate than comprehensive high schools. Charter schools are suspending 15/100 blacks and 5/100 Hispanics, while public schools are suspending 3/100 blacks and 1/100 Hispanics.
Since charter schools enroll nearly a third of the students (half as many as public schools), that's where a big chunk of the difference is.
To the extent charter schools are successful (and it's not much), they achieve it by booting out kids with low motivation. They do this with the express support of the school parents (also URM), who want their kids to have a safe and calm education, whether or not it's particularly good.
So had St. George done her job, she wouldn't have shrieked about the higher overall suspension rate, opening herself to mockery from people who are tired of reporters crying wolf. She would have instead pointed out that charter schools are suspending and, ultimately, expelling URM students at a high rate, taking advantage of freedoms that public schools don't have. These kids are then turned back over to the public schools--who don't, in fact, suspend or expel URM kids at a particularly surprising rate. Of course, as a result, their schools are out of control, which is why the charter schools are in business.
How can they perpetually get away with this increasingly fanciful obsession?
ReplyDeleteThey run this in the same news cycle as the global shoe riots that culminated in the Mall of America mayhem, right in the marshmallow-center of liberal white America, Minneapolis.
How long do we have to keep ignoring this willful, craven obstinancy? For them black violence is like Ron Paul; it simply doesn't exist and anyone who insists on talking about it is a bigoted maniac. And they further appear genuinely incapable of seeing how ridiculous they are.
But when is someone going to have a satirical go at this elephant? Could you imagine the damage the guys at the Daily Show or SNL could do to it?
Alas, the pussies.
"I find this hard to believe. Isn't public education run almost entirely by liberals from top to bottom? I thought Democrats loved black people, and black people thrive in the anti-'racist' environment provided by wonderful progressives. So, why all this horrible KKK-ish 'racism' by suspending all those poor saintly magic negro students?"
ReplyDeleteSend 'em to Sidwell!
"The article gives some explanations:"
ReplyDeleteFunny how in those explanations blacks themselves are not responsible at all.
When given a statement, or, if you want to be more "sciency" about the whole thing, I always ask the first and most important question of:
ReplyDeleteW H Y ?
For example, why are black people incarcerated at rates that are staggering when compared to whites, asians, indians in this country?
With this story, does the article dare to ask the
W H Y ?
Paul Mendez wins the thread.
ReplyDelete"I am attempting to get a NSF grant to establish a lunar colony of diverse races in order to establish whether the effects of Institutional Racism are limited to the influence of Earth's gravitational field, or extend across the solar system."
We know the result of that study before there are even people in that colony, and we know how it will be reported - rather differently - when that day comes.
There is a complete mutually exclusive set of objectives that cannot be compromised, and are pushing parents towards online education.
ReplyDeleteThe first, is more and more racial cut-outs, reserves, set asides, and so on to make more budgetary room for "compliance monitors" for "racial diversity" and "disparate impact."
The article is nothing more than a call to expand the Dept. of Education AND local school budgets to have some "Nice Black Lady" (who in reality will not be very nice) bulldoze people over perceived racial discrimination and build more political patronage.
The other objective is for parents to have their kids actually learn something useful and as an entry to college or whatever. In other words to get ahead in life.
So for schools, like say, retail spaces, the surge of "flash mobs" combined with poor purchasing power and the need to micro-price all disposable incomes driving shopping save groceries/gas online, the same process will occur there as well. Wealthy, nearly all White private and exclusive public schools due to social power (how many Black people did Steve Jobs or Bill Gates ever hire?) will remain immune to this, the middle class schools will collapse into Lord of the Flies.
[The WSJ ran an article on how Google and others ASK IQ TEST QUESTIONS but without any DoJ censure because, well they are Google!]
There are always three laws: one for the cool and connected, one for the privileged non-Whites, and one for everyone else.
Hasn't there been a gap in Washington and in politics in general of black politicians getting busted for corruption more than white ones? 'Racism' I say.
ReplyDeleteAnd weren't black teachers especially caught in scandals involving exam cheating? More 'racism'!!!
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete"The white man raped the world and now he must pay.
Afric is on the rise. The west is in a death spral."
12/29/11 8:12 AM
***********************************
Ah I see the troll who visited OneStDv on a similar topic has appeared here, spelling errors and all.
"But when is someone going to have a satirical go at this elephant? Could you imagine the damage the guys at the Daily Show or SNL could do to it?
ReplyDeleteAlas, the pussies."
Haven't heard from Bill Cosby lately, have we?
SNL people are indeed the biggest pussies of all. Well, maybe not pussies--it's just that for the group that runs NBC and SNL to admit the error of their ways is just to much to bear so they pretend it isn't happening and when the pretending/ignoring doesn't quite cut it, they say, "Well, it's just human behavior given their circumstances" and shit like that.
Rev. Right said:
ReplyDelete"Apparently, the teachers and administrators were accusing themselves of an unconscious bias known as 'institutional racism'; otherwise there could be no explanaton for the fact that the black kids got in trouble at two or three times the rate for white kids.
I thought they were being a little hard on themselves, but they are just the kind of people who deserve all the self-flagellation they can muster up."
You do realize that the teachers and the lower administrators don't get to vote on this, right? They don't "accuse themselves". They get herded off into some sort of a mandatory professional development or conference where they get accused of all that you mentioned by OTHER people. Then, they are introduced to the new plan that will solve everything. It's not a brainstorming session nor a discussion nor a conversation. It's an order in a form of a power point presentation. Those who express displeasure get... consequences.
"In America, teachers in trouble-schools surely see the reality with their eyes but the words crammed into their ears simply doesn't allow them to process reality as reality. Ear-truth overrides eye-truth.
ReplyDeleteSo, the problem at school must be 'racism', history, poverty, lack of self-esteem, etc. "
No, their mortgages, student loans and responsibility to their own children don't let these teachers express their new take on reality vocally. Almost everyone who can leave the inner city schools does so. That's why the turnover is higher than that of an average AIDS-infested brothel. I originally found Steve because I thought no one around me saw what I saw or felt how I felt. However, since then, I relaxed a bit and started meeting teachers everywhere (Panera Bread, airport, beach, extended family reunion, Starbucks, dentist's office, ect.) who understood exactly what I was talking about, shared similar stories, advised me to change locations as soon as possible, promised me that it's not like that everywhere or, if they were very new, just sounded extremely relieved to have a shoulder to cry on. These people are young and old, male and female. What would you have them do? Stand up and tell it like it is in public? I seem to remember a yahoo featured story about a teacher who was suspended for telling what sounded like a very mild version of the truth on her personal blog. She was suspended without pay for months, and there was serious talk of revoking her license. I've seen what happens to those perceived "not on board". Who is going to pay for a vocal teacher's kids' braces? You?
Or is "two to five times more" a greater quantity than "two to five times as"? It sure sounds like it. Help me with the math and/or logic here!
ReplyDeleteYes, "two to five times more" is a greater quantity than "two to five times as" much.
"Two to five times more" equals "three to six times as much".
Dennis Dale:
ReplyDelete"But when is someone going to have a satirical go at this elephant? Could you imagine the damage the guys at the Daily Show or SNL could do to it?"
-----------
The guys at the Daily show and SNL are Elephant Keepers. Their job is to tell young people the elephant doesn't exist, and to laugh at people who say it does.
...the Vancouver Hockey kid...
ReplyDeleteURL?
[Youtube video?]
Thanks.
This is a good example of a very destructive, general phenomenon. Letting black students get away with disruptive, inappropriate behavior in school is not kindness, it's cruelty. Their teacher may not be willing to tell them what they're getting wrng, but their employers and the cops certainly will. In order to make the racial numbers on school discipline come out right, we take a group of people who already aren't doing too well, and make them even more likely to fail.
ReplyDeleteWhen I attended my high school, the student body was about 1/3 Black. I was given detention once in my 4 years there (do they still have detention these days?). I was assessed 5 days for shooting a spitball at my friend - a rather harsh "sentence" for such a minor thing. My memory is that at least 2/3 of the students in the large auditorium serving detention were African American. There was no riddle to the imbalance in anyone's mind at the time. It was simply acknowledged that the black guys were more likely to act out, disrespect authority, utter profanities to teachers, etc., than the white guys. It was a very rowdy crew in that auditorium; the teacher in charge had a mighty battle on his hands to stay in control.
ReplyDeleteThe impression I formed then was that this would be a tough problem to solve in American schools going forward. I remember wondering what could be done to mitigate the situation and coming up with nothing, short of the application of strict discipline. It was definitely an issue I didn't want to tackle, thus my "escape to the hills". I guess if I had envisioned a completely ineffective strategy I would have come up with one where the truths were obfuscated, excuses for bad behavior were made, partial blame was placed on teachers and administrators, and a plan to reduce punishments was devised. That would have appeared to me to be the best way to hamstring teachers and place the general student body in greater jeopardy. Lo and behold, look what we have now.
I suppose people like me are partially to blame; we left the problem in the hands of folks who don't appear to have first hand experience and thus a reality-based approach to the matter. Naturally, the PC environment doesn't help.
"The guys at the Daily show and SNL are Elephant Keepers. Their job is to tell young people the elephant doesn't exist, and to laugh at people who say it"
ReplyDeleteHey, I like that term. I'd love for someone to stick Jon Stewart with the name, "Elephant Keeper."
Too bad Chris Christie hasn't yet reached the point of understanding how HBD impacts educational policy (although down the road, he might).
Yeah, imagine it: Big Chris from Jersey, mic in hand, calling Stewart and the honchos at NBC "The Elephant Keepers."
Maybe a conservative film maker could actually make a film based on the dangers of Elephant Keeping.
Or what about a lib? Does Mel Brooks still make movies? Would he touch this? Nah, wrong guy, huh? Or maybe his age trumps his tribal and youthful political affiliations.
After all, Mel would do almost anything for a laugh.
I can second Maya here. I'm writing this as I have to start the unpleasant task of calling the parents of every kid who failed to explain to them why they failed. I've never in my life bitched about teacher pay, insurance, benefits, etc, and I used to teach in some of the lowest paying districts in this country. One thing I can complain about is that schools are coming up with all kinds of ways to blame the teachers for what everyone knows but nobody can say, such as having discipline reports by race, cultural sensitivity training, 24-7 access to your gradebook online, etc.
ReplyDeleteMy new school has an interesting example of that high-low dynamic that Steve talks about. The parents who bitch are the top end who don't want their kid's scholarship opportunities messed with, and the bottom end who are probing for race/disproportionate impact, etc. to get after you. The middle tend to accept that their child is responsable for their behavior and performance.
Is there any relationship between the discipline gap and the other gap?
ReplyDeleteBlacks doing offensive things is not offensive. But it is offensive to take note of offensive black behavior.
ReplyDeleteSo, when blacks burned down LA, well...
But OH MY, Ron Pauls' newletter made note of bad black behavior!!
'Racist'!!!
Similarly, gays having gay sex is okay. But if you explain what gay sex entails--sexual organ into a defecatory organ--, you are some kind of sick pervert.
Do.... okay
Say... nokay.
"Next they'll be telling us East Asians are being stereotype stroked into performing better than whites across all regions and at all socioeconomic status levels too."
ReplyDeleteBEEEEHAAAHAAAHAWWWWHEEEHAAAHAAAHEEEEHAWWW!
You must be a newbie, that's exactly what half of your compatriots here believe.
Btw, any 'sexism' involved in suspension rates? I'll bet more boys than girls are suspended. Oh my, call the FBI!!! Injustice!!
ReplyDeleteI know, I keep forgetting that one. It's the first test for "disparate impact" arguments because it's so simple. Everyone needs to be trained to swap in "women" for whatever minority is being held up as victims of "disparate impact," to check if the claim still holds any water.
Hey, I like that term. I'd love for someone to stick Jon Stewart with the name, "Elephant Keeper."
ReplyDeleteAnd Chris Matthews is the guy with the big shovel who follows behind it.
"Is there any relationship between the discipline gap and the other gap?"
ReplyDeleteYes and no... On the one hand, not much can be done for a child who is completely unwilling to try and has low IQ to boot; on the other hand, really bright kids, mostly, teach themselves and catch information from many sources. Still, a teacher can, probably, affect the outcome by around 5%. I think that makes my job extremely important because I would move mountains to give my own child a 2% academic advantage. Then, there are those kids in the middle who might be affected by who their teacher is even more. I think an incurious, but compliant child of average intelligence who comes from a stable, but an uneducated home environment could be greatly influenced by what happens in the classroom, both positively and negatively.
But, if we are to take for granted that classroom experience affects academic outcome, then, OBVIOUSLY, the two gaps are related. Where I went to school (in the immigrant-ridden near northern suburbs of Chicago), nothing, other than myself, had ever prevented me from hearing any of my teachers. Kids whispered and passed notes, but unless we were having a class discussion or working on a project, the room was always free of background noises. Also, kids got into trouble once in a while, got dealt with, and the teacher was able to get back to the lesson quickly. In the southern inner city where I teach, it's hard to hear oneself scream 90% of the time. The redirecting of behavior and the restoration of discipline is a constant, never-ending task- in every classroom, except for the special separate honors programs. Where I grew up, teachers could get through 45 minutes of material in a 50 minute class. Where I work, we are lucky to cover 10 minutes worth of new material. My teachers were encouraged to send the troublemakers out of the classroom and to the discipline wing of our school. My colleagues and I are required to keep the trouble makers in the classroom. As a result, they take all of our time. Moreover, this system makes the extremely bad behavior seem like no big deal, so a lot more of the kids begin to act out. Enter chaos. The ghetto children who have a lot of energy and a generally positive attitude, and who could have been impressed into doing school work by seeing the really bad trouble makers get consequences, instead learn that breaking the rules and acting like an animal is perfectly acceptable, and they start acting like the really bad kids. The few, but still ever present, children who seem to be ready to learn get absolutely no attention. Sorry, sweetie, but preventing your classmates from pushing pens into each other's eyes takes precedent over your reading progress. Besides, you can't hear me anyway. Here's a sticker for being good.
Figgy said:
ReplyDelete"My memory is that at least 2/3 of the students in the large auditorium serving detention were African American ... It was a very rowdy crew in that auditorium; the teacher in charge had a mighty battle on his hands to stay in control. "
I served detention many times (for being late to class by a minute, being caught with a note in my hand, whispering a few words to another student while on my way to the bathroom in a closed hall or letting out a loud giggle in the library). I've also served 5 hour Saturday detentions for forgetting to serve the normal 1 hour after school detention, and the in-school suspensions when the 5 hour Saturday interfered with my fast food job. These events were ALWAYS silent. The teacher in charge would be reading a magazine or grading papers. Sometimes, by the end of the 5 hour Saturday, the teacher would get bored and chat quietly with a few students. My school was very diverse (over 40 first languages spoken at home), but only 1.5% black, at that time.
I, honestly, had no idea that THIS could exist somewhere. I became a teacher because I like kids and the subjects that I teach, not to uphold some ideology that had very little to do with my life. Of course, I'd think you were all horrible people if I had met you! Everyone I trusted told me that you were wrong, and it would be hard to imagine that a large group of people would consistently act like... I was going to say "animals", but the dogs from my local shelter are much better behaved. What the majority of these children and their parents do requires so much energy and has such negative effects on their own lives, both immediately and in the long term, that it's hard for me to describe or explain it now, let alone imagine the possibility before I've even encountered it. Perhaps if American youth had an option of obtaining the equivalent of a 4 years' worth of tuition at their local state school that they could apply to an educational establishment of their choice, in exchange for joining a national corps for 2 years, serving at the low performing schools, as social workers in the ghetto, as nurse's aides at the free clinics and so on, the general population would have a different view on many of the issues.
I know, I keep forgetting that one. It's the first test for "disparate impact" arguments because it's so simple. Everyone needs to be trained to swap in "women" for whatever minority....
ReplyDeleteYeah, I always forget that one, too.
"Murder outlawed; minorities hardest hit!"
Ha - classic!
The impression I formed then was that this would be a tough problem to solve in American schools going forward. I remember wondering what could be done to mitigate the situation and coming up with nothing, short of the application of strict discipline.
ReplyDeleteThe easiest solution, which is no longer even an option, would have been to preserve the demographics of pre-1965 America.
And what do you believe, Truth?
ReplyDeleteDo you accept that there is a disproportionate amount of bad behavior by black kids in our schools?
If not, what is to blame for the referrals? Bigotry? Soft or hard?
If so, what's the cause?
"What the majority of these children and their parents do requires so much energy and has such negative effects on their own lives, both immediately and in the long term, that it's hard for me to describe or explain it now, let alone imagine the possibility before I've even encountered it."
ReplyDeleteI had the same revelation when I lived in a mixed-race, low-income neighborhood. For well-indoctrinated liberals, it's literally impossible to imagine that people could or would choose to live lives filled with ignorance, destruction and chaos when they have so many positive alternatives available to them, most of which are paid for by others.
Is there any relationship between the discipline gap and the other gap?
ReplyDeleteI have long held [by way of gut instinct] that there is a very strong correlation between intelligence and some quality which might go by a name like concentration, perseverance, or stick-to-it-ive-ness.
And at the other extreme, stupid people seem to grow bored all too easily.
"some quality which might go by a name like concentration, perseverance, or stick-to-it-ive-ness."
ReplyDeleteFocus perhaps? Does a higher IQ help cope with ADD(one of the symptoms of which is a lack of focus/difficulty with motivation)?
Oh and excellent comment Maya.
Focus perhaps?
ReplyDeleteFocus, "tunnel vision", the ability to withdraw "into the zone" and see a problem through to its conclusion [i.e. to its answer].
By and large, that quality - whatever it is [almost like an ability to summon up a little intellectual anger] - seems to correlate very strongly with IQ.
Dumb folk, on the other hand, start to get really antsy if they don't have some external distraction to entertain them.