Confession: teaching at a Title I school with a progressive admin has made me less liberal…

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[–]Alienhunter糞大名 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Yeah it's what happens when people lose the plot. Society to me seems to just flip flop between extreme outlooks rather than find balance.

School admin and teachers are too permissive and it turns into lord of the flies. Eventually shit reaches a point where it can't go on and it flips to the hardcore authoritarians who run it like boot camp. Shit obviously improves but then the extreme authoritarian types become the new problem and you get shit like kids with disabilities not being recognized getting beat or some shit like that, problems come to a head, the permissive understanding types come to power and shit improves for for the marginaziled outside the box types for a time, until it goes back to being lord of the flies.

Like there's a good medium between never disciplining kids and not giving them zeroes so they don't feel bad vs screaming bloody murder at everyone that steps out of line. You give the kid a zero, then talk with them about why they got a zero and figure out what the problem is so they can fix it. Parents are absent and kid doesn't give a shit? Kid tried but legit doesn't understand for some reason?

I do like the response in there where the teacher is like "admin complained I held all the kids to the same standards so I told them it was racist to not expect the black kids to be able to follow the same standards and they shut up" to be pretty funny. That's what I've always said. You don't think the black students are physically capable of showing up on time or understanding stuff to the same level as the white kids, translation, you think that black kids are inately less intelligent than the others? That sounds pretty fucking racist to me. Like it's definitely a problem to be a hateful racist, but being a loving accepting racist is also a pretty fucked up thing. A farmer cares about his livestock and doesn't hate them. Is that your opinion of the black students? That they are somehow lesser beings that need to be treated differently?

[–]LtGreenCo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

racist to not expect the black kids to be able to follow the same standards

I understand why though. They've been conditioned to expect it. Because for decades inner-city black-American culture has regularly produced terrible students. And when year after year you witness a good 80% of black kids in your school to be fuck-ups, then you also understand holding them to the same standards as the other kids is an almost guaranteed recipe for failure. But you don't want to fail them out of school, condemning them to a life of poverty or thuggery or worse. So instead you lower the bar so severely that even the very dumbest of dumbshit students can get a diploma. Consequences be damned.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I understand why as well but you can't allow this sort of thing to continue forever.

There's a good argument to be made for a soft approach to certain problems but there comes a point where you need to separate certain problem students from the general student population or else they ruin it for everyone else.

Military style discipline is a pretty great option to shape up otherwise problem students that don't have "anything else wrong with them" except for the fact they are little shits. It's a terrible option for students that are actually retarded.

Ultimately the problem with schools I think comes from the same paradox of equality where it's necessary to run schools fairly to give all kids an equal chance but in reality everyone is different and it's impossible to make a system that works well for everyone.

[–]William_World 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

genetics play a part in IQ, but they can never admit that so they'd rather keep the status quo where people use double think to convince themselves 2+2=5

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

They certainly do but you can't make a judgement call on someone's actual IQ based solely on their parentage. Sometimes smart parents have stupid kids. Sometimes stupid parents have smart kids. Gotta give all the kids at the very least an opportunity to make the most of what they've got and not lump them in with some larger category you already assume to be stupid.

[–]William_World 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

yeah like how to smart parents have a down syndrome kid, caused by random mutations in the genetics

[–]LyingSpirit472 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

But honestly, that's why I disagree that the reason schools hold students to the lowest standard for some equality paradox is based in bigotry, when the most likely excuse is the true one:

Teachers just plain don't give a shit. They don't have to. The teachers in the US know damn well they're glorified babysitters so that their parents can each work during the day- or at least one parent works and the other can drink wine and watches daytime TV in peace- and because they are they know they don't NEED to teach kids anymore. You're mad little Johnny can't read, write, or even know enough about science to cook meth so he has a future in 10 years? Well, you're making the teacher work and that makes them sad, and so the teacher's union will strike and you have to actually be a parent to your kids.

With that in mind, it makes sense for why the schools teach to the lowest common denominator. Teach to the lowest common denominator, you don't have to work as hard. And if some of the smarter kids are so bored to tears by this teaching they give up trying? Fuck it, they need to learn by now your job hopes in the future are based on "1- do Mommy and Daddy own a business? 2- Are you friends and/or have something on someone in high school or college who's Mommy and Daddy own a business?" Smarts or work ethic have nothing to do with it, your destiny was foretold by the stars in the sky and it cannot be fixed, and the sooner they learn to stop trying and accept it, the happier they'll be.

[–]LordoftheFliesAmeri-kin 2.0. Pronouns: MegaWhite/SuperStraight/UltraPatriarchy 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I feel like a Fox News asshole.

Gets a decade-long, personal demonstration of why the the policies that they once believed in are utter shit, but is still too caught up to even consider addressing those people as anything other than "assholes."

Reading through the comments, I'm not even surprised to see people trying to handwave it all away, including some "it's the conservatives' fault" shit like this thread. Rather than face that it was the policies that they supported that broke the system, they have to reach into the tinfoil hat box and pull out a "it was someone else's fault all along" conspiracy.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Most Americans can't really break out of the culture war mindset and take issues on their own merits. Lots of reasons to criticize Fox News are valid, same as most of the 24 hr news networks. But it's far easier to just be like "I'm gonna ignore this story from a source I don't like" rather than deal with thinking about it. Conservatives do it same as liberals.

People want this kind of us vs them comforting worldview that tells them how to think and promises them some kind solution they can believe in but oh if only those bad people weren't stopping us we'd have utopia. Rather than the scarier and more sobering reality that utopia is unachievable, there are no nice clean totally acceptable good solution to problems, and that the world is a violent scary oftentimes evil place by it's very nature and that merely existing requires you to consume the lives of other living organisms.

I don't think there really are great solutions to this. In the end I think they can't really come to the conclusion that what is best for the majority of students and their future success is going to cause a lot of short term pain and suffering for the minority students who for whatever reason aren't willing to play by the rules of larger society, even if such policies radically benefit those minority students who do.

So which policy is worse? The one that hurts all the students so they are equally fucked? Or the one that benefits the majority of students who are not anti-social but fucks over the ones that are?

There's unpleasant realities of any solution that are not fun to deal with. But most people would rather believe in utopian promises that prevent them from having to make morally questionable judgements in their lives.

[–]LordoftheFliesAmeri-kin 2.0. Pronouns: MegaWhite/SuperStraight/UltraPatriarchy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Oh sure, Fox News is (at the end of the day) a media outlet invested in peddling specific information to a specific audience. I won't even try to deny or contest it. I'm more annoyed by OP's dip into self-awareness and then at the very end, veering right back into that safe little mental rut where anyone who seriously watches Fox News is just an asshole.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's reddit innit. Can't expect people in a hyperpartisan ideological echo chamber to suddenly come out of it when the cracks start to form. It's just like a cult member, they might come to see the cult as a scam but the cult teachings will still remain and take quite some time to fully leave if they ever do.

Might be slightly better than a total uncritical flip flop like I've seen before. Liberals are wrong so I'll just believe all the stupid stuff that conservatives say instead with zero critical thought? Problem is more zero critical thought than any ideological slant. I can maybe excuse young people for believing crazy stuff they were taught because they thought their elders knew better but at some point you do have to just question the value of really dumb shit like not scoring less than a 50. We can call a failing grade a zero, an F, a 50, or a magical sunshine happy, but it's still a fucking failing grade. Maybe there's a good argument for changing the name of the failing grade if it's really having a bad impact on the students, like if you called a 0 a "useless piece of shit award" but damn, you aren't fixing anything by just shifting the numbers around. That's about as useful as lowering carbon emissions by shortening the smokestack to the are emitted lower.

I don't think it's useful to utterly destroy people for being stupid in the past but you've got to at least get them to be critical of stuff before shit hits the fan. It's not like the critical voices of these policies have been saying "this is going to be the result of them" for years.

[–]William_World 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

talking about trauma in that thread, kids don't have trauma, kids have it easy these days. Teachers being shot by 6 year olds causes trauma.

[–]NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Strange, it says the thread is locked and I should see the comments for more details... But there's nothing explaining why it's locked. You don't think... You don't think they'd lock a thread without explaining the reason out of fear, do you?? Gasp!

[–]UncleWillard56 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's malfeasant to pass kids who don't meet the bare minimum for grade level performance. It's also racist and abusive. I also don't care about the past. Time to hold schools, teachers, kids, and their parents accountable. There should be national testing required to at least graduate high school. To hold all accountable for fulfilling the mandate of education. We're paying for these schools and they are churning out failure. No other business/agency would be allowed to continue functioning as is if they failed at every level. Even at the worst job, if you attacked your boss or a co-worker, you'd be at the very least fired if not arrested. No reason that doesn't happen in a school. At these point, public schools in inner cities are little more than pre-jail.

[–]QueenBread 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Public education was a mistake.

[–]jet199 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They seem like such a weak character.

I can only assume it's because they work in a female heavy environment so they don't even have to practice the pretence of having a backbone