Excellent rant on "underperforming" schools

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Friday, August 9. 2013

Excellent rant on "underperforming" schools

Via an Insty reader.

It is a powerful and discouraging report. Those are not underperforming schools. Those are underperforming kids and underperforming parents in an underperforming subculture. "Underperforming" by bourgeois standards, anyway. Perhaps not by their standards. Free food is fine.

America contains many subcultures without bourgeois expectations or standards. It's a free country. As we always say at Maggie's, do whatever you want with your time and your life, but not on my nickel.

Sometimes I wonder whether requiring "education" does any good. School learning is not a passive procedure. It requires, at the least, both inner and external discipline and, at most, inner desire, curiosity, and motivation.

In the younger years, clearly a positive connection with authority - a "master," a teacher - helps. One wants to please them and not to disappoint their efforts on your behalf. Our schooling is probably more designed for gals than for guys, or also for highly-domesticated or high IQ guys.

Can those things be "inspired," i.e. put into the air so that they are taken in by breathing? I don't know. I can say that, for me, school discipline and parental discipline put me on the road to an independent restless desire for knowledge and thought, but I may have been born with that anyway.

My IQ is probably not dramatically high, but my interests in all things is quite high and I have a temperamental or cultural restlessness which leaves me without a lazy bone in my body. I don't know what "relax" means, and I do not want to find out. My lack of interest in relaxing has served me well and enriched my life. Not mainly financially, but in all ways. I do not even like to sit down. My Maggie's Farm hobby is an expression of that. Call it ADD if you want.

Even on "vacation" from my day job, I want to either work or learn or eat, but the eating fattens me and drinking makes me lazy, so I minimize them. It's not about virtue. It's the way I developed, and my parents are the same way. "Retirement," endless vacation, is my nightmare.

I would rather pump gas than sit on my ass.

Posted by The Barrister in Education, Our Essays at 13:54 | Comments (12) | Trackbacks (0)

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Oh boy! This is another one of those "unspeakable" subjects the R party could learn how to name and call out, and suggest new ways of dealing what the actual problem is, as opposed to just pretending everything is fine. African/American students and Mexican/American students in large cities and ethnic neighborhoods are failing. They are failing as today's students and as tomorrow's citizens. Now let's deal with that! Poor Ms. Rhee tried to speak about it and the unions took her down--but, she was the first and so far the strongest voice.

#1 faculty wife on 2013-08-09 14:35 (Reply)

So true. Failing schools always have the similar/same characteristics as do achieving schools. You never have to look further than the surrounding demographics and homes (term used loosely) the students come from.

Blacks and Mexicans = mostly disfunctional (succeeding blacks are typically found in predominantly white districts as they got the heck out of the dysfunctional ones and tend to come from intact homes)

Whites and Asians = mostly functional

There's not a fast start, no child left behind program that can change this reality.

#1.1 phil g on 2013-08-09 15:02 (Reply)

I think it's fair to say whites are not immune.

I grew up in a rural district, but was lucky enough to have a mother who felt private school was a better education. The school I attended is now gone, and there is only the public school, which has grown so large it split into 2. It is primarily a white population and it is not doing well at all.

For some time in the 90's, there were gang problems. These are not gone, but have been dealt with to some degree. The issues which minorities face in urban districts can be as bad as those whites face in rural areas.

My private school supposedly had parents who 'cared'. Less than half of us went on to college. What is intriguing, though, is that in the portion which didn't, half of those started their own small businesses. One was very successful developing real estate, while another is a convicted fraudster.

I don't know that there is any gauge you can use to say one ethnic group versus another will perform a particular way in school.

Many of the black children in my sons' school district are there becuase their parents moved to our town to avoid the problems in the schools from their previous district. As my son points out, just moving them doesn't fix their desire to want to be like the people they just left. It just creates more problems for the kids in his school.

One could say these black kids have parents who care, and care enough to move them to a decent district. But the kids themselves don't relate with the locals, and this makes the pressure on them worse. They don't fit in in class, and they believe they don't fit in outside of class.

There are no easy answers to these problems, but the best short term solution is to recognize throwing money at the problem won't make it go away.

#1.1.1 Bulldog on 2013-08-09 16:23 (Reply)

Whites are certainly not immune. They can fall prey to the same welfare / low expectation spiral many Blacks and Hispanics have.

My first real experience of how perpetual state aid can wreck people was, of all places, in Scotland. And the wrecked ones were Scots. I had occasion to repeatedly visit several government housing projects outside Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the people there were as beat down, craven, grasping, ignorant, hostile and almost feral as anything I've seen amongst Blacks in Atlanta, D.C., or New York City. With the same bite-the-hand sense of entitlement to free stuff and corresponding absence of work ethic.

It was quite an eye-opener for me, as my previous experience had been with the rural Black & White poor of South Carolina, where I grew up. And it was downright shocking to see that many white people - who looked a lot like me, as my family line is almost exclusively Scot-Irish - in such absolutely wasted state. Those Scots were in worse shape and worse - character - than all but a thin fraction of the poorest poor, Black or White, back home.

Later I had occasion to see the same kind of places in London.

It gave me something to think about, as a young Liberal told how enlightened, caring and morally superior Britain's welfare system was compared to ours. I didn't see how a system capable of doing that to its own people, and consider it good and just, deserved better than to be gutted.

#1.1.1.1 T.K. Tortch on 2013-08-09 19:57 (Reply)

I was acquainted with a man who taught in a rural school. He told me most of the kids would leave school as soon as possible and had no interest in leaving town. Figured they could work in the woods or do something locally. Very few wanted to go to college or leave town. My wife told me when she was in high school many of the girls wanted to marry a man in the service just to get out of town, seeing no opportunity there. 'Tis sad.

#2 Sam L. on 2013-08-09 16:45 (Reply)

The first thing we can do is stop mandatory busing! Yup, I know that is harsh--but, who does it serve? The bus drivers!

Now, let's take that money and build schools that will succeed. Not unionized. Charter schools picking students from the best mothers/fathers. Schools that will demand parents to clean halls, mow the lawns, wash the boards, etc. DEMAND uneducated parents to participate in the school itself. Those students whose parents are contemptuous of education get to go somewhere else. Those students whose parents support best efforts get to stay.
There is also a difference in types of rural areas. Poor white in the southern states is different than poor white in other agricultural states (north/west). Sorry, bout that but it's a fact!
Not all rural whites are poor, but again we must look to the parents to see how they will encourage and support their kid. Will they turn off the tv? Will they demand homework be completed without cheating. How about schools with NO computers--it's working in some places already. Maybe we need to step back away from the technology in some cases? Maybe we need to add armed guards at the door in other cases. Not one solution fits all--

#3 another one on 2013-08-09 17:56 (Reply)

I attended a one-room country schoolhouse, a very small town grade school, an Episcopal girls school, a very small - town high school, a larger town high school. The first was the best, but we were lucky enough to have a very good teacher. We had our science classes out-of doors. A good school does not need a fancy building nor a wealth of equipment — just a good teacher. Instilling a hunger for learning is a different matter, and if the parents have none, the kids are in trouble. Head Start is not the answer.

I keep toying with the idea that we should hire former Marine Corps drill instructors to teach in inner city schools. They seem to do a good job of instilling the basics in a diverse group of enlistees.

Kids now are not really learning math —"because they will always have calculators." They are not learning cursive writing "because they will always have keyboards." There's a reason why the cash registers in McDonalds don't require anyone to learn how to make change or add up the cost of an order. Have you noticed how many kids can only print?

We did better when elementary school teachers went to Normal Schools without pretensions, and high school teachers went to college to learn a subject, and there were no schools of education. Maybe the "middle schools" or junior highs should be segregated by sex and taught by drill instructors. The Schools of education should be abolished.

#4 The Elephant's Child (Link) on 2013-08-09 19:04 (Reply)

I keep toying with the idea that we should hire former Marine Corps drill instructors to teach in inner city schools. They seem to do a good job of instilling the basics in a diverse group of enlistees.

I don't disagree that Drill sergeants do motivate young enlistees. But they have at least TWO important "demotivators" to use to shape up those who aren't performing:
1.) more time in Basic Training, AKA "re-training"
2.) kicking the individual out of the Corps (and back to civilian life)
and possibly a third one, kicking their butt if they attempt to fight the drill instructor.

So, out of those three, which do you think would work on young urban youth? And which would land the DI / Teacher in court?

#4.1 cas on 2013-08-12 10:47 (Reply)

Have you noticed how many kids can only print?

Not to mention some doctoral students. As to Schools of Education, abolished is much to gentle. I'd like to see them come down in a bang and cloud of dust.

#5 chuck on 2013-08-09 23:59 (Reply)

"Call it ADD if you want."

In Barrie's case, it would be the dreaded RDD.

Relaxive Deficiency Disorder

Incurable, from what I hear.

#6 Dr. Mercury on 2013-08-10 09:16 (Reply)

What I got out of the rant at Instapundit was the difference between a school that can throw kids out and one that can't.

It works both ways: there's a big difference between a school that parents can reject and replace and one they can't.

#7 Z-Meister Rebooted: Now 67% More Fact-Free! on 2013-08-10 10:41 (Reply)

""Retirement," endless vacation, is my nightmare."

Yes. The searching for "endless vacation" is a blight on America and most of Europe I think.

#8 Larry Geiger on 2013-08-12 08:39 (Reply)

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Friday, August 9. 2013

Excellent rant on "underperforming" schools