4 ms·

Public Education’s Dirty Secret

14 points by smsm42 8y ago

thatfrenchguy 8y ago
> Why should millions of perfectly normal adolescents, not all of them ghettoized, resist being educated? The reason is that they know deep down that due to the color of their skin, less is expected of them It's not just race, it's also class.
- yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
  It’s just class. Problematic lives at home and after school, lacking materials that lend dignity to the experience, etc., etc., the list goes on. This is a problem of poverty. This essay is noise that buries the non-thesis, which is a stan for charter schools that disenfranchise poor students even more than they already were. Extremely shameful.
externalreality 8y ago
I don't agree with this article. The article presents the very narrow perspective of an apparently uninformed person who thinks that invoking the names MLK or James Baldwin will help their case. People like the author of this article avoid, in their reasoning, any conception of income disparity, an intrinsically racially prejudice curriculum, micro-aggressive and biased media (to which students are constantly exposed), and any such thing that would lead to a rational that an unfair system is producing students who are going to be unresponsive to a traditional school system that is based on a presumption of equality and social equity. What is more is this uninformed person, doesn't seem to know why it is not OK for a "white person" to use certain words. Showing that she has no understanding of recent history and how words take on a different meaning depending on who is saying them. This isn't a new concept; natural languages(unlike say many computing languages) are VERY context sensitive and have always been so. This article reveals that it is, in fact, too the teacher who is lacking education. Here I yield to works like that from Robin DiAngelo and Ken Wytsma.
- minitel 8y ago
  It sounds like you're a very worldly and pragmatic person. Perhaps you should go and teach in one of these schools. You might just turn things around! :)
- smsm42 8y ago
  > of an apparently uninformed person What do you mean by "uninformed"? From the article it is apparent the author actually worked in the school as a teacher for years, and she writes about the experience. I am sure people may disagree with the conclusions, but calling her "uninformed" just sounds out of place to me - if the person literally doing the thing for years is not informed, what does that even mean? > system is producing students who are going to be unresponsive to a traditional school system What you mean by "traditional"? I've been in school outside the US, and what she describes looks nothing like any school I've ever been in. I have also read there have been lots of reforms and various approaches tried, with various degree of success, in various US schools. In what sense is the experience she describes "traditional" and what non-"traditional" approach would you advocate?
  - externalreality 8y ago
    That you for "respectfully" disagreeing. > What do you mean by "uninformed"? I mean that the author doesn't seem to be very informed with respect to race relations or social equity issues. > What you mean by "traditional"? I mean a school system that fails to take into account or fully address the same issues that I state above. It is hard to tackle these issues because it is still too hard to have a reasoned conversation on race and the great injustices of the past (both very intentional and unintentional) that have lead students to the despair they find themselves in today. The author of this article is part of the problem IMHO.
    - smsm42 8y ago
      > I mean that the author doesn't seem to be very informed with respect to race relations or social equity issues. "Race relations" is kinda wide topic, encompassing more or less the whole human history. It would be more useful if you point out which relevant aspects of this huge topic, in your opinion, the author got wrong and how, in your opinion, it influenced her discussion about education. I understand this could potentially also be huge, but at least 2-3 of major examples would be very helpful. > I mean a school system that fails to take into account or fully address the same issues that I state above. Yes, but address how? Any school system could fail to fully address one or the other aspects of the full history of race relations and social issues. It is impossible not to - it's the whole human history in all its vast diversity, and nobody would ever be able to account or fully address all aspects of it. Pointing out which aspects and how are not addressed would be much more interesting than just saying "oh, race relations, therefore whole article is invalid". I don't see how it adds anything, it just sounds dismissive of an experience of the real person and painstaking work she made of recording it and sharing it with us. What do you thing she have done wrong, specifically? > It is hard to tackle these issues because it is still too hard to have a reasoned conversation on race True, it is not easy. But I think that's not the reason to not try? > The author of this article is part of the problem IMHO. I do not see how. She honestly tried to help those students who want to learn and advance, despite harsh conditions that surround them, and she found her efforts consistently being contradicted and nullified by the system, which does not help people who want to learn, and allows people who behave destructively to continue their behavior not only to their own detriment, but to the detriment of others. She spent a lot of time and effort trying to teach people despite these circumstances and despite constant assault on her human dignity. If that counts as being part of the problem, what isn't?
philipkglass 8y ago
The stories of attempting to teach adolescents who have no interest in learning are as appalling as they are familiar. I have long heard similar stories from people who went into teaching. But the sweeping conclusion that the students behave this way because "they know deep down that due to the color of their skin, less is expected of them" is thinly supported. Maybe she would feel differently if she had also taught in majority-white schools where students also raise hell. I know that white students can get away with most of this anti-social behavior too, because I met one online in the early 2000s. I was a sophomore in college and he was a sophomore in high school. We were both interested in chemistry and computers and started chatting through the PM system of an overclocking forum. He was bored in school. When he wasn't reading about chemistry and computers on his own he was booby-trapping teachers' equipment and classrooms and spreading mocking nicknames for people he didn't like -- teachers and students alike. He ignored most of his assigned work. He once kept his father's handgun in a backpack through the school day just to see if he could get away with it. His friends were people that he got to work on undermining teachers with him. After a year he ran away from home, got as far as the West Coast, reluctantly returned when his parents said he could leave school, and dropped out to get his GED after returning. After that he went straight to college, grad school for a couple of years and then dropped out, went into software development. AFAIK his antisocial and even criminal behavior fortunately stopped after high school. He got away with pretty much everything while he was still in high school. This was in an affluent majority-white suburb, and his family was even higher income than the area average. Still it seems that teachers had little power to reign in his antisocial behavior. What can we do with school-aged children who have no interest in learning and actively sabotage the educational opportunity for students who show up willing to learn? I don't know. But policies that keep them in school alongside willing learners are not helping. Teachers shouldn't have to be good babysitters and jailers in addition to being good teachers.
- iguy 8y ago
  Her the description of the problems is vivid, detailed, and sadly not unfamiliar. This is largely separate from her suggestions as to what might solve the problem, or at least reduce it. It's not obviously correct, but I wouldn't be too quick to write it off... she presumably thought about this for a while, and whether or not it would work, it communicates at least something about the students' mental state. I would be curious to hear what sort of system you think your hell-raising overclocker might have benefitted from. In some non-US systems, enough of this would eventually land you in a track which is pretty close to army boot-camp -- very very rigid with lots of focus on standing in line & saying "sir", none at all on french poetry. Do you think this would have improved his life (or that of his classmates)?
zxcvbn4038 8y ago
NYC schools are pretty aweful unless you live on the upper west side. The few years of his life my son was in a Montessori school, but the cost was more then my rent, so I decided to enroll him in a public school - it was a block away from me so I saved four hours of commuting and a couple grand a month. He walked in the door with basic reading, writing, and simple math skills. The receptionist looked up his birth year on a chart, and informed me my son would be placed in kindergarten where they were learning colors - no possibility of him testing out, no possibility of sitting in with a 1st grade class, he was born in year X so the chart says he is in kindergarten. So he spent two days doing colors, on the third day his name came up in a lottery for a charter school, and I started getting up everyday at 4am to take him to Brooklynn where he was doing 1st grade work again. The charter schools are unique to New York City I believe, they are publicly funded but have a lot more discretion in everything they do. Whereas the dropout rate in NYC is around 30%, and of the 70% that do graduate only 48% graduate on time. For the charter schools it’s closer to 90% graduate on time. When you factor in races - the NYC public schools have their worst stats in black and Hispanic neighborhoods - no shortage of data to back that up in Google - whereas the charter school stats in the same neighborhoods equal or exceed the stats in the wealthiest Caucasian neighborhoods.

14 points by smsm42 8y ago

> Why should millions of perfectly normal adolescents, not all of them ghettoized, resist being educated? The reason is that they know deep down that due to the color of their skin, less is expected of them It's not just race, it's also class.

yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
It’s just class. Problematic lives at home and after school, lacking materials that lend dignity to the experience, etc., etc., the list goes on. This is a problem of poverty. This essay is noise that buries the non-thesis, which is a stan for charter schools that disenfranchise poor students even more than they already were. Extremely shameful.

externalreality 8y ago

I don't agree with this article. The article presents the very narrow perspective of an apparently uninformed person who thinks that invoking the names MLK or James Baldwin will help their case. People like the author of this article avoid, in their reasoning, any conception of income disparity, an intrinsically racially prejudice curriculum, micro-aggressive and biased media (to which students are constantly exposed), and any such thing that would lead to a rational that an unfair system is producing students who are going to be unresponsive to a traditional school system that is based on a presumption of equality and social equity. What is more is this uninformed person, doesn't seem to know why it is not OK for a "white person" to use certain words. Showing that she has no understanding of recent history and how words take on a different meaning depending on who is saying them. This isn't a new concept; natural languages(unlike say many computing languages) are VERY context sensitive and have always been so. This article reveals that it is, in fact, too the teacher who is lacking education. Here I yield to works like that from Robin DiAngelo and Ken Wytsma.

minitel 8y ago
It sounds like you're a very worldly and pragmatic person. Perhaps you should go and teach in one of these schools. You might just turn things around! :)
smsm42 8y ago
> of an apparently uninformed person What do you mean by "uninformed"? From the article it is apparent the author actually worked in the school as a teacher for years, and she writes about the experience. I am sure people may disagree with the conclusions, but calling her "uninformed" just sounds out of place to me - if the person literally doing the thing for years is not informed, what does that even mean? > system is producing students who are going to be unresponsive to a traditional school system What you mean by "traditional"? I've been in school outside the US, and what she describes looks nothing like any school I've ever been in. I have also read there have been lots of reforms and various approaches tried, with various degree of success, in various US schools. In what sense is the experience she describes "traditional" and what non-"traditional" approach would you advocate?
- externalreality 8y ago
  That you for "respectfully" disagreeing. > What do you mean by "uninformed"? I mean that the author doesn't seem to be very informed with respect to race relations or social equity issues. > What you mean by "traditional"? I mean a school system that fails to take into account or fully address the same issues that I state above. It is hard to tackle these issues because it is still too hard to have a reasoned conversation on race and the great injustices of the past (both very intentional and unintentional) that have lead students to the despair they find themselves in today. The author of this article is part of the problem IMHO.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    > I mean that the author doesn't seem to be very informed with respect to race relations or social equity issues. "Race relations" is kinda wide topic, encompassing more or less the whole human history. It would be more useful if you point out which relevant aspects of this huge topic, in your opinion, the author got wrong and how, in your opinion, it influenced her discussion about education. I understand this could potentially also be huge, but at least 2-3 of major examples would be very helpful. > I mean a school system that fails to take into account or fully address the same issues that I state above. Yes, but address how? Any school system could fail to fully address one or the other aspects of the full history of race relations and social issues. It is impossible not to - it's the whole human history in all its vast diversity, and nobody would ever be able to account or fully address all aspects of it. Pointing out which aspects and how are not addressed would be much more interesting than just saying "oh, race relations, therefore whole article is invalid". I don't see how it adds anything, it just sounds dismissive of an experience of the real person and painstaking work she made of recording it and sharing it with us. What do you thing she have done wrong, specifically? > It is hard to tackle these issues because it is still too hard to have a reasoned conversation on race True, it is not easy. But I think that's not the reason to not try? > The author of this article is part of the problem IMHO. I do not see how. She honestly tried to help those students who want to learn and advance, despite harsh conditions that surround them, and she found her efforts consistently being contradicted and nullified by the system, which does not help people who want to learn, and allows people who behave destructively to continue their behavior not only to their own detriment, but to the detriment of others. She spent a lot of time and effort trying to teach people despite these circumstances and despite constant assault on her human dignity. If that counts as being part of the problem, what isn't?

philipkglass 8y ago

The stories of attempting to teach adolescents who have no interest in learning are as appalling as they are familiar. I have long heard similar stories from people who went into teaching. But the sweeping conclusion that the students behave this way because "they know deep down that due to the color of their skin, less is expected of them" is thinly supported. Maybe she would feel differently if she had also taught in majority-white schools where students also raise hell. I know that white students can get away with most of this anti-social behavior too, because I met one online in the early 2000s. I was a sophomore in college and he was a sophomore in high school. We were both interested in chemistry and computers and started chatting through the PM system of an overclocking forum. He was bored in school. When he wasn't reading about chemistry and computers on his own he was booby-trapping teachers' equipment and classrooms and spreading mocking nicknames for people he didn't like -- teachers and students alike. He ignored most of his assigned work. He once kept his father's handgun in a backpack through the school day just to see if he could get away with it. His friends were people that he got to work on undermining teachers with him. After a year he ran away from home, got as far as the West Coast, reluctantly returned when his parents said he could leave school, and dropped out to get his GED after returning. After that he went straight to college, grad school for a couple of years and then dropped out, went into software development. AFAIK his antisocial and even criminal behavior fortunately stopped after high school. He got away with pretty much everything while he was still in high school. This was in an affluent majority-white suburb, and his family was even higher income than the area average. Still it seems that teachers had little power to reign in his antisocial behavior. What can we do with school-aged children who have no interest in learning and actively sabotage the educational opportunity for students who show up willing to learn? I don't know. But policies that keep them in school alongside willing learners are not helping. Teachers shouldn't have to be good babysitters and jailers in addition to being good teachers.

iguy 8y ago
Her the description of the problems is vivid, detailed, and sadly not unfamiliar. This is largely separate from her suggestions as to what might solve the problem, or at least reduce it. It's not obviously correct, but I wouldn't be too quick to write it off... she presumably thought about this for a while, and whether or not it would work, it communicates at least something about the students' mental state. I would be curious to hear what sort of system you think your hell-raising overclocker might have benefitted from. In some non-US systems, enough of this would eventually land you in a track which is pretty close to army boot-camp -- very very rigid with lots of focus on standing in line & saying "sir", none at all on french poetry. Do you think this would have improved his life (or that of his classmates)?

zxcvbn4038 8y ago

NYC schools are pretty aweful unless you live on the upper west side. The few years of his life my son was in a Montessori school, but the cost was more then my rent, so I decided to enroll him in a public school - it was a block away from me so I saved four hours of commuting and a couple grand a month. He walked in the door with basic reading, writing, and simple math skills. The receptionist looked up his birth year on a chart, and informed me my son would be placed in kindergarten where they were learning colors - no possibility of him testing out, no possibility of sitting in with a 1st grade class, he was born in year X so the chart says he is in kindergarten. So he spent two days doing colors, on the third day his name came up in a lottery for a charter school, and I started getting up everyday at 4am to take him to Brooklynn where he was doing 1st grade work again. The charter schools are unique to New York City I believe, they are publicly funded but have a lot more discretion in everything they do. Whereas the dropout rate in NYC is around 30%, and of the 70% that do graduate only 48% graduate on time. For the charter schools it’s closer to 90% graduate on time. When you factor in races - the NYC public schools have their worst stats in black and Hispanic neighborhoods - no shortage of data to back that up in Google - whereas the charter school stats in the same neighborhoods equal or exceed the stats in the wealthiest Caucasian neighborhoods.