Teaching In A Ghetto School

[PawPaw]

But good luck to the new contender for World's Biggest Walking Penis On Top Of His Shoulder Blades

He probably wears a necktie so the foreskin doesn't slip up over his face.

[skb12172]

Conway is a well-known, Company Man in the state Demoncrap party machine. Need I say more?

[martini]

About 2 years ago actually. Sold my old big box TV when I changed AOs because neither I nor the moving co. wanted to touch it, and I got a better flatscreen down here.

My solution....I'm not sure it's completely workable due to child labor laws. But here it is....
I see folks on liberal board complain about our crumbling infrastructure: roads, buildings, utilities, etc. I see them say we need a new CCC or more works projects. I see folks on conservative boards complain about the welfare state and the culture it breeds, with money going to people who consume and breed, giving back no benefit to society. Maybe it's just me, but I'd form a plan that if you want to receive a check from the government, you work for the government. Have all these people collecting welfare start building new roads, have them learn the trade to put up new electrical/communications infrastructure. That way, a- we get something out of our tax dollars that go to welfare, and b- people with no jobs get a new job, and students learning squat in schools learn a trade which can earn them money.

Now, here's a box of debating shells, go fill my idea full of holes if you don't like it.

That's very similar to what we got with the WPA. There are two major differences today. When the WPA existed there was a work ethic and the people had some skills to start with. Everyone knew how to swing a hammer or use a broom. (gross simplification) Neither of these exist today in the population that would be put to work. Further, they have an entitlement mentality that practically ensures that projects will never get done and wouldn't be safe if they did.

All of these are fixable, but do we, as a nation, have the stomach for it?

[martini]

There's nothing wrong with public education that wouldn't be solved by cutting off all taxpayer funding.

That's like saying there's no problem too big in Chicago that another fire couldn't solve. Mind you I say that all the time during quarterly filings...

I happen to agree with both statements...

I'm ok funding education with state and federal money. My problem is the how. I'd personally go for an all voucher system.

[skb12172]

Society inevitably evolves upward. However, there are dips and valleys when civilizations collapse and dark ages begin. Our society's problems will ultimately be resolved through Natural Law and Darwin. Before that happens, a hell of a lot of people, both good and bad, are going to die. For those who survive, it won't be fun for a long, long time.

[Weetabix]

Every kid hits the floor and grows up with an natural curiousity about learning.
The public school system and (many of its) associated practitioners manage to beat that out of most of their raw material with an efficiency that borders on design.
Looking at kids who've been in public schools for 4-10 years proves the effects, not that they themselves are the cause.

Claiming that the kids not in the system do better because they're better kids is a self-serving tautology, and I don't think it flies.

Take a Lexus and take a Yugo. Beat the crap out of them on a baja course. Neither runs at the end. Lexus=Yugo. Q.E.D.

Sorry. Not buying it. This is a multivariable space. Claiming that there are only three variables doesn't make it so. You may claim that some variables are significantly more important than others, and I'll agree. But I won't accept that a variable is a constant.

We're sidetracking a bit here. I think we shouldn't get into an argument about whether, every single time, Brooks Farmington Merriwether III and Kar'shanquon Jones will produce equal results when placed in the same milieu. I'm a Nature AND Nurture man.

I agree that the system is a more significant variable.

[MarkD]

And note I didn't say drop high-achievers into a public school.
I said drop them into the worst public schools.
I'd give you a dollar for every one who maintained performance if you'd give me a nickel for every one who cratered and burned, and I'd buy a Ferrari on the profits.

Still not buying it.

Just for the sake of clarity, here's what you said:

It would be like sacrificing bunnies to prove a point, but I'd happily wager that dumping that pile of high achievers into a school in the crappier precincts of the public system in 9th grade wouldn't refine them, but that instead it would destroy them by 12th grade, even if their parents were Ozzie and Harriet, and thus prove that the kids you have are immaterial, so the problem lies elsewhere. It doesn't matter how much filet mignon you add to a pot with a ton of fertilizer, the taste never improves.

Basic personality like work ethic, morality, love of learning, curiosity, etc are pretty much established by 9th grade (High School Sophomore). Plus, again given the involved parents that generally go along with high-achievers (not always of course, but a safe bet), I'd wager those kids may very well fail in the school they were going to (probably from lack of attendance), but they'd STILL learn and STILL succeed in the post-high-school world.

Again, given that anecdote is not data, I offer myself. I went to a NYC public school (grade school, junior-high and high school) where a large percentage of the kids were from the local housing projects, AND I went to college at the local city-university school (with open admission, meaning as long as you had a high school diploma they'd let you in). I got my BS, then worked on my MS part time while I worked full time at the same college. No dorms, strictly a commuter college. In grade/JHS/HS my parents kept an eye on my performance, and the habits I learned there stood me well in college, and now nearly 30 years later I'm living a solidly middle class life, own a home, and have enough disposable income to take a fairly nice vacation once or twice a year (not to mention paying taxes thru the nose).

Today, it's even easier, with online classes and the lack of stigma attached to a GED (since homeschooled kids get GEDs and generally do very well in college).

People who've learned to succeed will do so.

Back to your assertion, sure, a certain percentage will get into dope, will join a gang, will get pregnant. Just like they will anyway, even if they stick with the "good" schools. The majority will succeed, and you won't get your Ferrari.

[Aglifter]

Bright kids, locked in a cell for 8 hours/day = BORED kids.

The brighter the kid, the more dangerous boredom becomes. The more dangerous it is to surround them with idiots.

I've seen quite a few borderline "genius" cases self-destruct. (140 might make you a "genius" technically, but its a long way from a real one.)

I've also seen the far higher ones implode, but there's a fair amount of instability there to start with.

[PawPaw]

I've long believed that we should have a high-stakes test in 8th grade that determines whether or not you get to go to high school. Truly high-stakes. If you pass, you go to high school. If you don't you're passed on to the vo-tech system.

When my wife and I hosted international exchange students, they told us that their systems worked like that. If you didn't pass your eighth-grade test, you didn't go to high school. Period. These kids were mainly northern European and I don't think they were pulling the Crazy American's leg. It sounds like a reasonable idea to me, and there is still a large demand for skilled craftsmen in any number of disciplines, from the construction trades to office work.

I know that I have told a student that "you'll make some Warden a good trustee, one of these days". I explained to him that before he was promoted to trustee, he'd have to spend some time on the field line, chopping weeds from endless rows of pepper plants. I happened to be in the parish lockup last month and actually walked that kid from the jail to the courtroom for his arraignment. It seems that he's graduated from the school system to the prison system, and he's well on his way to being a field hand in one of our state prisons. It's a natural progression for this kid, and I'm glad that he's realized his potential without harming anyone or catching a bullet himself.

[Aesop]

Paw Paw, that's exactly how it works thereabouts. But we could do the same thing without staking a kid's entire future on how he performed one day at 13 years of age. Simply give kids choices at multiple points. I don't want to shunt Thomas Edison into digging ditches forever because he had a bad day, but if he wants to tinker with stuff and take more shop classes than college prep, that's fine with me. As long as it works the other way too. The beauty of our system vs. the Yourapeons is that if some guy decides he wants his MBA, he can study, take a test, and go back to school if he makes it over the bar. Good luck trying that over there with the same options.


Sorry for disagreeing with you other guys, but you're overlooking the obvious.

We've been performing a modified verson of the test year in and year out. And the jury's verdict is in. Surprising no one, they disagree with you.

The result is exactly what we get every year from the public education system. Except that no one in their right mind willingly sends their bright kids (or even their mediocre to average kids) to Craphole High if they have any other possible option.

In just the Los Angeles version of Craphole (which I'll stack up against the worst from Detroit, Boston, D.C., or NYFC) 50% of the kids who start inside the system never even graduate. Note that I didn't say transfer out (of the system, or the state), get an online GED, or any other wiggle word option.
They. DROP. OUT. Without a trace. And the LAUSD is just one district (albeit the biggest) out of the whole country. With 28,000 nickels/yr just from them, plus the rest of the nation's harvest of fail, I'll pay that Ferrari off in no time. Which kinds of wipes the luster off LAUSD taking the Academic Decathalon trophy about every other year. What is that, 15-20 kids? I'll write you a check - when you back the truck up with my nickels.

And the result of that harvest of fail is the usual tsunami of sociopathies we've all come to love and admire: under-able workers, business flight, burgeoning welfare roles, soaring taxes, and municipal bankruptcy, a tsunami of crime and punishment, poverty, a swath of abortions and trainloads of babies, and a police state and criminal justice system that's the envy of the Soviet gulag archipelago, with all the downstream corrosion on little things like the Bill of Rights.

And you don't get to claim the dropouts were all the dumbest low-achievers, because even without them, CA still manages to come in just ahead of Mississippi nationally on scores (49th). When 5,000 out of every 10,000 kids who start the game in 1st grade don't get a cap and gown after 12th grade in the national system's largest district, the system and those who make their living at it are exactly the problem.

The only cure for that is to stop subsidizing both it, entirely, and their parents.

Momma can fund her crack habit without my help just fine, or perhaps decide to pursue other life choices; and the education system can compete on the free market for students, without coercion, based on documented performance. The same way the entire rest of life works, to the extent we can pry government's tentacles out of every nook and cranny. It seems to work for everything from TVs to cell phones to automobiles, which even the crack house moms and the poorest children seem to have access to.

If, after 5 years, or even from the get-go, someone wants government to offer a competing option under the old model, which people could freely choose, I can live with that, provided that it earns 100% of its operating revenue from vouchers, with the dedication of the land it sits on as the only prop from Nanny. No state-funded pensions or other nonsense. I think it'd be a rare day when they amounted to 1 school out of 2,000, anywhere.

Nota bene that under similar conditions the Post Office has been unable to ever break even, let alone make a profit against free market competition even with yards of federal code to ensure its monopoly in certain areas; and the lines at the DMV get longer, whereas I can register my car and get my tags with about a 4 minute wait at the AAA, or any of 50 other options.

When government shrinks to the same ratio as umpires to baseball players, we'll be starting on the right track. When it gets to the ratio of umpires to fans at the stadium, we'll be just about there. A great start would be moving primary and secondary teaching to a private sector job in all places and times, in perpetuity. Some teachers would prosper, but most know all too well what their salaries would look like if they had to actually earn them every year until retirement, with results. And even more fearsome, spending all their time teaching academic subjects wouldn't leave time for all the other socialist nonsense and government busybodying that's grown up like an impenetrable forest of cactus and kudzu since about 1950.