Let’s say that you run one of the largest school systems in the world. Now let’s say that the science shows that black and Hispanic students are not as smart and talented as other kids. How can you trust the science when the science is races an sheeit.
I know- eliminate the science. Now all kids are the same.
In Baltimore, it is being reported that dead students continued to be enrolled in classes. Why? The answer lies in three letters: FTE, or Full Time Enrollment. Schools get money that is dependent upon how many students are enrolled in the school.
When I was a teacher, I had a student who died in a car accident. Even though I was notified by the Principal of his death, the student continued to be carried on my rolls. Since taking attendance is a legal requirement, I marked him absent. After a week of this, I was contacted by the Principal and she told me that every time I did this, the computer system was calling the mother with an automated message, which stated “Your student was absent from Science class today.” The Principal said, “Do you have any idea how upsetting that is?” I said, “Well, he isn’t here. Maybe we could change the mother’s number in the system, or remove him from classes.” The Principal said “We are working on that. For now, just mark him as present.” I asked her to email those instructions to me. She got angry and refused. I marked him present as I was told.
That continued for a month. As a teacher, you do what you are told, or your contract won’t be renewed for the next school year.
Now the news from Baltimore was far worse than that, in that they carried the dead students for years. However, the difference is one of degree, not of principle. So, I can believe it.
This item keeps coming across my aggregator. This third grade teacher has a lesson using bandaids that the left seems to think is brilliant. The conclusion of the lesson is this:
Fair doesn’t mean everyone gets the same thing, fair means that everyone gets what they need to be successful.
No it doesn’t. In real life, not everyone is going to be successful. Some won’t try. Some will try and fail. To hand out materials and benefits to ensure that everyone has the same amount of success is not helping children. It causes them to become lazy and reliant on handouts from a beneficent authority figure. This is how people become cattle, dependent on others for their success.
Instead, teach them to become self reliant. Teach them that anything worth having is worth working for. Teach them that the joy of success after a struggle is something worth striving for.
If someone had told you 20 years ago, as you watched the towers fall, that our military would flee from Afghanistan, leaving their weapons and Americans civilians behind, and there would be a Muslim woman on television, telling our nation’s teachers to teach children that the 9-11 attackers were not terrorists, and avoid promoting American exceptionalism, would you have believed it?
As many in the press try to downplay the Taliban’s atrocities, some stories of the horrors that are being carried out are leaking out of Afghanistan.
Americans on the left began showing their stupidity almost immediately:
Meanwhile, stories of forced marriages and executions continue to come out of the country. Those who live in the Capitol are facing searches, checkpoints, and beatings.
This is what happens when a war becomes not just about power, but involves tribal and religious implications. This could easily be our future here in the US: A victorious left, taking your children to be a part of their sexual fantasy. Don’t think that’s possible?
As a teacher, I was often provided with pro-homosexuality teaching materials with instructions to “push” this on children. I refused. Here is one of the handouts I was given, with instructions to deliver lessons on homosexuality to kids. Note that there are resources on there for K-5 children. They are trying to sex up your kids, even at 6 years old!
We are in the middle of a war, a revolution. This is just one of the things that the victors want.
I know that this makes me sound like a raving lunatic. You don’t have to take my word for it- click on the links above. Read the handout that I embedded above. Visit the websites on it.
We are in a fight, not only for the survival of this nation, but for the very souls of our children.
I read about a school shooting in a New Mexico middle school. One 13 year old student shot another. As soon as the name of the school was mentioned, I knew what I would find. I also knew that an NRA member as unlikely to be involved.
The middle school was Washington Middle School. That school has 442 students enrolled, with 410 of them receiving free lunch. Eighty seven percent of the student body is reading below their grade level. Ninety percent of US schools are better than this one in reading and math. One in eight households are single parent households.
To get those absolutely horrid results, taxpayers are paying more than $11,300 per student each year. I would say that this money is being wasted.
One of the many jobs I have had was at a plant that made stainless steel pipe and tube. The process was that we would buy large rolls of stainless steel, slit them to the proper sizes, then cold roll those into pipe. The edges of the roll would be welded together, then the now completed pipe was induction annealed so it would hold its shape.
We had a woman there who was in charge of QA. It was her job to test each batch of pipe to ensure that the pipe was properly manufactured. Once, the woman decertified an entire batch of pipe because the welds were faulty and had microscopic cracks in them. That batch had to go out the next day so we could meet the customer’s deadline. It was a couple of dozen tons of pipe.
Management fixed the problem by firing the QA department and shipping the pipe. Of course, the entire batch of pipe came back when the welds began to fail. Due to bad management, the company went out of business less than a year later.
I am telling you this story because there is a lesson there. One that will easily apply to the situation in this country with regards to our education. The Oregon governor recently decided that too many black students were failing tests in reading and math proficiency. To her, the obvious problem lies in the test, so the test was eliminated.
The Biden administration is bringing back an Obama era policy of racial quotas in school discipline. One of the many problems that forced my exit from education was my experience with this policy, although I was not aware that the policy had ever ceased. Behavior that gets a white student suspended will not even merit a stern talking to if displayed by a black student.
This article blames the school system because a high school student had a 0.13 grade point average and failed nearly every class he took. The student in question was absent 272 times in four years. He failed his classes for four years, and the first time the kid’s mother knew anything was during the final semester of his senior year? Yeah, mother of the year right there.
I have 133 students this year. Of those, more than half of them (68) are currently failing my course. Six of those students have a perfect zero for the current marking period, due to the fact that they have not turned in a single one of the fifteen assignments that has been assigned to them. In fact, more than half of my students have received at least 6 zeros. The mean grade for my students is a 48 percent.
Absenteeism is over the top. I have students who have been absent more than not. One of my students has only been in class six times so far this year. I have over a dozen students that I have not seen nor heard from since before Christmas.
There is nothing that I as a teacher can do. I teach, but the student has to show up and actually make an effort. I am tired of caring more about my students’ success than they or their parents.
In fact, I have had enough. I am done. I am putting in my two weeks’ notice tomorrow. Since spring break is coming up, my last day as a teacher will be next Friday. This morning, I was offered a job supervising techs at a nearby hospital. I accepted.
Back to the medical business.
This is my answer to SiGraybeard:
There are many challenges to being a teacher in a failing high school. One of those challenges is the students have parents who are largely high school dropouts and drug addicts. They didn’t become that way because they value education. Kids emulate the behavior they see at home. Countering years of a parent who is ignorant and telling the child, “You don’t need to know that. You will never need to know how to use any of that stuff they make you learn. I graduated 20 years ago, and still haven’t used any of it,” is nearly impossible.
One of the things that I do is present the students with a digital photo album. It’s a photo story of my life. My time in the military. My time as a firefighter. A paramedic. A master SCUBA diver. I show them pictures of my travels. I show them how great life can be, and how different it can be from what they know. Then I tell them that the key to living an interesting life is education. That doesn’t mean college, necessarily. It could be a trade. Then I try to tie my lessons into a skill.
Kids, did you know that a bullet begins to fall from the acceleration of gravity as soon as it leaves the barrel of a gun? If a sniper shoots a bullet perfectly horizontal, and his watch falls off at the same time, the bullet and the watch will hit the ground at the same time. Then I prove it.
If four firefighters are on the fourth floor of a building, and there is 200 feet of firehose between the truck and their position, you have to add pressure to the water to account for friction and elevation. This is how you calculate just how much pressure you need to add in order to get them enough water to put out the fire.
Efficiency is important. Chemical reactions have efficiency. Some reactions are not perfect. Let’s say we are making drugs like in “Breaking Bad.” Let’s say that we know that our reaction is 90% efficient. (Pointing to kid in front row) Is John stealing from us, or are we losing product to inefficiency? If he is stealing, we need to whack him. Let’s do the math and see if John lives or not. (students all laugh) So we start by calculating…
I use examples to make the class fun, interesting, and relevant. Math isn’t racist, but a poor teacher can make it boring. Even these tactics fail more than half the time. The kids don’t care, their parents don’t care, and so the kids don’t even come to school more than half the time.
So many people fall back on the race card. It isn’t that my kid is absent and refusing to cooperate with the lessons. That would be an indictment of my parenting. It isn’t that my kid is becoming a gang member. A drug user. My daughter isn’t going to wind up as a stripper. No, all of this is the teacher’s fault. Not mine. Not my child’s. The teacher MUST be racist. Blaming racism is the same fundamental logic as 1930s Germans blaming the Jews- “It can’t be MY fault. It must be someone else’s fault.” The people need a scapegoat for their own failures.