Essay by a teacher in a black high school

[CG6468]

Removed from viewing on the 'net. I have no idea why.  Well, on second thought, it offends some people.

So here's the entire essay.

Essay by a teacher in a black high school

Before-It’s-Deleted Of The Day

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Black & Right

The following was a difficult read because it’s also what liberal blacks call “dirty laundry”: bad stuff about black folk never to be said around whites. The essay was posted on Craigslist and it’s the kind of truth that often is taken back out of PC fear….

Essay by a teacher in a black high school

*This is a repost from the rants and raves section from the Mobile, Alabama craigslist.*

The truth is usually a tough thing to accept, so I understand if this is flagged. It would be a cowardly thing to do, but I understand it. Some people just ignore unpleasant truths. However, if you think ignoring the problem, or trying to censor the truth, will help our black children improve, you’re dreaming. This is important, so I’m happy to repost – indefinitely if necessary. I find it interesting that NO ONE has had the intellect to refute anything in the essay. They can only attempt to censor it, as if doing so somehow makes it invalid. Weak minds, weak minds.

Until recently I taught at a predominantly black high school in a southeastern state.

The mainstream press gives a hint of what conditions are like in black schools, but only a hint. Expressions journalists use like “chaotic” or “poor learning environment” or “lack of discipline” do not capture what really happens. There is nothing like the day-to-day experience of teaching black children and that is what I will try to convey.

Most whites simply do not know what black people are like in large numbers, and the first encounter can be a shock.

One of the most immediately striking things about my students was that they were loud. They had little conception of ordinary decorum. It was not unusual for five blacks to be screaming at me at once. Instead of calming down and waiting for a lull in the din to make their point — something that occurs to even the dimmest white students — blacks just tried to yell over each other.

It did no good to try to quiet them, and white women were particularly inept at trying. I sat in on one woman’s class as she begged the children to pipe down. They just yelled louder so their voices would carry over hers.

Many of my black students would repeat themselves over and over again — just louder. It was as if they suffered from Tourette syndrome. They seemed to have no conception of waiting for an appropriate time to say something. They would get ideas in their heads and simply had to shout them out. I might be leading a discussion on government and suddenly be interrupted: “We gotta get more Democrats! Clinton, she good!” The student may seem content with that outburst but two minutes later, he would suddenly start yelling again: “Clinton good!”

Anyone who is around young blacks will probably get a constant diet of rap music. Blacks often make up their own jingles, and it was not uncommon for 15 black boys to swagger into a classroom, bouncing their shoulders and jiving back.

They were yelling back and forth, rapping 15 different sets of words in the same harsh, rasping dialect. The words were almost invariably a childish form of boasting: “Who got dem shine rim, who got dem shine shoe, who got dem shine grill (gold and silver dental caps)?” The amateur rapper usually ends with a claim–in the crudest terms imaginable — that all womankind is sexually devoted to him. For whatever reason, my students would often groan instead of saying a particular word, as in, “She suck dat aaahhhh (think of a long grinding groan), she f**k dat aaaahhhh, she lick dat aaaahhh.”

Black women love to dance — in a way white people might call gyrating. So many black girls dance in the hall, in the classroom, on the chairs, next to the chairs, under the chairs, everywhere. Once I took a call on my cell phone and had to step outside of class. I was away about two minutes but when I got back the black girls had lined up at the front of the classroom and were convulsing to the delight of the boys.

Many black people, especially black women, are enormously fat. Some are so fat I had to arrange special seating to accommodate their bulk. I am not saying there are no fat white students — there are — but it is a matter of numbers and attitudes. Many black girls simply do not care that they are fat. There are plenty of white anorexics, but I have never met or heard of a black anorexic.

“Black women be big Mr. Jackson,” my students would explain.

“Is it okay in the black community to be a little overweight?” I ask. Two obese black girls in front of my desk begin to dance, “You know dem boys lak juicy fruit, Mr. Jackson.” “Juicy” is a colorful black expression for the buttocks.

Blacks, on average, are the most directly critical people I have ever met: “Dat shirt stupid. Yo’ kid a bastard. Yo’ lips big.” Unlike whites, who tread gingerly around the subject of race, they can be brutally to the point. Once I needed to send a student to the office to deliver a message. I asked for volunteers, and suddenly you would think my classroom was a bastion of civic engagement. Thirty dark hands shot into the air. My students loved to leave the classroom and slack off, even if just for a few minutes, away from the eye of white authority. I picked a light-skinned boy to deliver the message. One very black student was indignant: “You pick da half-breed.” And immediately other blacks take up the cry, and half a dozen mouths are screaming, “He half-breed.”

For decades, the country has been lamenting the poor academic performance of blacks and there is much to lament. There is no question, however, that many blacks come to school with a serious handicap that is not their fault. At home they have learned a dialect that is almost a different language. Blacks not only mispronounce words; their grammar is often wrong. When a black wants to ask, “Where is the bathroom?” he may actually say “Whar da badroom be?” Grammatically, this is the equivalent of “Where the bathroom is?” And this is the way they speak in high school. Students write the way they speak, so this is the language that shows up in written assignments.

It is true that some whites face a similar handicap. They speak with what I would call a “country” accent that is hard to reproduce but results in sentences such as “I’m gonna gemme a Coke.” Some of these country whites had to learn correct pronunciation and usage. The difference is that most whites overcome this handicap and learn to speak correctly; many blacks do not.

Most of the blacks I taught simply had no interest in academic subjects. I taught history, and students would often say they didn’t want to do an assignment or they didn’t like history because it was all about white people. Of course, this was “diversity” history, in which every cowboy’s black cook got a special page on how he contributed to winning the West, but black children still found it inadequate. So I would throw up my hands and assign them a project on a real, historical black person. My favorite was Marcus Garvey. They had never heard of him, and I would tell them to research him, but they never did. They didn’t care and they didn’t want to do any work.

Anyone who teaches blacks soon learns that they have a completely different view of government from whites. Once I decided to fill 25 minutes by having students write about one thing the government should do to improve America. I gave this question to three classes totaling about 100 students, approximately 80 of whom were black. My few white students came back with generally “conservative” ideas. “We need to cut off people who don’t work,” was the most common suggestion. Nearly every black gave a variation on the theme of “We need more government services.”

My students had only the vaguest notion of who pays for government services. For them, it was like a magical piggy bank that never goes empty. One black girl was exhorting the class on the need for more social services and I kept trying to explain that people, real live people, are taxed for the money to pay for those services. “Yeah, it come from whites,” she finally said. “They stingy anyway.”

“Many black people make over $50,000 dollars a year and you would also be taking away from your own people,” I said.

She had an answer to that: “Dey half breed.” The class agreed. I let the subject drop.

Many black girls are perfectly happy to be welfare queens. On career day, one girl explained to the class that she was going to have lots of children and get fat checks from the government. No one in the class seemed to have any objection to this career choice.

Surprising attitudes can come out in class discussion. We were talking about the crimes committed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and I brought up the rape of a young girl in the bathroom of the Superdome. A majority of my students believed this was a horrible crime but a few took it lightly. One black boy spoke up without raising his hand: “Dat no big deal. They thought they is gonna die so they figured they have some fun. Dey jus’ wanna have a fun time; you know what I’m sayin’?” A few black heads nodded in agreement.

My department head once asked all the teachers to get a response from all students to the following question: “Do you think it is okay to break the law if it will benefit you greatly?” By then, I had been teaching for a while and was not surprised by answers that left a young, liberal, white woman colleague aghast. “Yeah” was the favorite answer. As one student explained, “Get dat green.”

There is a level of conformity among blacks that whites would find hard to believe. They like one kind of music: rap. They will vote for one political party: Democrat. They dance one way, speak one way, are loud the same way, and fail their exams in the same way. Of course, there are exceptions but they are rare.

Whites are different. Some like country music, others heavy metal, some prefer pop, and still others, God forbid, enjoy rap music. They have different associations, groups, almost ideologies. There are jocks, nerds, preppies, and hunters. Blacks are all — well — black, and they are quick to let other blacks know when they deviate from the norm.

One might object that there are important group differences among blacks that a white man simply cannot detect. I have done my best to find them, but so far as I can tell, they dress the same, talk the same, think the same. Certainly, they form rival groups, but the groups are not different in any discernible way. There simply are no groups of blacks that are as distinctly different from each other as white “nerds,” “hunters,” or “Goths,” for example.

How the world looks to blacks: One point on which all blacks agree is that everything is “racis’.” This is one message of liberalism they have absorbed completely. Did you do your homework? “Na, homework racis’.” Why did you get an F on the test? “Test racis’.”

I was trying to teach a unit on British philosophers and the first thing the students noticed about Bentham, Hobbes, and Locke was “Dey all white! Where da black philosopher a’?” I tried to explain there were no blacks in eighteenth century Britain. You can probably guess what they said to that: “Dat racis’!” One student accused me of deliberately failing him on a test because I didn’t like black people.

“Do you think I really hate black people?”
“Yeah.”
“Have I done anything to make you feel this way? How do you know?”
“You just do.”
“Why do you say that?”

He just smirked, looked out the window, and sucked air through his teeth. Perhaps this was a regional thing, but the blacks often sucked air through their teeth as a wordless expression of disdain or hostility.

My students were sometimes unable to see the world except through the lens of their own blackness. I had a class that was host to a German exchange student. One day he put on a Power Point presentation with famous German landmarks as well as his school and family.

From time to time during the presentation, blacks would scream, “Where da black folk?!” The exasperated German tried several times to explain that there were no black people where he lived in Germany. The students did not believe him. I told them Germany is in Europe, where white people are from, and Africa is where black people are from. They insisted that the German student was racist, and deliberately refused to associate with blacks.

Blacks are keenly interested in their own racial characteristics. I have learned, for example, that some blacks have “good hair.” Good hair is black parlance for black-white hybrid hair. Apparently, it is less kinky, easier to style, and considered more attractive. Blacks are also proud of light skin. Imagine two black students shouting insults across the room. One is dark but slim; the other light and obese. The dark one begins the exchange: “You fat, Ridario!” Ridario smiles, doesn’t deign to look at his detractor, shakes his head like a wobbling top, and says, “You wish you light skinned.”

They could go on like this, repeating the same insults over and over.

My black students had nothing but contempt for Hispanic immigrants. They would vent their feelings so crudely that our department strongly advised us never to talk about immigration in class in case the principal or some outsider might overhear.

Whites were “racis’,” of course, but they thought of us at least as Americans. Not the Mexicans. Blacks have a certain, not necessarily hostile understanding of white people. They know how whites act, and it is clear they believe whites are smart and are good at organizing things. At the same time, they probably suspect whites are just putting on an act when they talk about equality, as if it is all a sham that makes it easier for whites to control blacks. Blacks want a bigger piece of the American pie. I’m convinced that if it were up to them they would give whites a considerably smaller piece than whites get now, but they would give us something. They wouldn’t give Mexicans anything.

What about black boys and white girls? No one is supposed to notice this or talk about it but it is glaringly obvious: Black boys are obsessed with white girls. I’ve witnessed the following drama countless times. A black boy saunters up to a white girl. The cocky black dances around her, not really in a menacing way. It’s more a shuffle than a threat. As he bobs and shuffles he asks, “When you gonna go wit’ me?”

There are two kinds of reply. The more confident white girl gets annoyed, looks away from the black and shouts, “I don’t wanna go out with you!” The more demure girl will look at her feet and mumble a polite excuse but ultimately say no.

There is only one response from the black boy: “You racis’.” Many girls — all too many — actually feel guilty because they do not want to date blacks. Most white girls at my school stayed away from blacks, but a few, particularly the ones who were addicted to drugs, fell in with them.

There is something else that is striking about blacks. They seem to have no sense of romance, of falling in love. What brings men and women together is sex, pure and simple, and there is a crude openness about this. There are many degenerate whites, of course, but some of my white students were capable of real devotion and tenderness, emotions that seemed absent from blacks — especially the boys.

Black schools are violent and the few whites who are too poor to escape are caught in the storm. The violence is astonishing, not so much that it happens, but the atmosphere in which it happens. Blacks can be smiling, seemingly perfectly content with what they are doing, having a good time, and then, suddenly start fighting. It’s uncanny. Not long ago, I was walking through the halls and a group of black boys were walking in front of me. All of a sudden they started fighting with another group in the hallway.

Blacks are extraordinarily quick to take offense. Once I accidentally scuffed a black boy’s white sneaker with my shoe. He immediately rubbed his body up against mine and threatened to attack me. I stepped outside the class and had a security guard escort the student to the office. It was unusual for students to threaten teachers physically this way, but among themselves, they were quick to fight for similar reasons.

The real victims are the unfortunate whites caught in this. They are always in danger and their educations suffer. White weaklings are particularly susceptible, but mostly to petty violence. They may be slapped or get a couple of kicks when they are trying to open a bottom locker. Typically, blacks save the hard, serious violence for each other.

There was a lot of promiscuous sex among my students and this led to violence. Black girls were constantly fighting over black boys. It was not uncommon to see two girls literally ripping each other’s hair out with a police officer in the middle trying to break up the fight. The black boy they were fighting over would be standing by with a smile, enjoying the show he had created. For reasons I cannot explain, boys seldom fought over girls.

Pregnancy was common among the blacks, though many black girls were so fat I could not tell the difference. I don’t know how many girls got abortions, but when they had the baby they usually stayed in school and had their own parents look after the child. The school did not offer daycare.

Aside from the police officers constantly on patrol, a sure sign that you are in a black school is the coke cage: the chain-link fence that many majority-black schools use to protect vending machines. The cage surrounds the machine and even covers its top. Delivery employees have to unlock a gate on the front of the cage to service the machines. Companies would prefer not to build cages around vending machines. They are expensive, ugly, and a bother, but black students smashed the machines so many times it was cheaper to build a cage than repair the damage. Rumor had it that before the cages went up blacks would turn the machines upside down in the hope that the money would fall out.

Security guards are everywhere in black schools — we had one on every hall. They also sat in on unruly classes and escorted students to the office. They were unarmed, but worked closely with the three city police officers who were constantly on duty.

There was a lot of drug-dealing at my school. This was a good way to make a fair amount of money but it also gave boys power over girls who wanted drugs. An addicted girl — black or white — became the plaything of anyone who could get her drugs.

One of my students was a notorious drug dealer. Everyone knew it. He was 19 years old and in eleventh grade. Once he got a score of three out of 100 on a test. He had been locked up four times since he was 13.

One day, I asked him, “Why do you come to school?”

He wouldn’t answer. He just looked out the window, smiled, and sucked air through his teeth. His friend Yidarius ventured an explanation: “He get dat green and get dem females.”

“What is the green?” I asked. “Money or dope?” “Both,” said Yidarius with a smile.

A very fat black interrupted from across the room: “We get dat lunch,” Mr. Jackson. “We gotta get dat lunch and brickfuss.” He means the free breakfast and lunch poor students get every day. “Nigga, we know’d you be lovin’ brickfuss!” shouts another student.

Some readers may believe that I have drawn a cruel caricature of black students. After all, according to official figures some 85 percent of them graduate. It would be instructive to know how many of those scraped by with barely a C- record. They go from grade to grade and they finally get their diplomas because there is so much pressure on teachers to push them through. It saves money to move them along, the school looks good, and the teachers look good.

Many of these children should have been failed, but the system would crack under their weight if they were all held back.

How did my experiences make me feel about blacks? Ultimately, I lost sympathy for them. In so many ways they seem to make their own beds. There they were in an integrationist’s fantasy–in the same classroom with white students, eating the same lunch, using the same bathrooms, listening to the same teachers–and yet the blacks fail while the whites pass.

One tragic outcome among whites who have been teaching for too long is that it can engender something close to hatred. One teacher I knew gave up fast food–not for health reasons but because where he lived most fast-food workers were black. He had enough of blacks on the job. This was an extreme example but years of frustration can take their toll. Many of my white colleagues with any experience were well on their way to that state of mind.

There is an unutterable secret among teachers: Almost all realize that blacks do not respond to traditional white instruction. Does that put the lie to environmentalism? Not at all. It is what brings about endless, pointless innovation that is supposed to bring blacks up to the white level. The solution is more diversity–or put more generally, the solution is change. Change is an almost holy word in education, and you can fail a million times as long as you keep changing. That is why liberals keep revamping the curriculum and the way it is taught. For example, teachers are told that blacks need hands-on instruction and more group work.

Teachers are told that blacks are more vocal and do not learn through reading and lectures. The implication is that they have certain traits that lend themselves to a different kind of teaching.

Whites have learned a certain way for centuries but it just doesn’t work with blacks. Of course, this implies racial differences but if pressed, most liberal teachers would say different racial learning styles come from some indefinable cultural characteristic unique to blacks. Therefore, schools must change, America must change. But into what? How do you turn quantum physics into hands-on instruction or group work? No one knows, but we must keep changing until we find something that works.

Public school has certainly changed since anyone reading this was a student. I have a friend who teaches elementary school, and she tells me that every week the students get a new diversity lesson, shipped in fresh from some bureaucrat’s office in Washington or the state capital. She showed me the materials for one week: a large poster, about the size of a forty-two inch flat-screen television. It shows an utterly diverse group — I mean diverse: handicapped, Muslim, Jewish, effeminate, poor, rich, brown, slightly brown, yellow, etc.–sitting at a table, smiling gaily, accomplishing some undefined task. The poster comes with a sheet of questions the teacher is supposed to ask. One might be: “These kids sure look different, but they look happy. Can you tell me which one in the picture is an American?”

Some eight-year-old, mired in ignorance, will point to a white child like himself. “That one.”

The teacher reads from the answer, conveniently printed along with the question. “No, Billy, all these children are Americans. They are just as American as you.”

The children get a snack, and the poster goes up on the wall until another one comes a week later. This is what happens at predominately white, middle-class, elementary schools everywhere. Elementary school teachers love All of the Colors of the Race, by award-winning children’s poet Arnold Adoff.

These are some of the lines they read to the children: “Mama is chocolate . . . Daddy is vanilla . . . Me (sic) is better . . . It is a new color. It is a new flavor. For love. Sometimes blackness seems too black for me, and whiteness is too sickly pale; and I wish every one were golden. Remember: long ago before people moved and migrated, and mixed and matched . . . there was one people: one color, one race. The colors are flowing from what was before me to what will be after. All the colors.”

Teaching as a career: It may come as a surprise after what I have written, but my experiences have given me a deep appreciation for teaching as a career. It offers a stable, middle-class life but comes with the capacity to make real differences in the lives of children. In our modern, atomized world children often have very little communication with adults — especially, or even, with their parents — so there is potential for a real transaction between pupil and teacher, disciple and master.

A rewarding relationship can grow up between an exceptional, interested student and his teacher. I have stayed in my classroom with a group of students discussing ideas and playing chess until the janitor kicked us out. I was the old gentleman, imparting my history, culture, personal loves and triumphs, defeats and failures to young kinsman. Sometimes I fancied myself Tyrtaeus, the Spartan poet, who counseled the youth to honor and loyalty. I never had this kind intimacy with a black student, and I know of no other white teacher who did.

Teaching can be fun. For a certain kind of person it is exhilarating to map out battles on chalkboards, and teach heroism. It is rewarding to challenge liberal prejudices, to leave my mark on these children, but what I aimed for with my white students I could never achieve with the blacks.

There is a kind of child whose look can melt your heart: some working-class castaway, in and out of foster homes, often abused, who is nevertheless almost an angel. Your heart melts for these children, this refuse of the modern world.

Many white students possess a certain innocence; their cheeks still blush. Try as I might, I could not get the blacks to care one bit about Beethoven or Sherman’s march to the sea, or Tyrtaeus, or Oswald Spengler, or even liberals like John Rawls, or their own history. They cared about nothing I tried to teach them. When this goes on year after year it chokes the soul out of a teacher, destroys his pathos, and sends him guiltily searching for The Bell Curve on the Internet.

Blacks break down the intimacy that can be achieved in the classroom, and leave you convinced that that intimacy is really a form of kinship. Without intending to, they destroy what is most beautiful–whether it be your belief in human equality, your daughter’s innocence, or even the state of the hallway.

Just last year I read on the bathroom stall the words “F**k Whitey.” Not two feet away, on the same stall, was a small swastika.

The National Council for the Social Studies, the leading authority on social science education in the United States, urges teachers to inculcate such values as equality of opportunity, individual property rights, and a democratic form of government. Even if teachers could inculcate this milquetoast ideology into whites, liberalism is doomed because so many non-whites are not receptive to education of any kind beyond the merest basics.

It is impossible to get them to care about such abstractions as property rights or democratic citizenship. They do not see much further than the fact that you live in a big house and “we in da pro-jek.” Of course, there are a few loutish whites who will never think past their next meal and a few sensitive blacks for whom anything is possible, but no society takes on the characteristics of its exceptions.

Once I asked my students, “What do you think of the Constitution?” “It white,” one slouching black rang out. The class began to laugh. And I caught myself laughing along with them, laughing while Pompeii’s volcano simmers, while the barbarians swell around the Palatine, while the country I love, and the job I love, and the community I love become dimmer by the day.

I read a book by an expatriate Rhodesian who visited Zimbabwe not too many years ago. Traveling with a companion, she stopped at a store along the highway. A black man materialized next to her car window. “Job, boss, (I) work good, boss,” he pleaded. “You give job.”

“What happened to your old job?” the expatriate white asked. The black man replied in the straightforward manner of his race: “We drove out the whites. No more jobs. You give job.”

At some level, my students understand the same thing. One day I asked the bored, black faces staring back at me. “What would happen if all the white people in America disappeared tomorrow?”

“We screwed,” a young, pitch-black boy screamed back. The rest of the blacks laughed.

I have had children tell me to my face as they struggled with an assignment. “I cain’t do dis,” Mr. Jackson. “I black.”

The point is that human beings are not always rational. It is in the black man’s interest to have whites in Zimbabwe but he drives them out and starves. Most whites do not think black Americans could ever do anything so irrational. They see blacks on television smiling, fighting evil whites, embodying white values. But the real black is not on television, and you pull your purse closer when you see him, and you lock the car doors when he swaggers by with his pants hanging down almost to his knees.

For those of you with children, better a smaller house in a white district than a fancy one near a black school.

I have been in parent-teacher conferences that broke my heart: the child pleading with his parents to take him out of school; the parents convinced their child’s fears are groundless. If you love your child, show her you care — not by giving her fancy vacations or a car, but making her innocent years safe and happy. Give her the gift of a not-heavily black school.

Removed from viewing?

[ColonelCarrots]

I see this when I go to work.

[Chris_]

This has been going on for decades.  The school I went to wasn't any different, and that was 20-25 years ago.

[NHSparky]

I saw this as a recruiter 15-20 years ago.  Tragic is the only word that comes to mind.

[JohnnyReb]

46 years ago, I married the young daughter of an Air Force Major stationed in S.C.. She had been born overseas to him and a young English war bride. She was British and German but by the laws of the time, not American. They had spent most of their lives in Europe and never around very many blacks and the few that they had seen were more or less, the cream of the crop. So when I, the white southern rebel came along, the whole family thought I was the most horribly racist person in the world.

A year after I started seeing the oldest daughter, we were married. Another year and the Major retired from the Air Force. They settled in S.C. and he started teaching in the public school system. The younger kids had by that time spent a couple of years in public school. A couple more years went by and I was the least racist person in the family.

Whoever wrote that piece knows what they are talking about but you will never get it through lily white liberal heads that it is the truth. They just can't fathom what you're talking about until they experience it first hand.......and then they become the most racist person you've ever seen. I believe the DUmmies know the truth but are able to insulate themselves from the black community and it's influences.

[Eupher]

Mrs E is a liberal moonbat teacher, a bit less frothing-at-the-mouth than most, but still likes that certain kinship with her fellow moonbat teachers.

I copied that entire essay and emailed it to her with the question, "Is that even remotely accurate?"

We'll see what she says.

[CG6468]

Mrs E is a liberal moonbat teacher, a bit less frothing-at-the-mouth than most, but still likes that certain kinship with her fellow moonbat teachers.

I copied that entire essay and emailed it to her with the question, "Is that even remotely accurate?"

We'll see what she says.

Thanks, Euph.

[JohnnyReb]

Mrs E is a liberal moonbat teacher, a bit less frothing-at-the-mouth than most, but still likes that certain kinship with her fellow moonbat teachers.

I copied that entire essay and emailed it to her with the question, "Is that even remotely accurate?"

We'll see what she says.

If there are only a few in her school, they will behave. If it's like here, 30% and up, she has her hands full. They have rights, you know and they don't mind telling you all about "Their Rights".

[Eupher]

If there are only a few in her school, they will behave. If it's like here, 30% and up, she has her hands full. They have rights, you know and they don't mind telling you all about "Their Rights".

Three years ago, as a part-time teacher (she's since moved to full-time) she taught General Music in one of the elementary schools in the school district) that is probably 50% or more black. She calls it one of the most horrific experiences of her life and could not WAIT to unass that school.

She now directs the orchestras at one high school and one middle school. Black population in orchestra ain't real, real high.

She wouldn't say it, but she'd definitely think that she's no longer dealing with the "riff raff."

[DefiantSix]

How the world looks to blacks: One point on which all blacks agree is that everything is “racis’.” This is one message of liberalism they have absorbed completely. Did you do your homework? “Na, homework racis’.” Why did you get an F on the test? “Test racis’.”

I was trying to teach a unit on British philosophers and the first thing the students noticed about Bentham, Hobbes, and Locke was “Dey all white! Where da black philosopher a’?” I tried to explain there were no blacks in eighteenth century Britain. You can probably guess what they said to that: “Dat racis’!” One student accused me of deliberately failing him on a test because I didn’t like black people.

“Do you think I really hate black people?”
“Yeah.”
“Have I done anything to make you feel this way? How do you know?”
“You just do.”
“Why do you say that?”

He just smirked, looked out the window, and sucked air through his teeth. Perhaps this was a regional thing, but the blacks often sucked air through their teeth as a wordless expression of disdain or hostility.

My students were sometimes unable to see the world except through the lens of their own blackness. I had a class that was host to a German exchange student. One day he put on a Power Point presentation with famous German landmarks as well as his school and family.

From time to time during the presentation, blacks would scream, “Where da black folk?!” The exasperated German tried several times to explain that there were no black people where he lived in Germany. The students did not believe him. I told them Germany is in Europe, where white people are from, and Africa is where black people are from. They insisted that the German student was racist, and deliberately refused to associate with blacks.

And this, ladies and gents, is why whenever some asshole denounces me as a "racist", my standard answer these days is a smile, a laugh and, "Yeah? And?"  The word loses all meaning when existence as a Caucasian/white Hispanic is sufficient evidence to dismiss you as a racist.

[Ptarmigan]

The essay reveals several themes.
-A culture that promotes and perpetuates.
-Groupthink, anyone who goes against them get attacked.
-Blacks are prejudice against other people, including other Blacks.
-Racism and bigotry runs deep.

I am not surprised this has gone on for decades. The essay has been around since June of this year.

If a Black African went to a school with Black American majority they will be targeted. Speaking of Black Africans, they do much better than Black Americans

Seattle African Immigrants Outscore American Blacks, Biggest Shock Asians?
http://hu1st.blogspot.com/2011/12/seattle-schools-find-african-immigrants.html

[vesta111]

And this, ladies and gents, is why whenever some asshole denounces me as a "racist", my standard answer these days is a smile, a laugh and, "Yeah? And?"  The word loses all meaning when existence as a Caucasian/white Hispanic is sufficient evidence to dismiss you as a racist.

Reminds me of a White math teacher in a 70% black school in NYC that had the lowest percentage of grades in the math classes in the district.

He did a steam boating discussion on just how to teach math to kids that could not understand math.  He came to realize the kids needed to become interested in Math as it effected THEM.

One day out of the clear blue sky he walked into a class of both white and black students  and gave them 20 minutes to figure out  how much money they could make with one once of pot  costing $300. if cut into a nickel or dime bag.  He came back in 10 minutes to find all students had done the math using grams and were all correct.

He was on to something, for the girls he  requested they figure out how much a 15 count of disposable diapers would cost them  at 20% off in a 3 month period.

The teacher went the whole mile,   Your brother has been arrested and bail is $1.500, he has 6 family members, how much do each one have to pony up to get him out of jail.

This teacher went way beyond what we think is acceptable, got into the odds on playing card games at a casino into how to figure the odds at a dog race.  

His class's went crazy, their marks on math tests went so far up some people began to wonder what was going on.  

He was teaching his students Math that they could understand, he did not expect everyone to be the same, he taught those Math from what they could understand.

He was fired naturally and last I heard he is teaching in the South about if one plants peanuts on one hector of land with climate involved what is the yield to be.  

[Dori]

I'm not surprised at all by this.

One thing I know for sure living in L.A. is that the high schools in L.A. look like prisons.  Black kids hate the Mexican kids, worse than they hate white kids.

A boss of mine and a dear friend was born and raised in Ghana, Africa.  She has the darkest complexion of any black person I've ever known.  She was very well educated and taught in English, before she came here to America.  She is also very successful.  One thing she couldn't relate to were Black Americans.  She thought they had a chip on their shoulder and were lazy, and she was not keen on hiring them.
She dated a very sophisticated Black man that was also educated in another country.  

It's not a racial thing.  This is an American thing.  We really are letting our black youth down by allowing this behavior.  



 

[DefiantSix]

I'm not surprised at all by this.

One thing I know for sure living in L.A. is that the high schools in L.A. look like prisons.  Black kids hate the Mexican kids, worse than they hate white kids.

A boss of mine and a dear friend was born and raised in Ghana, Africa.  She has the darkest complexion of any black person I've ever known.  She was very well educated and taught in English, before she came here to America.  She is also very successful.  One thing she couldn't relate to were Black Americans.  She thought they had a chip on their shoulder and were lazy, and she was not keen on hiring them.
She dated a very sophisticated Black man that was also educated in another country.  

It's not a racial thing.  This is an American thing.  We really are letting our black youth down by allowing this behavior.  



 

Dori, at what point are these people responsible for their own decision trees?

[Dori]

Dori, at what point are these people responsible for their own decision trees?

Great question.  I do know it's generational.  We have to be at least on the third generation of this, and it's only getting worse.

What is disturbing are the facts.  In the past few days I've heard numbers like; 82% of black children will be raised by a single parent.  Young black males have no decent role models. 

[Splashdown]

How do we fix this?

There are no parents at home.

Every child needs a quiet, safe place where they can learn. Students don't have this at home. There's nobody there to celebrate their achievements. Nobody to put their horrible drawings of puppies or their families on the refrigerator.

Many of us are parents here. How do you react to anything your young child creates? They get used to praise, and they work harder. Now, imagine growing up without any of that. There are zero fathers around to provide stability. I know at some point you have to assume responsibility for yourself. I know that several on this board have overcome horrific childhoods to lead amazing adult lives. But there was always some sort of community support.

Here are some things that almost 20 years in education have taught me:

1. single-sex education is crucial. Separate boys and girls for the school day. Research tells us that girls thrive under these conditions--especially in math and science--and boys show no negative repercussions. Reread that passage again, and look at how many problems would be solved if you removed that from the classroom.

2. Lengthen the school day. 8-5. Reduce the number of classes the lower-performing students take, keeping it to mostly math, science and English. the rest of the time is spent learning how to study.

I have more, but these'll do to start.

We pay obscene amounts of tax dollars per student. Most of this stuff could be done with zero extra dollars.

[Dori]

I don't think kids need more classroom hours or more homework.  That's just too long of a day for most kids, especially boys, and I see long hours for a kid only contribute to turning them off to education.

Young boys are very physical.  They need to get that energy out.  There are other ways to teach, besides just in classrooms.



 

[Splashdown]

I don't think kids need more classroom hours or more homework.  That's just too long of a day for most kids, especially boys, and I see long hours for a kid only contribute to turning them off to education.

Young boys are very physical.  They need to get that energy out.  There are other ways to teach, besides just in classrooms.



 

True; that time in my little model would not all be spent in classrooms. Some of that is also physical activity/gym. The longer school days are meant to make up for absent parents, etc. But the truth is, they DO need homework. They DO need quiet places to study.

[JohnnyReb]

True; that time in my little model would not all be spent in classrooms. Some of that is also physical activity/gym. The longer school days are meant to make up for absent parents, etc. But the truth is, they DO need homework. They DO need quiet places to study.

Compared to when I went to school, 1950's to early 60's, my son that just graduated had very little homework.....and he was in what was supposed to have been the advanced classes.....never any weekend homework.

[Texacon]

Want to keep kids off drugs and engaged?  Extra curricular activities.  It's proven.  Give them something to do that has rewards for their hard work AND they must be passing in school to be able to participate.

Trap shooting
Archery
Golf
Tennis
Chess
Bowling
Etc ...

On top of the other 'normal' type stuff like baseball, football, basketball ...

Look, not every kid is a jock nor can every kid participate in the 'normal' sports.  Take a kid in a wheelchair and hand them a bow!  All of a sudden you have a kid who has the potential to be a rock star!

Look it up, the stats prove out that extra curricular activities keep kids engaged in school and off drugs.  Yeah, some of them might cost the tax payers a little on the start up side but the return could and should far outweigh that expense.

KC

[Dori]

Compared to when I went to school, 1950's to early 60's, my son that just graduated had very little homework.....and he was in what was supposed to have been the advanced classes.....never any weekend homework.

When my kids were in grade school, I almost resented the homework. Between dinner/family time, sports and scouts, and getting them bathed and to bed at a decent hour, we just didn't have the time for it. 

[DefiantSix]

Compared to when I went to school, 1950's to early 60's, my son that just graduated had very little homework.....and he was in what was supposed to have been the advanced classes.....never any weekend homework.

My 9-year old has discovered - much to his chagrin - that the line between "teacher" and "parent" is quite fuzzy in my household.  The days he comes home with no homework from his teacher, he has come to expect that homework assigned by mom and dad will be awaiting him when he walks in the door (even over "summer break").

The reason for this is quite simple: my boy's father was almost as smart as he is at that age, and he had one gift/Achilles heel: until I was in 10th grade, I could walk into any test cold and and ace it. Being the little bastard I was, I interpreted from that, that there were no negative consequences if I didn't do homework; after all, the teacher couldn't say I didn't know the material, right?  Well the downside was that I spent too damned many of my formative years, not building good work habits, and I was a panicky little duckling in the midst of a school of pike when I had to build those habits in my early adulthood instead.  

So, as a penance for my lazy youth, I make sure that my son knows that there is work to be done EVERY day.

[JohnnyReb]

When my kids were in grade school, I almost resented the homework. Between dinner/family time, sports and scouts, and getting them bathed and to bed at a decent hour, we just didn't have the time for it. 

Grade school was different, they had homework....but from eighth grade on and in his advanced classes even, not so much. He had Scouts and sports in grade school, JROTC 4 years in high school, so he stayed fairly busy.

[JohnnyReb]

My 9-year old has discovered - much to his chagrin - that the line between "teacher" and "parent" is quite fuzzy in my household.  The days he comes home with no homework from his teacher, he has come to expect that homework assigned by mom and dad will be awaiting him when he walks in the door (even over "summer break").

The reason for this is quite simple: my boy's father was almost as smart as he is at that age, and he had one gift/Achilles heel: until I was in 10th grade, I could walk into any test cold and and ace it. Being the little bastard I was, I interpreted from that, that there were no negative consequences if I didn't do homework; after all, the teacher couldn't say I didn't know the material, right?  Well the downside was that I spent too damned many of my formative years, not building good work habits, and I was a panicky little duckling in the midst of a school of pike when I had to build those habits in my early adulthood instead.  

So, as a penance for my lazy youth, I make sure that my son knows that there is work to be done EVERY day.

Sort of the opposite here. Daddy got everyone up at 6 am and everyone went to bed at 9 pm, Saturday and Sunday included, PERIOD. So early to bed and early to rise was never a problem for me, even unto this day when I could sleep late or stay up late, I don't. I had chores to do before going to school and more chores as soon as I got home. Most of my school homework was done on the school bus. I too could ace the test in high school without studying, college was a wake up call though....I didn't know how or why I had to study.

My senior year of high school, I got up at 4:00 am and delivered newspapers(22 mile route, used a car of course and then left home at 6:45 to run my school bus route). I got home in the afternoon after running my bus route (54 miles one way) at 4:30, changed clothes and did my farm chores until done.....then it was usually supper and off to bed. I did most of my homework during my lunch period at school. I had a Friday night and all day Saturday job and If I wasn't doing it, daddy had farm chores for me to do. It may sound a little hectic but I never thought so back then, it was what was expected of me.

[DefiantSix]

Sort of the opposite here. Daddy got everyone up at 6 am and everyone went to bed at 9 pm, Saturday and Sunday included, PERIOD. So early to bed and early to rise was never a problem for me, even unto this day when I could sleep late or stay up late, I don't. I had chores to do before going to school and more chores as soon as I got home. Most of my school homework was done on the school bus. I too could ace the test in high school without studying, college was a wake up call though....I didn't know how or why I had to study.

My senior year of high school, I got up at 4:00 am and delivered newspapers(22 mile route, used a car of course and then left home at 6:45 to run my school bus route). I got home in the afternoon after running my bus route (54 miles one way) at 4:30, changed clothes and did my farm chores until done.....then it was usually supper and off to bed. I did most of my homework during my lunch period at school. I had a Friday night and all day Saturday job and If I wasn't doing it, daddy had farm chores for me to do. It may sound a little hectic but I never thought so back then, it was what was expected of me.

Oh don't get me wrong; Senior Chief Dad knew all the buttons to push to get my ass to working when it needed to be. When dad got out of the Navy, he rented a 1-acre place where we could raise livestock to supplement the income we had, while he went to school during the day, and worked at night.  We were up at 05:30 every morning just like you were: feeding the animals, cleaning out the barn and sheds, etc, etc. Dad was also ruthless about making sure chores were done: with his work/school schedule, he didn't have time to ride on our shoulders to make sure the jobs we were assigned were done satisfactorily, so instead he left the onus upon us to motivate ourselves - with the caveat that whatever wasn't completed when he got home from work at midnight, would be completed by the child to whom it had been assigned at that time. (I'm sure you can imagine the number of times I was gotten up at midnight to finish shoveling the dogshit in the yard.)

Unfortunately, at that age, lessons learned in one aspect of life, rarely migrated over into habits formed in other areas.