I guarantee you don’t have a clue.

And get used to the stereotyping and profiling. That’s what I do – profiling is how large groups of people are managed and quality control is done. You apparently didn’t train in that area in University – Statistics and Economics, Financial Analysis, History, etc. Maybe you are an Education major. As a teacher you may have the luxury of a lot of one to one work. As policy designers one doesn’t focus that way. Much of your argument towards me reminds me of silly people railing against credit scoring, or any other kind of actuarial scoring. The central theme is usually “unfair” as if somebody owes them a break.

I think I’m far better aware of the job market that you will ever be. My work with people and organizations in trouble and with government agencies (shudder) gives me a broader point of view.

And I’m the first to admit I am not tolerant of failures. I don’t feel time is on the side of my constituients. Your dialog belies your denials about you never such and such. I just don’t buy what you are selling. That should be obvious. You don’t need to try to sell me again.

What I would love to hear from all OUSD teachers is how they believe their students are being prepared for this Brave New World by whatever it is the teachers & OUSD happen to be doing. Especially how the black students (because OUSD has a lot of them) are being help to make it in society by whatever it is OUSD does. I’ve got to be missing something there because I have a hard time seeing the added value. Please inform.

While bio helps understand your point of view I agree with your post about bio. But when it comes to race – which is important – well.. Save us from white liberals.

Whatever. You don’t know anything about me or anybody else you trash on here on a daily basis. Forget it. I’m not going to let you get me mad again, it’s a waste.

It’s just that I forgot sometimes, you don’t actually LISTEN. You just hear what you want to hear and respond to that. You’re intelligent but you don’t actually want a conversation.

You’re all about straw-man arguments, marginalizing others’ opinions, black-and-white thinking and relentless certitude based on anecdotal personal experience and few extreme, deterministic visions of human nature and society.

I never said Sapphire had to be a doctor as opposed to a clerk (or first one and then the other). I never said anything against firm discipine in the schools. I never focused on an individual rather than larger numbers (instead, I’ve been trying to get you to look at the economic realities of the job market.)

Simply put, I don’t believe or represent half the stereotypes you pin on me. You have a stereotype of teachers who question abusive tyranny as an effective educational model and you’re going to stick with it no matter what. If I question SOME of King Jorge’s methods or its viability in other schools, I must believe the the complete opposite, right? Sit in a circle and sing kumbaya?

First you assumed I was a woman because it fit your stereotype of the weak, over-nurturing female teacher. Now you’re assuming I’m white, or rich or whatever else. Well, I’m not going to put my bio on here — the benefit of this venue is ANONYMITY, and this is a small town in many ways. So, my words either stand on their own or they don’t.

Peace.

Megalomaniac requires more than we speak of here. You confuse authoritianism with that. Concentrating authority without checks and balances does create problems. An example is a bookkeeper allowed to lock her office, balance her own books, and not subject to on the spot audits. If you think that is the problem here you’ve not developed that issue.

The Catholic Church is a classic cult (now in decline). What happened with the pedophile priests such as Father O’Grady is not unusual for cults at all. The Nuns ran the schools I attended in the East Bay and their relations with the priests seemed to be guarded. If the priests came onto the school grounds there was a nun escorting him. But that’s just what I noticed a very long time ago.

By the way, are you black? Or are you white? Did you grow up in a mixed school and neighborhood?

Our differences probably have something to do different societies – I’m not sure you have lived with and around the people you speak of – as opposed to just going to work.

As far as anybody’s expectation of poor youth… are you hired and trained so as not to look at stats? Or is it that you just can’t get your mind around large groups of numbers and only want to deal with a student you personally know. This dialog is not about one to one. It’s about large systems handling large groups of people – and how to create sound policy to benefit those large groups. You are not the professor in “My Fair Lady”.

The only one with low expectation around here is yourself. Becuase that’s what your policy arguments deliver. You pretend to want med school for Sapphire. Do you remember hearing about Supreme Court Justice Joyce Kennard? She’s been called the Cinderella Justice. She is Indoneasian, was held in a prisoner or war camp, lost her leg there in early adolescence. Saw an electric light bulb for the 1st time at 14. Not sure what happened to her father, her mother died when she was a teen leaving her alone. Kennard migrated to the USA at 18 with no family here. Wound up in Los Angeles working as a clerk and secretary. Went to night schools. You get the rest.

You will see to it that Sapphire can’t get a job as a clerk or a secretary. My policy would make sure she could. You don’t give a damn about the Sapphires of the world, you won’t even discipline them. Jorge does. Before one can be at the top of a field they must be easily able to manage the entry levels. OUSD has a big problem turning out 18 year olds ready for industry, military, or higher learning. We’ve done better in the 60′s than this. We can do better again.

And if the C-schools are so great, don’t we have to ask if the parents who CHOSE Catholic school and SCRIMPED AND SAVED to send their kids there didn’t have something to do with the progeny’s success?!

And yes, you have said many times on here that urban public education should be about deportment and subservience to prepare “the left side of the bell curve” for jobs as laborers, maids, etc.

As for Sapphire, you really think requiring Algebra 2 is the problem? That’s what makes her drop out of school? NOT FOR A SECOND. Sapphire drops out of the race long before that even becomes an issue for graduation.

As for Jorge, I stand by the word megalomaniac. Obviously, he’s no Hitler, but he is clearly obsessed with building up his own legend, taking all credit, putting down anybody who disagrees with him, etc. Some of the greatest teachers around are megalomaniacs — it’s a type featured in “Stand and Deliver” type teacher flicks. Problem is, they can go haywire.

All your Catholic school success stories are so anecdotal, it cracks me up. We could just as easily talk about the pedophilia scandals or the “Catholic schoolgirl syndrome.” And if the C-schools are so great, don’t we have to ask if the parents who CHOSE Catholic school and SCRIMPED AND SAVED to send their kids their not have anything to do with the progeny’s success?!

I’m curious: Do you have children?

Oh, and I’m a man, btw.

1) Revel in the students hating you. It means you’re doing right.

2) Forget about getting approval from their parent. If their parent was worth worrying about they’d have the kid in private school.

3) To the extent reasonably possible get guest speakers and distribute literature from which the students will be forced to realize they are deficient and have a lot to learn. Tear down their self esteem don’t support it.

4) Make sure the students realize that you are not going to be attempting to teach them anything they have no reasonable expectation of managing. Attempts to learn stop if the pack decides things are hopeless. Keep the carrots dangling apparently within reach.

5) Foster competition. Pit black against white and hispanic, fat against thin, boys against girls, rich against poor, and everybody against everybody else. Cultivate a climate of having something to prove. (The nuns were really good with this one.)

6) Ration approval and when it’s delivered make sure at least someone else is around to see it confered, preferably the adversaries or competitors of the person to be congratulated. The last thing you want is a group applause because somebody hasn’t had a drink in 5 days. It cheapens the currency you pay with. Keep the approvals to very brief and very rare.

7) Anybody screws up you take their fruit cup away from lunch. It doesn’t matter they didn’t want fruit cup. Find something no matter how fleeting or token (fleeting is fine) and punish inattentiveness to your wishes or rules. Make sure the adversaries and competitors see it get taken from the transgressor.

8) Give the kids constant and recurring chances to demonstrate progress. Try having them read aloud a paragraph each. Call on them in class (a lot) and ignore volunteers. Pace the room in loud shoes. Keep the tension/energy level up. Make them look up definitions constantly. Don’t let them get comfortable anytime anywhere. Change seating, terms, assignments often and shower them with pop quizzes.

Most of this was how my law school classes were run, by the way. Catholic School classes also.

I probably shouldn’t think that way but I do. I unreasonably feel that since some of the dummies I went to public high school with have done so well, and the kids my teacher relatives talk about and point out have done so well with so little to start with, that good teachers can usually save almost everybody. even the crooks I knew were better, more successful crooks because of our superior public schooling.

The readers have to take my positions with a grain of salt. I probably compare teachers to my great-grandfather, grandfather, his brothers and the aunts and other relatives who were public grade school and high school teachers. Their products – at least all the ones I’ve met and heard of – were often “firsts” and generally did well in life despite coming from families of laborers. The ordinary students still had good lives and stayed out of trouble. I blame (fairly or unfairly) the current public school teachers for the black kids being so patently non-viable. My anger begins when I walk into my local urban high school classroom and without exception I find the students disorderly and unprepared. They are so full of self entitlement the teachers can’t even assign their seating without a row. The list of behavior problems is so great I’m not suprised they can’t read or write well either.

Somehow C thought I’d support her derisive opinion of “King Jorge”. I’d probably make him look benevolent if I ran a public school. And I’d be nicer about it compared with my Grandparent’s generation. Teaching is tough and the very first thing is that you’re their teacher not their friend and never their social equal. It’s optional and unusual if they like you. These kids seem to like all their teachers.

Our current public school teachers tend to have a worldview I believe is counterproductive. Probably a result of their wretched teacher education and training. I’d rather find teachers from military and industry rather than an education major. Just my experience of what works and what doesn’t.

your perception of our situation is absolutely correct. i imagine that right now i am struggling with a select group of my students because i am not following the feel good method of teaching. i “keep it real” with them by letting them know what “real” is and if they keep up the BS they are trying to skate by with, this is it. i am hated because of my expectation that they come in and work. i am hated because we are reading and writing instead of “doing projects.”

now, i don’t know about being able to kick people out of school because they can’t meet a standard of dress. but i agree that one of the worst things to happen as a result of integration is the decline of black students. education used to be a weapon; hard work was the standard, and now it’s an inconvenience.

i completely agree that raising graduation requirements is not the answer and that it will in fact be a terrible mistake. we are not failing our students right now because of the classes they take. we are failing them because of the expectations that are set and the discipline we lack.

all that said… i still don’t know how to fix it on a level as microscopic as my classroom. maybe it can’t be fixed on that small of a level, but even for my school, i can’t say i’m sure of how to get the kids in line. perhaps it is because they are high school students with their habits and expectations about education (and life, for the most part) set. i still feel that a huge obstacle is the ignorance and absence of the families we work with. school cannot be the only place these expectations are enforced. i cannot spend my career contradicting the messages from home expecting to win.

so what then?