Hmmm. Guess it really is a brave new world.

Anyone can read about his unethical practices in an official capacity at the PERB website re: the School Psycologists and the 1996 Strike:

http://www.perb.ca.gov/decisionbank/pdfs/1464E.pdf

Last, he has an ungly, vicious tongue and way of behaving, especially beating up and prempting people his irrational, narcisistic personality-disordered brain perceives (or misperceives) who he has irreparably harmed behind the scenes.

Please encourage all to obstain from watching any derogatory, nasty humiliations that are nothing other than hate that comes from his ugly personality.

God Help Us All.

Trust me, I am not shocked that you exist. One relative gave me an autographed Alan Keys book!

Besides, the comments of you Cranky, Caroline, OakTeach, Gordon, Jim, TheThrutHurts, etc.are always interesting, whether I agree or not.

-AC Mom

Blacks are what they are. We are enormously skilled and not, depending on the person and the particular talent. We are not known for group advantages in several things. In point of fact our problem areas as a group involving crime and obesity are not the same as the group averages for the Poles or numerous other groups. The sooner we deal with the differences and make the most of life the better for us.

The problem that I get to see over and over is (often younger) blacks who could have become so much more than they are who are in bad (life threatening sometimes) trouble because their public schooling taught them indiscipline as well as poor penmanship, illiteracy or what have you.

And believe me, what has happened to urban black public school students is a product of white liberals, now continued by black liberals who’ve been given AA/PC jobs to finish things off. Segregated black public schools in the 1950s and early 1960s never produced such awful behavior and performance.

On the other hand we are doing the same thing to poor whites although the damage isn’t taking the same way.

As far as your statement that I believe blacks are less intelligent… Well the group averages are notorious by all measures across the 20th century and continuing to today. Yes. Blacks on average do not score as well as Asians. Do you want to be Asian? I don’t. Asians out score whites also. Do they want to be Asian? Poor Asians ourscore rich whites on the average. I don’t see the uproar except the whites imposing Asian caps on the enrollment at Lowell High School (and the UC School of Engineering?).

We are wasting our time here. If you can’t see what is right before your face, I can. I am not going to bet on the Poles winning the Olympic track meet. People are different and so are the groups. The ratios of the skills are different. And it’s obvious even without the research.

Public schools do not add IQ to their students. They train what is there. Our public schools are very careful not to do much of anything for the black students preferring to give them a lot of rope and easy A’s. The white kids are treated differently. People care if they try to act a fool.

That has always infuriated me. As well as praise for nothing.

And that is how it is. I don’t expect the bolg to run to any position I take or have, I’m just one person. If we blog “Why don’t we…” or “How could they…” without any consideration to my position I might contribute. My detractors should address these issues at least as a check on their own enthusiasm for merging Piedmont Schools with Oakland (As if that will ever happen).

Maestra is unused to debate and public discourse. She and others like her believe they should never be confronted directly with un-PC points of view. Such people are shocked, shocked.. that I even exist. There problem is also that people like me will normally never speak to them. Here on the blog they do get to hear how I think. They sure don’t have to agree with me, I could be wrong about any number of things.

Maestra’s comments affected me too. Nextset, what is often frustrating about your statements, particularly about the intellectual abilities of Black and Latino/a students, is that they are often stated in such absolute terms. So, it should be no surprise to you, or anyone else, that a person would take issue with such generalities. Next, your quoting of data derived from Murray/Hernstein’s work or the like (for me at least) is quite problematic. Even if one were to assume that the data that Murray/Hernstein used were flawed, or the conclusions that they drew were not based upon “researcher bias”, why would any self-identified Black man such as you want to perpetuate the idea that persons of African descent are less intelligent than other ethnic groups, and that condition is largely unchangeable? From your comments, you seem well established in your career in the legal profession…so such beliefs may not impact your personally, but what about people beyond you (family, extended family, friends, etc.)? I am younger than you, but I was raised with the belief that you have to be “twice as good to do half as much”, and I am (my husband too) passing that on to my kids. But, I think that it is counterproductive to reinforce such ideas as they have negative effects on the “brights” and the “dulls”, as such statements make it easier to discriminate against Blacks. Urban education is in crisis, but I just don’t understand the efficacy of using data that effectively writes these students off. In the end, I hope that you stay around Nextset, and Maestra comes back…No matter how uncomfortable the comments may be.

I’m really sorry that she choses to react the way she did and I hope/think that she will reconsider. But if she goes, there will be others arriving. Maybe I was shrill on this thread. My own ax to grind is that it is hard going up against the best competition that the State of CA has. You run into that in UC Berkeley’s competitive schools – the Business School, not sociology, and in Medical, Dental, Law schools, etc. Perhaps I will in the future mention some of the more interesting things I saw there involving the Affirmative Action students. Had friends in Standford. Horror stories there also. Mixing competitive and uncompetitive student groups results and a very bad situation. Students do better when well matched to their programs.

People who want to debate policy in managing the student population of an urban public system such as OUSD often have no clue what life is like in the real world where people compete with one another for positions. They expect that everybody else has to like them, tolerate them, and play nice. Which is why they want the OUSD teaching staff to like the kids (no matter what), tolerate just about any performance from the kids, and not flunk, expel or call the cops on the kids no matter what. So kids who could have been made competitive get ruined.

Some people like this person perhaps, when confronted with anybody – even a blogger like me – that doesn’t sugarcoat a situation, react emotionally. Not a competitive feature. Not everybody is.

Our thread was the proposition that OUSD somehow forcibly absorb Piedmont Schools with it’s money and physical plants and better students. That is an absurd fantasy. Even if the state legislature were to force something against the wishes of the other District – the students would not mesh. There are reasons the districts are apart. More to the point, Piedmont is changing over the last 20 years demographically. It is becoming even more competitive and less welcoming of “diversity”. Poor whites are no longer in the mix. The “numbers” of Piedmont are a polar opposite of OUSD. The two groups of students have nothing in common.

I will remember Maestra and try to tone this down in the future. I continue to rail against urban education in hopes something will change the direction we are on wherein urban students are no longer learning how to make entry level into industry, military or higher education. I still worry the rate of decline of the skills of the young adults I see in the courts is growing. The scope of the social problems I see is growing. Poor people I worked with in 1970 were not this diseased, injured and disfunctional. I don’t even think they had such rotting teeth in 1970.

Brave New World.

Goodnight.

You are telling it like it is to you. I repect that about you.

Maestra,

It’s too bad that you have a problem reading someone’s perspective that is different than yours. I wish you the best of luck in communicating with those who share only your perspective. That is what makes this site great. We can have different views. Not like Cuba!