The Oakland Tribune has an interesting article on the State Colleges today. The people of the state have pulled the plug on spending money on the colleges also. Let’s just say we are not as proud of them as in 1950. Too much rad-lib politics, I think. Too much open borders welfare state to have such a system. We are closing all the state hospitals also for the same reasons.

All the consequences of rad lib policy. It is going to get much, much worse, quickly. The politicians are trying to hide what’s happening but we are de-policing the ghettos and very quickly you are going to see stores and industries withdrawing from any commerce involving minorities or their neighborhoods. It will start casually with credit scoring and no-smoking policies and “credentials” for everything and soon become pretty overt.

Brave New World.

We were better off when we actually maintained standards.

Nothing but rights for those that are getting expelled nothing for the adults. One piece of the pamphlet even says that students cannot be held accountable for fighting on the way home! Can you tell me how this is beneficial in a city like this! Let themact like fools. man, we are screwed in this country with this attitude.

You voice a line of thinking that is certainly present in both my and my wife’s minds. I agree with some aspects. But I don’t go all “carebear” with these kids. Their language is centered in aggressiveness of which I am now fluent. I’m not suggesting that we coddle punks that attempt to destroy all the work we put into the school. In fact, I would like to see schools empowered with easier suspension and expulsion capabilities.

However, if we are to give these desperate students equal respect as we would a suburban student body, then kids that have witnessed a parent or sibling murdered should see a counselor. I have these students in my classroom and giving them urgently needed mental care is not a sign of me going soft. The consequential mental disorders of untreated trauma are a result of liable neglect. And this fuels the climate of fear and violence. Getting tough at this particular root cause will only make matters worse.

Again, I agree with letting loose the outrage and indignation of a shocked nation at those that defile our schools. But let me share with you a haiku that a 12-year-old girl wrote as we studied medieval Japanese culture:
Sun hides behind clouds
Anger darkens within
“Time to go to school honey”

Even if the help we offer is inadequate, this girl and many others could use greater support and care–not ghetto bravado.

When I attended schools- teachers and principals had, and were required too, have a strong attitude and break you head attitude towards students-now we want to hug them to change?

Dont you get it (Nextset does).

Teachers, administrators, and school officials are handcuffed by ideals that have rendred them as eunicks in a world where you are measured by ghetto bravado!

Guns to school and we want a psychiatrist!

Old school schools for ghettoness is what I say.

Who let the let it be and carebear approaches into the inner city? Here is where we begin.

Good luck to you, but If I were you, I’d quit this ridiculous district. I know many bloggers will attack- but teachers like this will eventually quit anyway.

A few years to ideals-then real life sets in!

The outrage and the indignation at the absence of desperately needed resources is shared. This is craziness! I don’t deny that. My students dismiss the school by claiming it’s just a parking lot, (the yard is a large paved space between the main building and the portable classrooms). But my colleagues are some of the most impressive people I’ve ever met.

Too many amazing people have worked too hard for me to let the descriptor of mad house go without some objection. I will not deny that the behavior of many students and the measly tools we’re given to handle the situation is shocking. They are nonetheless “real students,” though burdened they may be, and they deserve real teachers.

thank you, dan, for all of this.