I’d prefer to stock the schools with staff who’d enjoy taking the kids on. Don’t know where you’d find such people now. Returning military, perhaps, not the education majors.

As far as the lawyers go, it’s time we pulled their teeth. Roll back all the great society legislation. Even that isn’t enough with incumbent and future rad-lib Supreme Court members who contend all the fantasy rights are somehow written in the Federal Constitution. Thus a gang of 5 sits as a super congress writing unassailable new legislation whenever the mood hits (Miranda warning, anyone?). This is why the confirmation hearings are so overwrought, these appointees believe they can do anything they want personally.

Back to the thread. Perhaps people will agree that the black drop rate for the public schools represent a huge waste and disconnect between free public schooling and the behavior and needs of low class blacks. Do we all agree the schools need to harmonize their programs with these people so that the free “education” grades 1-12 is not wasted for this segment of the population? As we see with the Adult Ed cuts, once you age out, the “free” education is gone. It would be best to more effectively manage the black population and their assimilation into USA society, than we are doing now. The whites are taking care of themselves.

Raising the graduation academic requirements is not going to help. Delivering voc ed within standard 20th Century general requirements is more appropriate.

This morning I saw a young black girl remanded for her very first prison term. She wore a track suit, and was smiling and waving at family and friends. It was for stealing from her employer. She looks maybe 22 (going on 16). The money was spent on boys and fast food. There was no hope of not getting caught, she really didn’t worry about that. I feel these “kids” I’m seeing in court are remarkably immature and silly. They are just not stressed enough in the schools, they are not being matured enough, they are just spoiled. But they are bright enough to have so much more for themselves.

I can’t see the black kids educated by my grandparent’s generation (many of them were teachers and administrators in black public schools) in this situation. By the time their teachers and schools, WWI and WWII vets largely, got through with them they were just better people than this. And they didn’t get caught so easily if they were doing wrong either. Babied students turn out like this.

a)too much bother, and it’s no big deal

or

b)no physical punishment for fear of C.P.S. and charges of child abuse(thanks lawyers) BTW did anyone realize that the majority politicians are and were lawyers.

My point is, as far as the majority of lawyers go, its not about right or wrong, its all about three things:

1.MONEY & FAME

2.MORE MONEY & FAME

3.ALL THE MONEY & FAME

The larger society and economy shape the schools far more than the schools shape the larger society and economy.

I tried to be nice about it. What was the beef? They did him a favor by not booking him in the county jail which is far away in another city. No, protocol doesn’t let police give the girl her car. It gets towed. Big towing and storage bill. Boy eventually gets 10 days in jail 1st time or 30 days in jail if 2nd time – he was driving on a suspension for DUI he hadn’t bothered to clear. I know people under that suspension for 7+ years now – they refuse to go to DUI school and pay a reissue fee or clear the DUI fines, etc It’s too much trouble and they always just keep driving anyway. The girls will let them drive anyway because it’s convenient until they get caught. Then they’re looking for sympathy.

These “kids” run all aspects of their lives this way because they were indulged silly during their formative years. At least she had car insurance so they dodged the $1600 fine if no insurance. I see that constantly.

I know I’m posting alot here but this is my huge beef with the schools as it pertains to the dropout rates and “The Gap”. I know we have OUSD kids who go to Stanford and have a great life. But the typical black kid leaves that school district a mess. I don’t believe half of the blacks run through OUSD graduate as it is. While I believe we have a problem with the bad students I also believe the schools could have done much better by them by knocking off the college prep nonsense for those students who are not college material (they will tell you – listen to them) and training the left side of the bell curve to take care of themselves and their family and clan and to get a military, technical or service career like the non-college immigrants. If you stop taking care of things the trouble snowballs; your health, your money, your criminal cases, all of it.

This didn’t happen in the mid 20th Century. Our laws then were more supportive of the proletariat. Now we seem to want to destroy them and their schools. Something has changed in our attitude towards these people. We have this political correctness to try to keep us from saying unwanted truths, but our society crushes these people unabated at the same time.

As far as those quotations – which ones do you not understand? I don’t think you are hearing anything that is exactly new data. You think they aren’t true? You think they have no basis in fact?

I take the position that the failure of the urban public schools currently – that was not such a problem during my childhood – has a lot to do with political correctness. And the results of all this is lack of care and services to the group that needs it.

JR: Homelife is not the point. Urban Schools are expected to take what shows up and make the best of it. It’s not an excuse to say the failure to thrive is because of what goes on after the kiddies leave school. The world has seen a lot of goofy families, poor people and desperate times. The Irish in the early 20th Century, The Oakies post 1930s, the WWII fatherless families. These social problem issues do not explain the failure factories that are the urban school districts.

And none of the contemporary USA problems match the UK’s poverty and social problems of the 1950s (ie the percentage of the urban population that were endentulous and without bathrooms in the homes, etc). Our literacy problems with all our creature comforts and self esteem are worse than before.

The problem is the public schools are no longer trying to produce results in terms of literacy & employability of the proletariat kids. But they are quite good in filling them with fantasies of “their rights”.

Speaking of that, here’s an interesting article about what happens to the proles now when they start moving about in the Brave New World – traffic tickets and the snowball effect:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/10/milking-the-poor-one-familys-fall-into-homelessness/28207/

I cannot stress how much driver’s licensing problems harm the quality of life of blacks and browns I see. “Normal” people just can’t grasp the magnitude of what happens to these people.

2. House, homelife and wealth( or lack of same)Kids as a group have never been so materialistic as they are these days. These electronic devices facilitate shallow and or false social relationships. While strangely enough kids who do not have these things feel like they are missing out. Bottom line children who feel more secure and loved are more apt to excel and flourish(fact, but there are exceptions).

3. The human mind is no different(between races) on a fundamental physical level, but the answer lies in treating the mind as though it were a standard computer(you only get out of it what you put in it). Kids cannot be forced to learn but they must be receptive to learning in order to learn progressively and abundantly(these traits are instilled by example by parents or relatives).Kids that are not raised to be receptive(whom you call dullards)will surely sink to the bottom unless family wealth prevents that(we have all seen evidence of that).

Have you listened to yourself lately? Here are a few of your more recent quotes:

- “As to Rural Hispanics in CA – They tend to have little use or regard for education”

- “Only a relatively small number of brights in the LA Unified school population – are suitable for college.”

- “I believe the LA Unified is not doing much to get these kids ready for the occupations they are able to nail down. Too many of them are drifting to welfare (which I hope will be abolished), narcotics, unemployability and prostitution/drug dealing. And if they are going to be hookers they should be better ones.”

- “Understand, it takes an IQ of 100 to have a reasonable chance of finishing high school currently. You have a huge population of under IQ 85, perhaps half or more of the public school black students.”

Do you really believe that black students have lower IQs than other students? That kids from the inner city can’t go to college because they’re not smart enough? That “if they’re going to be hookers, they should be better ones??” EXCUSE ME?

For your information, the definition of racism is: “the belief that there are characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to each race.” You do many things on this post, but the one thing you never fail to do is to spout racism in various forms. I’m tired of it.

The point isn’t that we are all the same. Of course we’re not. The point is to treat everyone with respect – black, brown, white, whatever, everyone. Not to assume that certain races are worse (or better, for that matter) at anything than others are. Of course there are trends and patterns. Of course. But statements like the ones you are making here, in this public forum, are quite offensive and inappropriate.

So you are right – and maybe wrong if you expect large groups of students to not move towards the profiled behavior. Large districts like OUSD and Los Angeles Unified need to work with house odds, doing what they can to help their students generally to avoid bad results that are far too common for those schools.

Cranky; I can say it faster, yes.

It often takes more detail to get the point across.

I’m frustrated. There are shootings every night. I see photos in the news in the morning sometime. Otis and Latifah again… There was a killing at Sacramento just now. Another “honor student” dead at 18 at his HS graduation party, dreads and all. And after all that work…

Sometimes I wonder if changes in the public schooling will ever reduce these problems. I think it can. At least I hope so.

Brave New World.