Comments on: Thoughts on mentoring — and being mentored

By: Nextset

Nextset — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 02:05:32 +0000

It wasn’t SNL who did that skit, it was MAD TV. Here’s a link to one of the skits:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w746gsQLLc4

By: Nextset

Nextset — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:37:34 +0000

I have a cousin who is a (relatively) wealthy banker, vacations to Monaco and all that. She was paired with a hispanic teen in an urban mentorship program once, many years ago. It didn’t go well. The cultural differences were insurmountable. Simply put the mating habits of the girl were not compatible with education and a responsible career. If the girl had to choose between her homies and education, careers, and a nicer life, she’d choose to have a 14 tattooed on her forehead. My cousin didn’t feel safe even going into the girl’s home. That was the end of participation in that mentorship program. She did spend some months on it, tried various things to get the girl out to see her life, local colleges, “enrichment” things, did the homework thing. It was a mistake.

Remember how educators like to use younger children whenever they want to trick people into thinking the Academic Gap is being changed or closed? The differences are less noticible when people are younger and more noticible at puberty. So I always notice these PC feel-good things involving smiling children at 5th grade or so. I wish everyone well. But the problems in public education are not solved this easily by any means. It’s just not this easy.

That said, the more mentorships the better. I hope everybody is up front and on board with what is intended from both directions. There are reasons the urban schools have the problems they do and unlike the SNL skit “It takes a white lady” you can’t just walk in and change what people are.

By: Nextset

Nextset — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:20:58 +0000

These programs are important to the older students because it does get them out of the “me, me, me” mindset and involve them with the larger community. You can take better care of yourself when you see what happens to families that don’t take care of anything. And at some point, the University Students are forced to realize the “difference” between them and the lower classes.

No, anybody cannot go to college. If you are not born with the innate ability to process fast enough and far enough, you can’t even graduate from a good high school. At some point the emphasis shifts from trying to teach someone how to function better (helping with the homework) to placing people in the best position to live with the level of function they are able to perform. Mentor long enough and you finally “get it” that all people are not created equal and we have to manage everybody for some success as they are.

In a nutshell, mentoring in mainstream East Bay will put the lie to the PC nonsense being offered up at Berkeley.

It is interesting mentoring to immigrants – I’ve done some of that over the decades. I’ve watched some of them go from nothing to high positions, when their own families tried to sabatoge their rise (Indian female in that case). The real fun starts when you see potential in the candidate and the opportunities clash with the ethnic and gender expectations of the student and their family and culture.

And you produce a plane ticket, they have to decide whether to stay or get on the plane to go to the opportunity.

Similar issues in dealing with urban blacks. the minute “opportunity” involves acting white or leaving the ghetto physically or it’s norms, you have a problem.

Some people get on the plane, some don’t. Most don’t.