I had long talk with a public school teacher yesterday; the wife of a close friend of mine who both date back to our CA days of being in college together (I have known him for 25 years, known her for about 13 years). Both of them are two of the best teachers I know, outstanding and hold very high standards for their students.
Rasta's post CANNOT have hit the target more in the middle (administration is a problem too though)…the parents have great deal to do with this. You can’t do much with a kid who parents are broken or do not exist. And yes, ‘your’ kids get impaired when you mix this all together and the bad parents don’t support what is trying to be done correctly. There is NO replacement for good parenting.
In this discussion yesterday this person (let’s call her 'J') told me several things, this is not new and I have heard and seen these very things over and over with the public schools. And, she and I see things a lot alike and she IS A REPUBLICAN AND WILL LET YOU KNOW THAT UP FRONT.
'J' was first assigned to a city (all black) school when she first came to this city. Here is what she found:
- The Memphis City Police were regularly coming to that school to track down students who had warrants out for thier arrest.
- a very high pregnancy rate among the females
- only 14% of the seniors could pass the 'senior test' to graduate (as opposed to 90% at the county school 'J' is teaching at now).
- The best teachers (like her) very quickly left to much better schools...they could because the better teachers are fully certified and have advanced degrees. The worst teachers don’t and cannot go anywhere; they just keep getting recycled in the bad schools.
Call me racist all you want but HERE ARE SOME FLAT OUT FACTS THAT SHE AND I KNOW ARE VERY REAL AND HAPPEN FAR TO OFTEN IN CIT”Y schools...in this city in particular.
The worst Black teachers in the Memphis City Schools are protecting one another and then become the administrators in those poorly performing schools. These teachers are almost always graduates of the Historically Black Private College that is here in town. The standards are low there and they take all the worst students who try to enter college (we won't take those and we are about 40% Black, our honors program is doing well too, we really enforce an ACT cut off score for entering freshmen) and therefore 'graduate out' the worst people with teaching degrees. That HBPC is teetering on losing their funding and accreditation but an enclave of militant Blacks keep the place open and the college keeps pumping out people who are poorly educated (and then teach also). The best Black students who want to teach in the state come to us, MTSU, or UTK. So, 'J' saw the best Black teachers leave and the worst stay at that city school; 'J' left within the year. 'J''s current students number about half Black but these are students who have parents that are working and affluent. These are kids who are aspiring to get a good education and job, it is expected from their parents (yes, Black) to go to college. We have four other (larger) U's here in town that do quite well and have high standards, two private and two public...the two private are very highly rated as liberal arts colleges. And, numerous Black students go through these and graduate.
So, there IS a culture of protecting ignorance and BS by the militants in the Black community here in town when it comes to education...I have seen it first hand and I can give you specific examples. People can complain all they want but in the end the smart parents (Black or white) move, they flee...they don't want their kids around stupidity, crack heads, and whores.
Yes, I am quite blunt because there have been three big incidents this summer which graphically outline this problem and what happens with poorly educated people and how that gets perpetuated. I even wrote a very blunt editorial at the beginning of the summer to the main newspaper...they did not want to hear the facts of what was going on. Too bad.
My solution...people (adults or teens) who are on drugs or want to fu*k all the time should be 'fixed' like a cat or dog. I don't care about the race but there are people out there who have no business raising kids who just do not have the tools AT ALL to do this…our public schools have plenty of people like this. People have to take a test for a damn drivers license but can freely choose to be parent (which the most difficult job in the world).
Guess I am a Nazi when it comes to this…hmmm…go figure…