And that's the real problem with "equity". It's always easier to eliminate the over-achievers than to raise up the under-achievers.
(really about economics, not education, but I think the sentiments apply). George Orwell, in "The Road to Wigan Pier" came to the conclusion that those arguing for equity didn't really care about the poor, they just hated the rich. “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” - Winston Churchill
I was a public school teacher, Biology, after changing careers. I was determined that each of my students succeeded. I shattered the achievement gap by double digits in my county, amount other accomplishments. I quickly learned that there was nothing wrong with my black, Hispanic, and/or poor students other than no one had held high expectations for them. The real difference in student achievement was shown in their socio-economic situation, not melanin count.
I quickly realized that the progressive- communists running the unions and the federal, state, and local departments of Ed hated the black, minority, and poor students and wanted them assigned to a poor and menial life.
They’ve shown us who they are and we must believe them. We must fight tooth and nail for school choice.
As a former MGM/GATE student, I am angered by these proposals on a deep level.
Smart kids are often made fun of. They aren't given recognition. Often times, they are the less athletic, the nerdy, the marginal members of the class.
They are far less popular than the jocks, certainly. We have stereotypes about smart kids which are not encouraging. Smart black kids are mocked for being "white."
They are often far ahead of the class and end up sitting in class being bored while their fellow students catch-up.
The one thing that might help is to take them out the classes with the other students who are retarding their progress and making fun of them out of jealousy and put them in classes with their peers.
But we can't do that because, you know, stratification and elitism.
On the other hand, jocks still get their varsity basketball and football teams and no one is concerned that there is a kind of elitism based on physical attributes. No one is concerned about the elitism and stratification that comes from being tall or strong or physically gifted.
"They are far less popular than the jocks, certainly. We have stereotypes about smart kids which are not encouraging. Smart black kids are mocked for being "white.""
"You are a scholar and a gentleman."
<heavy on the sarcasm>
But two Black kids paid me $100 each to take their SATs. And I deliberately made a few mistakes. I didn't tell them.
What is the substantive difference between reducing the educational level of Blacks by refusing to provide a decent education and the slavery prohibition against educating slaves? The difference is matter of degree -- but both are vile.
This practice of reducing the educational quality for Blacks and Browns was around in the 1960's and 1970's. Since I am old, I was around in the 1960's and 1970's, having been born during WW II. Dumbing down courses for minorities was forced upon schools by the government and something similar happened in business. A school's access to federal funding was threatened unless it admitted a percentage of Black and Brown students. Yes, it was definitely a Quota System and Affirmative Action quotas were no guidelines.
What does a college administrator do if the Blacks are unprepared for college, and thus on a merit basis, few will be admitted? Under the Quota System, they had to admit them, but the students would then be unable to do the work and would fail. The government's solution was to force the colleges to graduate the minorities students. Providing minority students with gut courses allowed the students to pass without learning much of anything. While they received a college degree, their abilities were barely high school level.
In businesses, the gov't use the came Quota System. I attended a meeting of the CEO's of the major retains in 1970, and I learned that the government would not allow the retail chains to put the under-qualified minority hires through compensatory education, for which the companies paid. Rather the gov't insisted that the minorities be mainstreamed per the Quota System. I remember that the executives decided that they had to treat the unqualified minority hires like an extra tax, which they would all bear. At the same time, they agreed to stop trying to hire the few qualified minorities away from each other. They said that this did nothing to help the minorities who needed help; it only escalated the salaries of the qualified minorities. They admitted that raiding another company was a zero sum game as they lost as many employees to other companies as they gained. The executives saw no alternative than to treat the Affirmative Action hires as a burden like an extra tax and like a tax, they all had to suck it up and bear it. All the companies had to stop their compensatory educational programs to increase the abilities of the Blacks and Browns.
The situation was especially bad for minority law school students. While the government forced the schools to graduate the minority students, the Bar Exams are taken anonymously so that the Bar examiners had no idea which student was a minority. The failure rate was outrageous. Since Blacks as a group were more educationally sophisticated than Browns, more Blacks were prepared for the Bar Exams. The Mexicans were especially hard hit.
Thus, Wokeism has not changed since the 1960's when Woke was Victimology.
I was involved in the made for TV Movie The Marva Collins Story; she had proved that Black kids could excel. Jaime Escalante proved the same thing by teaching Calculus to Mexican students in East LA. Despite the public praise they received, they were an anathema to the victimologists (Woke).
My nephew, who lives in Chicago,"graduated" from a private school whose claim to fame is every student gets into college. Turns out they do whatever it take to keep their record intact; i.e. lower standards. My nephew got accepted to some no name BS college, and was home before the first semester ended. It is a majority black high school that in the end doesn't really care if you graduate from college as long as you "get accepted to a college"and keep their record intact. In my opinion, this is an example of promising someone the moon and barely delivering it. On the flipside, my sister should have been more involved in his education other than believing she was paying a school so he would have a better future. In our short time in Chicago, for his graduation, my wife, who is a teacher, was able to discover deficiencies in his grades and school attendance. She also found out that other parents of past and current graduated had similar concerns. It takes the schools, the educators, the students and the parents to ensure a child gets the education they deserve. If the child demonstrates, through their actions, that college is not for them, don't force it.
Interestingly, the "white" liberals in my circle who are actrually friends with Black people want Black students to have high expectations, but those who don't know Black people seem to opt more for mediocre aspirations, including encouraging ALL students other than their own children, to enter the trades. Also, there remains considerable bigotry regarding gifted student programs. What is generally missed by those who oppose gifted programs is that most of these kids will not succeed in standard educational environments because of boredom and lack of motivation.
In addition to Black students, I think that Hispanic students are harmed by low expectations. I taught online college courses with many students in the military. I was particularly impressed by how motivated and successful my Hispanic and Black students were.
" Also, there remains considerable bigotry regarding gifted student programs. What is generally missed by those who oppose gifted programs is that most of these kids will not succeed in standard educational environments because of boredom and lack of motivation."
So where is a book list for these kids? Who needs boring teachers dishing out idiotic busywork? I stumbled across science fiction in 4th grade. Decided to go to college for engineering in 7th grade.
This is not new. The phrase, "low expectations of bigotry" was used by GWBush. Preserving public education, read unions, is a life line for democrats as the third leg of their stool. The simple fact is that when everything is political instead of practical, the people lose. It's a shame, yet black people continue to sort and depend on their users.
GW may have said “ bigotry of low expectations” but he doubled down on it with his “Leave No Child Behind” policy which was actually designed to leave ALL children behind. Just like the “The Inflation Reduction Act” increased inflation. The Establishment Uniparty are pure evil and have to go.
I was going to post a separate comment, but Ardath's comment on the practical caught my attention. I've been writing on AI and wondering how it will course through the educational system. Here I ask a question that I don't pretend to have an answer. Will AI become a bandaid to student poor performance as well as degrade skills for most? I ask a chatbot a question, even deep ones. Presto. In ten seconds, a long coherent and well written response. Not that I embrace the response. That kind of literacy might become the practical temptation of doing the hard work of literacy. That won't be political, but it may become a short cut for a perceived remedy to disparaging reading and soon math scores. The current social disparities will evaporate once we have institutional and personal chatbots to rely on.
Another great example as to why our public school systems aren’t about education, but standardization. And that bar keeps getting lower. Shame on those who dismiss the talents & potential of kids in favor of political points & power. Thank you for writing this piece! Have you read John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down?
I came to this platform by reading John McWhorter and Glen Louth, who are brilliant, but this article is so “off,” it’s risible. Nobody eliminates magnet schools to satisfy the teachers; in fact, the much ballet-hooed teacher shortage is mostly in majority-minority schools, and the urban schools where they don’t have trouble getting teachers is the magnet schools -- well, okay, not in all the classrooms of magnet schools, just the halves of those set aside for the “magnet” students (I.e., high-achieving students). If certain (misguided) leaders are closing magnet schools, it’s either because they have bought into the lame ideology of self-proclaimed anti-racists or because they have caved to the pressure from those activists. This article is so sadly misinformed, it’s pathetic.
I don’t think “bigotry of low expectations” is the right phrase - “daycare for teens” is better. Advancement each year literally predicated on age alone is how children are grouped in care settings to avoid hubbubs. Imagine feeling blah, going into a hospital setting without thermometers, blood pressure, without blood tests, no physical exam, given a bed, fed, and occasional staff visits to ask how you feel and random therapy applied without diagnostics. The patient next to you leaves for no reason, your insurance policy says you’ve stayed long enough and you leave. No diagnostics, no treatment, no goals and no help, you’re no healthier than when you went in.
Then imagine a school where you go in without testing, no intellectual goals, staff indifferent to your actual needs, perfunctory edutainment, and you just leave when it’s policy that you’ve been there long enough, you’re no better equipped intellectually than you were when you went in.
At least now “daycare for teens” is clear.
Closed-loop diagnosic testing to adjust education planning and methods driving progress towards critical life skills is the hallmark of reality-based educational services. Anything else is child daycare.
And that's the real problem with "equity". It's always easier to eliminate the over-achievers than to raise up the under-achievers.
(really about economics, not education, but I think the sentiments apply). George Orwell, in "The Road to Wigan Pier" came to the conclusion that those arguing for equity didn't really care about the poor, they just hated the rich. “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” - Winston Churchill
100%
I was a public school teacher, Biology, after changing careers. I was determined that each of my students succeeded. I shattered the achievement gap by double digits in my county, amount other accomplishments. I quickly learned that there was nothing wrong with my black, Hispanic, and/or poor students other than no one had held high expectations for them. The real difference in student achievement was shown in their socio-economic situation, not melanin count.
I quickly realized that the progressive- communists running the unions and the federal, state, and local departments of Ed hated the black, minority, and poor students and wanted them assigned to a poor and menial life.
They’ve shown us who they are and we must believe them. We must fight tooth and nail for school choice.
As a former MGM/GATE student, I am angered by these proposals on a deep level.
Smart kids are often made fun of. They aren't given recognition. Often times, they are the less athletic, the nerdy, the marginal members of the class.
They are far less popular than the jocks, certainly. We have stereotypes about smart kids which are not encouraging. Smart black kids are mocked for being "white."
They are often far ahead of the class and end up sitting in class being bored while their fellow students catch-up.
The one thing that might help is to take them out the classes with the other students who are retarding their progress and making fun of them out of jealousy and put them in classes with their peers.
But we can't do that because, you know, stratification and elitism.
On the other hand, jocks still get their varsity basketball and football teams and no one is concerned that there is a kind of elitism based on physical attributes. No one is concerned about the elitism and stratification that comes from being tall or strong or physically gifted.
What the hell kind of message does that send?
"They are far less popular than the jocks, certainly. We have stereotypes about smart kids which are not encouraging. Smart black kids are mocked for being "white.""
"You are a scholar and a gentleman."
<heavy on the sarcasm>
But two Black kids paid me $100 each to take their SATs. And I deliberately made a few mistakes. I didn't tell them.
What is the substantive difference between reducing the educational level of Blacks by refusing to provide a decent education and the slavery prohibition against educating slaves? The difference is matter of degree -- but both are vile.
This practice of reducing the educational quality for Blacks and Browns was around in the 1960's and 1970's. Since I am old, I was around in the 1960's and 1970's, having been born during WW II. Dumbing down courses for minorities was forced upon schools by the government and something similar happened in business. A school's access to federal funding was threatened unless it admitted a percentage of Black and Brown students. Yes, it was definitely a Quota System and Affirmative Action quotas were no guidelines.
What does a college administrator do if the Blacks are unprepared for college, and thus on a merit basis, few will be admitted? Under the Quota System, they had to admit them, but the students would then be unable to do the work and would fail. The government's solution was to force the colleges to graduate the minorities students. Providing minority students with gut courses allowed the students to pass without learning much of anything. While they received a college degree, their abilities were barely high school level.
In businesses, the gov't use the came Quota System. I attended a meeting of the CEO's of the major retains in 1970, and I learned that the government would not allow the retail chains to put the under-qualified minority hires through compensatory education, for which the companies paid. Rather the gov't insisted that the minorities be mainstreamed per the Quota System. I remember that the executives decided that they had to treat the unqualified minority hires like an extra tax, which they would all bear. At the same time, they agreed to stop trying to hire the few qualified minorities away from each other. They said that this did nothing to help the minorities who needed help; it only escalated the salaries of the qualified minorities. They admitted that raiding another company was a zero sum game as they lost as many employees to other companies as they gained. The executives saw no alternative than to treat the Affirmative Action hires as a burden like an extra tax and like a tax, they all had to suck it up and bear it. All the companies had to stop their compensatory educational programs to increase the abilities of the Blacks and Browns.
The situation was especially bad for minority law school students. While the government forced the schools to graduate the minority students, the Bar Exams are taken anonymously so that the Bar examiners had no idea which student was a minority. The failure rate was outrageous. Since Blacks as a group were more educationally sophisticated than Browns, more Blacks were prepared for the Bar Exams. The Mexicans were especially hard hit.
Thus, Wokeism has not changed since the 1960's when Woke was Victimology.
I was involved in the made for TV Movie The Marva Collins Story; she had proved that Black kids could excel. Jaime Escalante proved the same thing by teaching Calculus to Mexican students in East LA. Despite the public praise they received, they were an anathema to the victimologists (Woke).
My nephew, who lives in Chicago,"graduated" from a private school whose claim to fame is every student gets into college. Turns out they do whatever it take to keep their record intact; i.e. lower standards. My nephew got accepted to some no name BS college, and was home before the first semester ended. It is a majority black high school that in the end doesn't really care if you graduate from college as long as you "get accepted to a college"and keep their record intact. In my opinion, this is an example of promising someone the moon and barely delivering it. On the flipside, my sister should have been more involved in his education other than believing she was paying a school so he would have a better future. In our short time in Chicago, for his graduation, my wife, who is a teacher, was able to discover deficiencies in his grades and school attendance. She also found out that other parents of past and current graduated had similar concerns. It takes the schools, the educators, the students and the parents to ensure a child gets the education they deserve. If the child demonstrates, through their actions, that college is not for them, don't force it.
Interestingly, the "white" liberals in my circle who are actrually friends with Black people want Black students to have high expectations, but those who don't know Black people seem to opt more for mediocre aspirations, including encouraging ALL students other than their own children, to enter the trades. Also, there remains considerable bigotry regarding gifted student programs. What is generally missed by those who oppose gifted programs is that most of these kids will not succeed in standard educational environments because of boredom and lack of motivation.
In addition to Black students, I think that Hispanic students are harmed by low expectations. I taught online college courses with many students in the military. I was particularly impressed by how motivated and successful my Hispanic and Black students were.
" Also, there remains considerable bigotry regarding gifted student programs. What is generally missed by those who oppose gifted programs is that most of these kids will not succeed in standard educational environments because of boredom and lack of motivation."
So where is a book list for these kids? Who needs boring teachers dishing out idiotic busywork? I stumbled across science fiction in 4th grade. Decided to go to college for engineering in 7th grade.
Now there is stuff in Project Gutenberg:
Star Surgeon by Alan E Nourse
Black Man's Burden by Mack Reynolds
Deathworld by Harry Harrison
Omnilingual by H Beam Piper
Who needs Charles Dickens and Jane Austen?
For 11th graders:
Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez
Serious people need to get library cards and befriend a librarian and remember to never let one's schooling interfere with one's education.
https://www.bookfinder.com/
The introduction to this book rewards rereading.
High School Subjects Self Taught. Third Revised and Enlarged Edition
ASIN : B001768N1E
Publisher : Doubleday (January 1, 1967)
Language : English
But also, decentralization and friendlessness are real obstacles that I do not underestimate.
Bull's eye, Dr. Shufutinsky!
This is not new. The phrase, "low expectations of bigotry" was used by GWBush. Preserving public education, read unions, is a life line for democrats as the third leg of their stool. The simple fact is that when everything is political instead of practical, the people lose. It's a shame, yet black people continue to sort and depend on their users.
GW may have said “ bigotry of low expectations” but he doubled down on it with his “Leave No Child Behind” policy which was actually designed to leave ALL children behind. Just like the “The Inflation Reduction Act” increased inflation. The Establishment Uniparty are pure evil and have to go.
Yep. So glad they are moving away from this model. It doesn't serve.
I was going to post a separate comment, but Ardath's comment on the practical caught my attention. I've been writing on AI and wondering how it will course through the educational system. Here I ask a question that I don't pretend to have an answer. Will AI become a bandaid to student poor performance as well as degrade skills for most? I ask a chatbot a question, even deep ones. Presto. In ten seconds, a long coherent and well written response. Not that I embrace the response. That kind of literacy might become the practical temptation of doing the hard work of literacy. That won't be political, but it may become a short cut for a perceived remedy to disparaging reading and soon math scores. The current social disparities will evaporate once we have institutional and personal chatbots to rely on.
The human brain will also evaporate.
Another great example as to why our public school systems aren’t about education, but standardization. And that bar keeps getting lower. Shame on those who dismiss the talents & potential of kids in favor of political points & power. Thank you for writing this piece! Have you read John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down?
I came to this platform by reading John McWhorter and Glen Louth, who are brilliant, but this article is so “off,” it’s risible. Nobody eliminates magnet schools to satisfy the teachers; in fact, the much ballet-hooed teacher shortage is mostly in majority-minority schools, and the urban schools where they don’t have trouble getting teachers is the magnet schools -- well, okay, not in all the classrooms of magnet schools, just the halves of those set aside for the “magnet” students (I.e., high-achieving students). If certain (misguided) leaders are closing magnet schools, it’s either because they have bought into the lame ideology of self-proclaimed anti-racists or because they have caved to the pressure from those activists. This article is so sadly misinformed, it’s pathetic.
Sorry for typos above. Louth s/b Loury and ballet-hooed s/b ballyhooed.
I don’t think “bigotry of low expectations” is the right phrase - “daycare for teens” is better. Advancement each year literally predicated on age alone is how children are grouped in care settings to avoid hubbubs. Imagine feeling blah, going into a hospital setting without thermometers, blood pressure, without blood tests, no physical exam, given a bed, fed, and occasional staff visits to ask how you feel and random therapy applied without diagnostics. The patient next to you leaves for no reason, your insurance policy says you’ve stayed long enough and you leave. No diagnostics, no treatment, no goals and no help, you’re no healthier than when you went in.
Then imagine a school where you go in without testing, no intellectual goals, staff indifferent to your actual needs, perfunctory edutainment, and you just leave when it’s policy that you’ve been there long enough, you’re no better equipped intellectually than you were when you went in.
At least now “daycare for teens” is clear.
Closed-loop diagnosic testing to adjust education planning and methods driving progress towards critical life skills is the hallmark of reality-based educational services. Anything else is child daycare.