Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Battle Cry
The State of New York sets up summer school testing so high school students are taking up to 4 exams in a day. One kid was taking 3 from 12:30 until 8:45 this evening. The State "Officials" know by scheduling the exams like this there will be kids stuck taking multiple exams in the one day they have allotted. Doesn't sound very smart, almost like they are setting these kids up to fail. Almost like No Child Left Behind changed the drop out rule where you can still drop out at 16 but you can't enroll in GED classes until you are 17. Hmm, sounds like a lot of kids were left behind with that one. High Schools used to be able to track their drop out kids and get credit for the kid at least obtaining the GED, and not count as a failure against the school. Bush and the infinite wisdom of the conservative think tanks thought dumping the kid into limbo for a year was a good idea. Sounds like another way to set the poor kid up for failure if you ask me. We sit around and stomp our feet like children, whining about unions and teacher's pay, but we are, as a notion not even close to being as aware of the real issues as we all should be. But then again, it's usually always poor kids who are effected so who cares anyway? The insidious agenda of the elite is ruining this country. We have bred generations of sociopaths. If we don't wake up, and fast, our country will nose dive into the point of no return. Or is that the mission of the conservatives? Do we have it all wrong? Imagine if George W. Bush was in charge of writing the Bill of Rights? What would it say? They don't really want all those poor colored people voting do they? They really don't have a vested interest in all the poor of this country reading and being involved in the democratic process, do they? You be the judge. You look around, you tell me if you think the poor in this country have a fighting chance at making it these days. Once in a gymnasium a kid was playing ball and $4,000 in cash fell out of his sock. How do you argue with that kid? How do you tell him it's important to stay in school? He laughs. Character education is non-existent, except in the daily battles each and every good teacher engages in. A good teacher tries, but what can we really do except talk to the kids? Give advice, try to put yourself in their shoes? Some of the teachers I know can't even imagine what our kids are going through. Daily brutal violence, paranoia, drug addicted parents, poverty and death in the neighborhoods all are not out of the ordinary in schools where the population is poor. The lack of concern from our leadership in this country is astounding and it's created an epidemic. Time to wake up people, it's about to knock on your front door.
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6 comments:
It's easy to get the impression that w. and co. want there to be an angry ignorant underclass so they can privatize more prisons and create more Blackwaters and Halliburtons to control all the people they've screwed out of their free and appropriate public education, you know the one guaranteed them by law, P.L. 94-142 for starters...
same in public schools
too bad they cant knock on williams' door at city centre. im thinking they wouldnt get past the doorman.
i had to proctor today, and saw the list of students and teachers who had to stay until like past 6:00 to take this overlapping exams.....its crazy!..and most of these kids are trying soooooo hard to pass......but, they are for the most part, special ed, trying their damnest at these regents exams, and then going from one exam to the other....no food, no lunch, no nothing, except just one more exam to attempt at, and for the most part, fail. they walk out with a partial smile, hoping they passed THIS time, and you know damn well, that they probably didnt......and meanwhile, we have to listen some bafoon talking to us next week about why WE are failing our children because WE dont understand their cultural backgrounds.....HA!......ridiculous!. we understand more than ANYONE gives us credit for..........thats the problem. we really do know, because WE ARE in the trenches.....and variant learning styles, and walls of word charts arent going to make a whole lot of difference unfortunately........though we try like hell each and every day, and pray t hat we can make some sort of difference...........meanwhile..........im playing for ANOTHER funeral on Saturday for ANOTHER young person lost to the streets...with tears in my heart, and a stoic appearance like ive done this at least 49 other times....but then of course, i dont understand anything about the culture of the impoverished student of buffalo public schools.....if those in power only knew how much i DO understand..........they would never get it anyways
It never occurs to these experts to examine the inherent racism in their presumption that being white automatically costs you points on the sensitivity scale when it comes to minority kids. Last year one of my students jokingly surmised I was either the whitest black person she'd ever met or the blackest white person she'd ever met. I told her I would take it as a compliment I think and she said it IS a compliment, you cool, not like some people. So are you I told her and nobody had to in-service me or her on race relations !
the black man running the inservice i attended lived in clarence. not kidding.
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