Pamela Taylor wrote:
>I shudder whenever I hear the phrase "parent
>involvement". When I ran for school board, the
>StarTrib writer stuck that label on my platform and I
>asked her to print a retraction (which she didn't).
>My campaign mentioned absolutely nothing of the sort.
>She chose to stick that in there, and leave out
>EVERYTHING else I said. Typical.
>
>That phrase, to me, is simply a catch-all feel-good
>phrase leftover from the 1990's. You are right, the
>system only wants certain defined types of
>involvement. Any real movement, such as what your
>group was doing, clearly undermines what society has
>planned for itself, and that is conducting real reform
>and educating students.
While I agree in general with what you're saying
here, I think you're painting with too broad a brush
when you damn "society" for the reactions that Diane
was describing. The educrats want to protect their
turf, plain and simple, without any interference from
meddling parents who point out awkward facts about
the public schools and try to get them fixed. Certainly
epmloyers would rather have educated employees than what
they're getting now out of America's public school
systems, which on average do such a poor job of teaching
science and math that most of our new engineers and
scientists weren't born or raised here.
>Yes, racism is alive and well and running rampant in
>the public school system. It is alive and present in
>the socioeconomic fabric of our country. If any
>candidate for school board, both new and/or an
>incumbent were to tell me it is not, I would question
>the seriousness of their candidacy and their intent to
>serve the needs of children.
What we have now is less the "hard racism" of the
1950s and 60s based purely on race hatred than what
President Bush has called "the soft bigotry of low
expectations". It's that sort of bigotry that casts
a 4% increase in test scores as a dramatic increase,
and sees a 52% graduation rate as less than a disaster.
Personally, I have serious doubts that we could do worse
if we fired every single education major employed by the
MPS (along with all the administrators) and started over
again by hiring through the local temp agencies, but
18+ student-years of dealing with MPS has made me a tad
cynical.
--
Kevin Trainor
RPM Candidate HD 61A
East Phillips
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