You have said it so much better than I have.
Our children deserve to be treated with respect. Instead, our government
lies to them regarding their performance. Lying to them and to their parents
is disrespectful and ultimately more damaging to them because our government
is (in effect) saying they are intellectually and/or morally deficient.
After all, it's important to lie to them (our children) so that they will
(perhaps) keep coming to class. What does this accomplish? Certainly not
education! It does, however, keep them watched and occupied and (hopefully)
out of trouble. This provides parents with false hope and little more than
day-care for their adolescents. It provides the school with bodies so that
they can keep their funding up to pay (essentially) day-care providers
relabeled as teachers, administrators to manage them and the all important
political power that comes with numbers and funds so that the bureaucracy
can be maintained. "Graduating" illiterate youngsters only adds them to the
roles of those who must be supported by the state, thus insuring an ever
increasing ignorant, dependent electorate who will vote to support their
dependence.
A fellow walking down a city street noticed a man sitting on the sidewalk
snapping his fingers. Seeing that the man had been doing this for some time,
the fellow walked over to him and asked, "Sir, why are you snapping your
fingers so fervently?" "It keeps the tigers away.", replied the man. "But
sir, this is New York City! There are no tigers here!", said the fellow. To
this the man replied, "Effective, isn't it."
- Old joke, author unknown.
Regards
Bob...
---------------------------------------------------------------
"I don't mind if you don't like my manners.
I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad.
I grieve over them long winter evenings."
-- Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart)
----- Original Message -----
From: "William Robb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Stenquist"
That's all well in good in theory. But there are times when pragmatic
decisions must be made. I taught ninth grade in a Chicago inner city
high school. If I had taught the curriculum as provided by the board of
education and failed anyone who didn't achieve 70%, NO ONE would have
made it beyond ninth grace, and the school would have become non-
functional. Sometimes you have to deal with the reality of the situation
you're confronted with.
My father taught at Scott Colleigiate here in Regina. For those who get
McLean's magazine, Scott is in the heart of what polite society refers to
as North Central Less polite people have some rather racist labels for it,
but I digress.
The school board fiddled with all sorts of strategies to keep kids in that
school, everything from dropping programs that were considered
Euro-Centric, and therefore culturally assimilative by the largely native
community, putting in what they considered to be culturally friendly
programs, dropping requirements so that students wouldn't have to live
woth low marks and high expectations, putting a funded daycare into the
school so that the student mothers could have their infant children close
at hand, the list goes on.
Pragmatic decisions indeed.
At best, Scott has a 10% graduation rate, and this number hasn't changed
significantly for many decades.
I think that the less of a challenge you give, the less able people become
to be challenged.
I also think that it is an insult to any particular group, be they
predomonantly black kids (correct me if I am wrong) in a Chicogo inner
city school or native kids in a Regina inner city school to lower their
educational standards below the median.
Lower standards is telling them at an institutional level that they are
less smart, less intelligent, and less able to cope in society, and then
making truth out of it by graduating them without the skills required to
become contributing members of mainstream society.
We slap them in the face from the time they enter school, and then wonder
why they are bitter young men and women 12 years later.
The end result is high unemployment, more poverty, more crime, and more
hopelessness. If you happen to live in a welfare state, the result is also
higher taxes to support an unemployable group of illiterates, and a lot of
ill will from the taxed group who work very hard to support a
multi-generational life of leisure, as disfunctional parents beget
disfunctional children in this sort of society.
If you apply the same standards to the entire population, those that fail
have at least failed honestly rather than passed dishonestly, and the ones
who pass dishonestly generally end up in the same boat anyway, since they
are not only less prepared for their post educational life, they have gone
through their schooling having it drilled into them that they aren't smart
enough to cope.
Or perhaps it really is OK to graduate kids from grade 12 who can neither
read nor write, and can't identify their own country when handed an atlas.
William Robb
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