Sounds like a whopper. Scott Collegiate is a public school. No public
school in the US could turn out a 10% graduation rate and retain
funding. You're saying ninety percent of the parents and students are
okay with their kids never graduating? I love how people who've never
taught wax philosophical about how education should work. If you
haven't stood at the front of an inner city classroom, you don't have
a clue.
Paul
On Sep 26, 2008, at 2:21 PM, Bob Blakely wrote:
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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