On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Tyler Durden wrote: > In the 80s I worked in one of the toughest High Schools in the country, in > Brooklyn.
During the late 60 and early seventies I briefly "attended" IS44 in New York City. This was one of the schools over which Al Shanker's teachers went on strike for "combat pay". > One of my students was brutally murdered, and throughout a > semester several would be "out sick" due to being atacked with knives. Routine inner city school life. > (This > was in addition to fireworks being set off regularly in the halls, gang > fights, rampant vandalism and recreational "fires" and so on.) Routine inner city life. > And yet it > was quite clear to me that the intelligence level of these students was by > no means much less than that of whites at good high schools (I attended a > famous Science and math HS in NYC.). Agreed. Completely. Except for the caliber of school. My Gladiator School had teachers who were just too stupid to leave - to put that another way, the smart ones left after their first rape or beating experience, leaving only the incompetents who knew less than the students they were "teaching". > The sad thing was that these kids > really had never been exposed to the "why" of education, and asked me > regularly about the basic math I was teaching them: "Why do we have to learn > this? We'll never use this in real life." The problem is that they were more correct in this than you were: most of the white folks in my "classes" at Gladiator School went on to real jobs, whether or not they were qualified for them. Most of the black kids went on to bottom feeder jobs, regardless of what they were actually qualified for. This could, obviously, be anything or everything from self-fulfilling prophecy to overt discrimination > More than this, they couldn't even > really conceive of a life without the ubiquitous violence and filth around > them. Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Every kid I went to school with dreamt of lives without the violence. > There was no real reason to do well or get a good job. In the end, it > not only felt futile to work there, it was depressing. Futile - mostly. Depressing, definitely, but the rest of that is apologist bullshit. We did well so we could GET OUT. I did worse than most of the friends I had who made it out, but those who did were adamant from the getgo that "OUT" was the goal, and no brain dead dyslexic and illiterate/innumerate teacher was going to get in the way. Apologist bullshit: chant it with me... > Was this "black people's" fault? Nah. It's all of our fault. Whatever. > -TD > > > > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online > http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 > > -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
