Showing posts with label Public Schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Public Schools. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Arguing With Idiots...Or Liberals...
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Tuesday, June 05, 2012
This Is Why The Public Schools Suck, Part VIII...
I meant to post this fascinating article last week, but forgot all about it. It's entitled The Unteachables, and it's all about the process of -- as Fred Reed has called it -- Enstupidation. You can read about this disgusting and deliberate program here and here.
(Note: I've been a fan of Fred's for years, even if I don't happen to agree with him half the time.The man should be given some sort of medal for inventing this term because it's a perfect description of an observable phenomenon!)
It is now apparent that our institutions of learning have become little more than playgrounds for the preternaturally stupid run by the lazy -- often unionized and tenured -- ignorant. Recess is not taking place after lunch, but obviously before and after. That one hour, mid-day, where kids run around playing and chasing each other (assuming that hasn't been outlawed to avoid lawsuit, or as a means to avoid someones feelings being crushed) just might be the most productive things modern schoolkids do all day, apart from leaving school at 3 p.m.
Now you know where all those "Occupy ________" idiots came from, and who led them to the riots.
(Note: I've been a fan of Fred's for years, even if I don't happen to agree with him half the time.The man should be given some sort of medal for inventing this term because it's a perfect description of an observable phenomenon!)
It is now apparent that our institutions of learning have become little more than playgrounds for the preternaturally stupid run by the lazy -- often unionized and tenured -- ignorant. Recess is not taking place after lunch, but obviously before and after. That one hour, mid-day, where kids run around playing and chasing each other (assuming that hasn't been outlawed to avoid lawsuit, or as a means to avoid someones feelings being crushed) just might be the most productive things modern schoolkids do all day, apart from leaving school at 3 p.m.
Now you know where all those "Occupy ________" idiots came from, and who led them to the riots.
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
This Is Why The Public Schools Suck, Part VII...
I really do hate to pile it on, but sometimes things just happen in a certain way as to preclude the possibility of just letting something rest and perhaps fade into the background after a spell. This week, the New York City Department of Education has done some truly stupid things -- banning words that might hurt people's feelings, reinstating school bus services it cancelled despite court orders not to, rejecting tried-and-proven reading systems so as to not show the true depths of the incompetence of it's battalions of overpaid-unqualified teachers -- that there's no way in hell that some things will ever get to die a natural death.
What follows is a synopsis of a discussion I had with my sister last night regarding my junior-high-school-aged nephew's history assignment.
UPDATE: Great response to this post. I'm asking everyone who has a child in a public school, but especially in a New York City -- and specifically on Staten Island -- to pass this post on to everyone you think might be interested...and to the so-called Chancellor of Schools, himself. I'm assuming he'll be able to read it without his lips moving.
Also, if you're intrested in whatever else the City of New york has failed do to educationally, as well as learning about the stupidity of the public workforce entrusted with your child's education, simply click the Education and Public Schools tags at the bottom of this post.
Thanks much!
What follows is a synopsis of a discussion I had with my sister last night regarding my junior-high-school-aged nephew's history assignment.
UPDATE: Great response to this post. I'm asking everyone who has a child in a public school, but especially in a New York City -- and specifically on Staten Island -- to pass this post on to everyone you think might be interested...and to the so-called Chancellor of Schools, himself. I'm assuming he'll be able to read it without his lips moving.
Also, if you're intrested in whatever else the City of New york has failed do to educationally, as well as learning about the stupidity of the public workforce entrusted with your child's education, simply click the Education and Public Schools tags at the bottom of this post.
Thanks much!
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
When The People Are Watching...
...politicians and bureaucrats live in fear.
With regards to an earlier post about sucky public schools in New York City:
New York City School nitwits reverse "word ban" policy.
The reason this policy has been 'reversed" (the official snake oil was that the original ban was never a ban in the sense of being, you know, a ban, but rather a set of "recommendations") is because the general public was made aware of just what sort of dumbass, borderline psychotics are charged with their children's education, and what they were trying to do in the name of Political Correctness.
People: 1, Educrap Union: 0
At least until next time.
UPDATE: Bad link is now fixed.
With regards to an earlier post about sucky public schools in New York City:
New York City School nitwits reverse "word ban" policy.
The reason this policy has been 'reversed" (the official snake oil was that the original ban was never a ban in the sense of being, you know, a ban, but rather a set of "recommendations") is because the general public was made aware of just what sort of dumbass, borderline psychotics are charged with their children's education, and what they were trying to do in the name of Political Correctness.
People: 1, Educrap Union: 0
At least until next time.
UPDATE: Bad link is now fixed.
This is Why The Public Schools Suck, Part V...
Teacher’s unions against a phonics-based reading program that works, as opposed to the current trend in “education: which is to take the taxpayer’s money and run, leaving behind legions of stupid children to choke on your dust cloud.
Then again, it has been noted before in a millions studies on the subject that it’s generally well-known in academic circles that a majority of “education majors” were often themselves the worst college students, and the reason they became education majors – usually after changing majors at least once – is because it’s too easy to achieve a watered-down degree and then an iron-clad-almost-job-for-life public-sector job.
A job, incidentally, which only requires that you be able to pass a dumbed-down qualification exam written at a third grade reading level (because otherwise many minority applicants couldn’t pass it, and who wants to deal with the predictable civil rights lawsuits?).
Your average teacher is no better qualified than your garbage man to teach your children math and reading, and every bit as overpaid.
This is but yet one more reason to break the government monopoly on education in this country.
UPDATE: If you wish to read even more about the insanity taking place within our public schools, click on the taglines at the bottom of this article. Your eyes will be opened once you know just what it is that our so-called "educators" are doing to kids within the school setting.
Then again, it has been noted before in a millions studies on the subject that it’s generally well-known in academic circles that a majority of “education majors” were often themselves the worst college students, and the reason they became education majors – usually after changing majors at least once – is because it’s too easy to achieve a watered-down degree and then an iron-clad-almost-job-for-life public-sector job.
A job, incidentally, which only requires that you be able to pass a dumbed-down qualification exam written at a third grade reading level (because otherwise many minority applicants couldn’t pass it, and who wants to deal with the predictable civil rights lawsuits?).
Your average teacher is no better qualified than your garbage man to teach your children math and reading, and every bit as overpaid.
This is but yet one more reason to break the government monopoly on education in this country.
UPDATE: If you wish to read even more about the insanity taking place within our public schools, click on the taglines at the bottom of this article. Your eyes will be opened once you know just what it is that our so-called "educators" are doing to kids within the school setting.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
This is Why The Public Schools Suck, Part IV...
New York City "educators" compile list of 50 words that are never-ever to appear on a test, just in case someone gets offended...and stuff.
I could expound upon this for hours, but do I really need to? This isn't funny; it's your tax dollars at work, and your children in danger! Political Correctness run amok, is what it is. Shameful is what it is.
If it had not appeared in print -- in a newspaper which is frequently all-too-happy to present the Libtard point of view as if it were a dictate from the Almighty, and then present it as the bestest fuckin' thing evah! -- I would hardly have believed it.
I'd call it "child abuse", but that term has apparently been banned.
I could expound upon this for hours, but do I really need to? This isn't funny; it's your tax dollars at work, and your children in danger! Political Correctness run amok, is what it is. Shameful is what it is.
If it had not appeared in print -- in a newspaper which is frequently all-too-happy to present the Libtard point of view as if it were a dictate from the Almighty, and then present it as the bestest fuckin' thing evah! -- I would hardly have believed it.
I'd call it "child abuse", but that term has apparently been banned.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
This Is Why The Public Schools Suck, Part III...
Unionized moron with an education degree turns her 10-year-old students into pen pals for her imprisoned boyfriend.
An imprisoned boyfriend, incidentally, once accused of being a child pornographer, with a history of violence against women.
An imprisoned boyfriend, incidentally, once accused of being a child pornographer, with a history of violence against women.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
This Is Why The Public Schools Suck, Part II...
And yes, that is a picture of the alleged perpetrator dressed as the Easter Bunny.
Makes you wonder what the hell we're spending so much money on; obviously, it's about keeping alleged pedophiles employed instead of educating children.
No doubt this asshole's union will be front and center in defending him to the death. In New York City, even if this man is eventually convicted on these charges, he will no doubt still be collecting a paycheck and a pension the entire time...while in jail.
Because the ultimate purpose of the so-called Education Unions is not to educate anyone, but to ensure that the lowest-common-denominator in American Life gets to enjoy a decent standard of living, free of responsibility and at someone else's expense, in return for dues which then go to buy politicians. If that cause demands that a pedophile be protected from the consequences of his actions, then so be it. Just you watch.
It's never about the kids.
People like this should be taken out and burnt alive at the stake. On Pay-per-View.
Thursday, February 02, 2012
This Is Why The Public Schools Suck...
News this morning of a California elementary school teacher who was busted for taking exceptionally lewd and lurid photographs of children between the ages of 6 and 10.
People like this disgust me, and all the torments of Hades are hardly sufficient to deal with their ghastly crimes. I'd say we should kill them just as soon as they're discovered, but some douchebag from the ACLU would challenge me on it with some nonsense about due process of law, and then we'd have to kill someone extra.
People like this disgust me, and all the torments of Hades are hardly sufficient to deal with their ghastly crimes. I'd say we should kill them just as soon as they're discovered, but some douchebag from the ACLU would challenge me on it with some nonsense about due process of law, and then we'd have to kill someone extra.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Unfounded Calls of Racism, Stupid City Government, and a Dead Child...
Today I’d like to tell you a tragic tale involving a dead 13-year old girl, a yellow school bus, a bad public transportation system, a tractor trailer, a school administration that is more concerned with appearances and political correctness than student safety, and a court system which city lawyers openly abuse. It will not end well, I promise you, and I can also guarantee that at the end of it all you’ll be shaking your head in stunned disbelief that so-called responsible adults could be this stupid, petty, and well, irresponsible.
Our story begins two years ago, when the New York City Board of Education (three lies for the price of one) began looking for ways to cut it’s budget without firing the 2,000 or so teachers currently held in so-called ‘rubber rooms’ awaiting termination or criminal prosecution, thus pissing off the local education unions, whilst still giving the appearance of being both fiscally responsible and fair to racial minorities.
Given that combination of political requirements, it’s not surprising that Educational Establishment (an oxymoron if ever there was one) came up with a politically-biased solution that cost a young girl her life.
It all has to do with appearances, and false accusations of racism, plain and simple.
You see, I live on Staten Island, the Forgotten Borough of New York City. It is a place that City Government tends to think of as a cash cow and a dumping ground for projects that no other borough -- with their decidedly greater populations and more vocal ‘community organizer’ types -- just won’t take, such as Landfills, Wind farms, prisons and infectious disease wards.
Wikipedia describes Staten Island as a ‘suburban community’, and it once was, but it is so no longer. What it has become is a 12-by-7 mile bonanza of property taxes for a City that can concern itself with your salt intake, but then not give a shit about whether or not your community has adequate sewers and storm drains, public transportation, hospitals, or schools. There are 500,000 people shoehorned onto this over-developed island which is always last on the City’s ‘To-Do’ list, but always first on ‘People We Can Raise Taxes On’ list.
City Officials just absolutely love the property and income taxes they can collect here (amongst the highest in all of the United States!), but they just can’t see their way to spending any of it here. Probably because the island typically votes republican, and most of us are gainfully employed. There’s far more money and political power in (created by politicians in the first place) poverty than there is in the catering to the needs of the Middle Class who pays for it all, you see.
Four consequences of this attitude are:
1) The Road System on this island is a joke. Many of the main arteries still follow their meandering, pre-Revolutionary War-era paths from days of yore – in some cases, they still follow the routes they took during the days of the Dutch Settlements (pre-1660!) and these are often narrow, crowded with vehicular traffic, and lacking in adequate safety features (traffic islands, traffic lights, stop signs, or crosswalks). You’ll find the roads in a perpetual extremely-poor state of repair (the 12’-long-by-three-foot-deep-pothole-full-of-frozen-water-on-every-corner capital of New York!), and many basic services – like sidewalks along busy streets – are simply missing, and no one in City Government gives a shit. I can’t tell you how many stories of ‘Person-struck-and-killed-by-car-in- neighborhood-without-sidewalks’ stories there are every year in the Staten Island Advance, the local newsrag. It’s easily in the double digits.
Remember, this is supposed to be 21st-Century New York City.
2) Public Transportation is seriously lacking, and what is available is often unreliable, hardly goes where it needs to (the Transportation Plans which brought it here dating to the 1960’s, and only begun in earnest in the 1980’s), and under-utilized since decades of abject neglect of the transportation system has created a cult of the automobile that would rival that to be found elsewhere in the United States. This may be the only place in all of New York City where your trip to the ‘Corner Store’ often requires a journey by car that will take you a mile or more from home, and take 30-40 minutes because of traffic.
3) Schools are in seriously short supply. Since most of the available land (even City-owned land) has been parceled off and sold to developers (we need more overpriced Mother-Daughter townhouse/condos on this island like we need a plague of locusts), or goes to more Parks and Nature Preserves (which we need like a hole in the head. 1/5 of Staten Island is State-or-Federally-protected Wetlands, bird sanctuaries, parks, national monuments, and so forth), less space is available to build schools. Especially middle schools. The last new High School, for example, built on Staten Island (in the early 1980’s) was originally designed as a minimum-security prison -- in a residential neighborhood -- that only became the ‘new’ New Dorp High School because of the near-violent outrage that sprang from a community that wasn’t even asked if it would want a prison in it’s backyard, nor told until the very last minute that one was even being built.
4) What schools we do have are generally placed far apart, and are poorly served by public transportation, requiring more yellow bus service than might be normal for children who live in the other boroughs where there are more schools and more transportation options available.
Yellow school bus service in this borough is a necessity if children are to get to and from school safely and in a timely fashion. In fact, Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island schoolchildren from kindergarten to Middle School had been a standard for over four decades, courtesy of a political class that once understood the unique nature of the problems here, and a federal judge who granted Staten Island a waiver when parents in the other boroughs claimed that Staten Island kids were receiving a benefit that children elsewhere weren’t getting. The majority of these complaints, incidentally, were based upon race. At the time, the majority of Staten Island public school kids were white.
And if anything ever screamed ‘Racism’ way back when, it was the idea of white, middle class kids being chauffeured to and from a school three miles away when minority children had to walk, often only just a few blocks. Go figure.
The accusations of racism in Bus Service have never completely gone away, and those who have yelled ‘Racist!” the loudest and most persistently, I can promise you, have never stepped foot upon this isle to see the truth for themselves. Then again, people who make their livings shouting ‘Racist!’ and extracting government money for it are very often never really concerned with truth, nor care about the consequences of their actions, so long as a politician scratches his particular itch.
To give you some idea, my nephew Mikey is one of those children who was eligible for Yellow Bus Service. Let me tell you what he has to do to get to and from school, and maybe this will illustrate the problem for you.
Mikey’s school is approximately 4.6 miles from his own front door. Without a school bus, Mikey has limited options. He could walk to and from school, having to cross at least three major arteries which local drivers treat like the Indianapolis Speedway, dodging distracted by text-messages or putting-on-their-makeup-in-the-rearview drivers for whom simple things like proper use of turning signals, red lights, traffic lanes, No Right on Red signs, and pedestrian traffic are crippling inconveniences which conspire to keep them from their quest to be the first to the next red light at 65-mph-in-a-35 zone. It’s like a for-real game of Frogger.
This is mostly a cultural problem, exacerbated by poor road planning, construction and maintenance. To illustrate these issues for you, it is not uncommon for private individuals around here to pool their OWN money to build their OWN speed bumps on their school-zoned streets, because the City won’t, citing the excuse of expense. The City, however, has absolutely no trouble finding the funds to remove those privately-financed speed bumps – often in the dead of night --just as soon as it discovers them.
Option Number Two is that Mikey can walk eight blocks to the Staten Island Railway Train (a misnomer which consists of two tracks travelling in opposite directions that serves approximately 1/6 of the island’s population on any given day), take it four stops, and then have to walk 10 blocks from the station to school, both ways crossing busy (sometimes blind because of the curves or overgrown park/wetland) intersections without crossing guards or responsible drivers.
Option Number Three is take a City Bus, requiring a three-block walk from home, a transfer, and then a six block walk from the nearest stop. This requires, incidentally, about 45-60 minutes, so that he’d have to leave home at 6:30 to ensure he got to school anywhere near 8:00, due to the numerous stops (buses here stop at nearly every block for some reason), traffic and irregularity/unreliability of service.
Option Number Four is to take another City Bus which leaves him closer to school (after a transfer to another route), but which goes two miles out of his way in order to get him there, and probably takes closer to 90 minutes, all told.
You can see the problem.
So, the Board of Education, in a cynical effort to have it both ways -- paying lip service to the concept of financial responsibility, while pandering to the louder elements of the “Everything in Creation is Racist!” brigade -- decided it was time to end Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island (White) Middle Schoolers. Two years ago, the City claimed that doing so would save an estimated $2 million per year, which is a joke when you consider the NYC Board of Education is capable of finding more ways to waste $2 million a week without even breaking a sweat.
Local government (our Borough President) went right to the courts to stop this plan and to have the waiver granted 40+ years ago guaranteeing school bus service upheld. The judge in that case let the waiver stand, and then asked the Board of Ed to turn over its internal documents and e-mails related to the decision to stop service. What he got was a mess of blank and/or redacted paper, and an injunction against his upholding of the original waiver issued by a judge in a different borough after the Board of Ed went judge-shopping in (more-liberal) Brooklyn. Another judge, a state appellate judge, told the Board to go and pound sand, upheld the waiver, and squashed the injunction, and bus service was restored.
However, the Board of Ed is nothing if not persistent – and willing to waste that potential $2 million savings on more lawyers – had the service stopped once again by yet another judge, claiming the Original Waiver violates the ‘spirit of’ the 14th Amendment, despite any practical considerations. The court fight continues to this day.
Which brings us to the tragedy that is 13-year-old Aniya Williams. You see, she was run over by a great, big, fucking tractor trailer on a busy thoroughfare in an industrial area as she crossed a street -- one without a City-provided school crossing guard, despite the fact that it’s in a fucking school zone, and it was the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL -- in an effort to catch a city bus home, and thus spare herself the 40-60 minute wait for the next one.
There are two ironies here:
1. This young lady was entitled to Yellow School Bus service under the Old Waiver, which would have picked her up in front of the school, and dropped her off mere yards from her own front door, if not for all the legal wrangling and false accusations of racism in bus service.
2. Aniya Williams happens to have been African-American.
For the sake of $2 million dollars (probably $10 million now after the legal fees are all counted up), and to quiet the uninformed noises that came from the full panoply of ‘advocates’, ‘community organizers’, ‘community groups’, ‘education watchdogs’, public unions and all the other busy-body organizations and individuals who typically speak out of their collective asses, a child is dead. The only saving grace here is that more children aren’t dead, because on any given day there are probably going to be 50 more Aniya’s, racing for a city bus that runs on an irregular schedule so that they won’t have to walk 4 miles home, and who are forced to do so because a City Government that can’t count, but which can pander to anyone with an uninformed complaint and wants to monitor your caloric intake, just doesn’t get it.
This post also appears at the Insane Asylum.
Our story begins two years ago, when the New York City Board of Education (three lies for the price of one) began looking for ways to cut it’s budget without firing the 2,000 or so teachers currently held in so-called ‘rubber rooms’ awaiting termination or criminal prosecution, thus pissing off the local education unions, whilst still giving the appearance of being both fiscally responsible and fair to racial minorities.
Given that combination of political requirements, it’s not surprising that Educational Establishment (an oxymoron if ever there was one) came up with a politically-biased solution that cost a young girl her life.
It all has to do with appearances, and false accusations of racism, plain and simple.
You see, I live on Staten Island, the Forgotten Borough of New York City. It is a place that City Government tends to think of as a cash cow and a dumping ground for projects that no other borough -- with their decidedly greater populations and more vocal ‘community organizer’ types -- just won’t take, such as Landfills, Wind farms, prisons and infectious disease wards.
Wikipedia describes Staten Island as a ‘suburban community’, and it once was, but it is so no longer. What it has become is a 12-by-7 mile bonanza of property taxes for a City that can concern itself with your salt intake, but then not give a shit about whether or not your community has adequate sewers and storm drains, public transportation, hospitals, or schools. There are 500,000 people shoehorned onto this over-developed island which is always last on the City’s ‘To-Do’ list, but always first on ‘People We Can Raise Taxes On’ list.
City Officials just absolutely love the property and income taxes they can collect here (amongst the highest in all of the United States!), but they just can’t see their way to spending any of it here. Probably because the island typically votes republican, and most of us are gainfully employed. There’s far more money and political power in (created by politicians in the first place) poverty than there is in the catering to the needs of the Middle Class who pays for it all, you see.
Four consequences of this attitude are:
1) The Road System on this island is a joke. Many of the main arteries still follow their meandering, pre-Revolutionary War-era paths from days of yore – in some cases, they still follow the routes they took during the days of the Dutch Settlements (pre-1660!) and these are often narrow, crowded with vehicular traffic, and lacking in adequate safety features (traffic islands, traffic lights, stop signs, or crosswalks). You’ll find the roads in a perpetual extremely-poor state of repair (the 12’-long-by-three-foot-deep-pothole-full-of-frozen-water-on-every-corner capital of New York!), and many basic services – like sidewalks along busy streets – are simply missing, and no one in City Government gives a shit. I can’t tell you how many stories of ‘Person-struck-and-killed-by-car-in- neighborhood-without-sidewalks’ stories there are every year in the Staten Island Advance, the local newsrag. It’s easily in the double digits.
Remember, this is supposed to be 21st-Century New York City.
2) Public Transportation is seriously lacking, and what is available is often unreliable, hardly goes where it needs to (the Transportation Plans which brought it here dating to the 1960’s, and only begun in earnest in the 1980’s), and under-utilized since decades of abject neglect of the transportation system has created a cult of the automobile that would rival that to be found elsewhere in the United States. This may be the only place in all of New York City where your trip to the ‘Corner Store’ often requires a journey by car that will take you a mile or more from home, and take 30-40 minutes because of traffic.
3) Schools are in seriously short supply. Since most of the available land (even City-owned land) has been parceled off and sold to developers (we need more overpriced Mother-Daughter townhouse/condos on this island like we need a plague of locusts), or goes to more Parks and Nature Preserves (which we need like a hole in the head. 1/5 of Staten Island is State-or-Federally-protected Wetlands, bird sanctuaries, parks, national monuments, and so forth), less space is available to build schools. Especially middle schools. The last new High School, for example, built on Staten Island (in the early 1980’s) was originally designed as a minimum-security prison -- in a residential neighborhood -- that only became the ‘new’ New Dorp High School because of the near-violent outrage that sprang from a community that wasn’t even asked if it would want a prison in it’s backyard, nor told until the very last minute that one was even being built.
4) What schools we do have are generally placed far apart, and are poorly served by public transportation, requiring more yellow bus service than might be normal for children who live in the other boroughs where there are more schools and more transportation options available.
Yellow school bus service in this borough is a necessity if children are to get to and from school safely and in a timely fashion. In fact, Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island schoolchildren from kindergarten to Middle School had been a standard for over four decades, courtesy of a political class that once understood the unique nature of the problems here, and a federal judge who granted Staten Island a waiver when parents in the other boroughs claimed that Staten Island kids were receiving a benefit that children elsewhere weren’t getting. The majority of these complaints, incidentally, were based upon race. At the time, the majority of Staten Island public school kids were white.
And if anything ever screamed ‘Racism’ way back when, it was the idea of white, middle class kids being chauffeured to and from a school three miles away when minority children had to walk, often only just a few blocks. Go figure.
The accusations of racism in Bus Service have never completely gone away, and those who have yelled ‘Racist!” the loudest and most persistently, I can promise you, have never stepped foot upon this isle to see the truth for themselves. Then again, people who make their livings shouting ‘Racist!’ and extracting government money for it are very often never really concerned with truth, nor care about the consequences of their actions, so long as a politician scratches his particular itch.
To give you some idea, my nephew Mikey is one of those children who was eligible for Yellow Bus Service. Let me tell you what he has to do to get to and from school, and maybe this will illustrate the problem for you.
Mikey’s school is approximately 4.6 miles from his own front door. Without a school bus, Mikey has limited options. He could walk to and from school, having to cross at least three major arteries which local drivers treat like the Indianapolis Speedway, dodging distracted by text-messages or putting-on-their-makeup-in-the-rearview drivers for whom simple things like proper use of turning signals, red lights, traffic lanes, No Right on Red signs, and pedestrian traffic are crippling inconveniences which conspire to keep them from their quest to be the first to the next red light at 65-mph-in-a-35 zone. It’s like a for-real game of Frogger.
This is mostly a cultural problem, exacerbated by poor road planning, construction and maintenance. To illustrate these issues for you, it is not uncommon for private individuals around here to pool their OWN money to build their OWN speed bumps on their school-zoned streets, because the City won’t, citing the excuse of expense. The City, however, has absolutely no trouble finding the funds to remove those privately-financed speed bumps – often in the dead of night --just as soon as it discovers them.
Option Number Two is that Mikey can walk eight blocks to the Staten Island Railway Train (a misnomer which consists of two tracks travelling in opposite directions that serves approximately 1/6 of the island’s population on any given day), take it four stops, and then have to walk 10 blocks from the station to school, both ways crossing busy (sometimes blind because of the curves or overgrown park/wetland) intersections without crossing guards or responsible drivers.
Option Number Three is take a City Bus, requiring a three-block walk from home, a transfer, and then a six block walk from the nearest stop. This requires, incidentally, about 45-60 minutes, so that he’d have to leave home at 6:30 to ensure he got to school anywhere near 8:00, due to the numerous stops (buses here stop at nearly every block for some reason), traffic and irregularity/unreliability of service.
Option Number Four is to take another City Bus which leaves him closer to school (after a transfer to another route), but which goes two miles out of his way in order to get him there, and probably takes closer to 90 minutes, all told.
You can see the problem.
So, the Board of Education, in a cynical effort to have it both ways -- paying lip service to the concept of financial responsibility, while pandering to the louder elements of the “Everything in Creation is Racist!” brigade -- decided it was time to end Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island (White) Middle Schoolers. Two years ago, the City claimed that doing so would save an estimated $2 million per year, which is a joke when you consider the NYC Board of Education is capable of finding more ways to waste $2 million a week without even breaking a sweat.
Local government (our Borough President) went right to the courts to stop this plan and to have the waiver granted 40+ years ago guaranteeing school bus service upheld. The judge in that case let the waiver stand, and then asked the Board of Ed to turn over its internal documents and e-mails related to the decision to stop service. What he got was a mess of blank and/or redacted paper, and an injunction against his upholding of the original waiver issued by a judge in a different borough after the Board of Ed went judge-shopping in (more-liberal) Brooklyn. Another judge, a state appellate judge, told the Board to go and pound sand, upheld the waiver, and squashed the injunction, and bus service was restored.
However, the Board of Ed is nothing if not persistent – and willing to waste that potential $2 million savings on more lawyers – had the service stopped once again by yet another judge, claiming the Original Waiver violates the ‘spirit of’ the 14th Amendment, despite any practical considerations. The court fight continues to this day.
Which brings us to the tragedy that is 13-year-old Aniya Williams. You see, she was run over by a great, big, fucking tractor trailer on a busy thoroughfare in an industrial area as she crossed a street -- one without a City-provided school crossing guard, despite the fact that it’s in a fucking school zone, and it was the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL -- in an effort to catch a city bus home, and thus spare herself the 40-60 minute wait for the next one.
There are two ironies here:
1. This young lady was entitled to Yellow School Bus service under the Old Waiver, which would have picked her up in front of the school, and dropped her off mere yards from her own front door, if not for all the legal wrangling and false accusations of racism in bus service.
2. Aniya Williams happens to have been African-American.
For the sake of $2 million dollars (probably $10 million now after the legal fees are all counted up), and to quiet the uninformed noises that came from the full panoply of ‘advocates’, ‘community organizers’, ‘community groups’, ‘education watchdogs’, public unions and all the other busy-body organizations and individuals who typically speak out of their collective asses, a child is dead. The only saving grace here is that more children aren’t dead, because on any given day there are probably going to be 50 more Aniya’s, racing for a city bus that runs on an irregular schedule so that they won’t have to walk 4 miles home, and who are forced to do so because a City Government that can’t count, but which can pander to anyone with an uninformed complaint and wants to monitor your caloric intake, just doesn’t get it.
This post also appears at the Insane Asylum.
Friday, July 08, 2011
Your Children Are Still In A Public School, Because…? Part II
And why should they do this? For the money, of course!
So long as the Public School systems in this country are government-union monopolies, so long as they are run by union-backed mercenaries and paper-pushers for the benefit of politicians, so long as they are stuffed full with battalions of teachers drawn from the lowest stratum of academic performance, and so long as the System survives with little discipline, oversight, or responsibility, it will continue to remain little more than a sinkhole for taxpayer money that could otherwise be used someplace else to much greater effect and general benefit.And we’ll continue to raise future generations of blathering idiots who can’t add or read, and who don’t know their history quite as well as they know proper condom use. Remember: this is the generation that will have to take care of you in your old age, and now we know that some of them are getting passing grades only because their teachers and principals conspire to give such to them without making the effort to ensure they earn these passing grades.
That might require actual work on behalf of the School System.
The next generation, from what I can see, is going to consist of largely stupid people, laboring under the pretense of knowledge having been showered with watered-down academic ‘qualifications’, probably living at a lower standard than we do even in these economically-depressed times, perpetually angry, perpetually led by the nose by their politicians, unable to exercise the same kind of level-headed judgment you’d expect to find in a German Shepherd.
A frightening prospect, certainly.
This phenomenon isn’t just confined to Atlanta, either. Its prevalence was evident in my neck of the woods this past July 4th . See this post.
The headlock which unionized lowest-common-denominator teachers, professional bureaucrats, politicians, and ‘advocacy groups’ have on the American Educational System must be broken. It speaks volumes that here in New York -- where the Public School system spends $18,000 a year per pupil, and only manages to create more nose-picking morons, while it expands into the ‘Charter School’ area of education (i.e. a more expensive idiot factory), while the local Catholic Schools which spend much less per student -- and get much better results -- are closing their doors for lack of funding (mostly because the Pope won’t sell a painting or two, and the Archbishop can’t be bothered to give up his limousine).
I can promise you that teachers and administrators huddling behind locked doors in the (rhetorical) dead of night in a conspiracy to inflate their test scores in order to justify higher salaries and funding, or lowering standards in order to accomplish the same, is something that would almost never happen in a Catholic School setting.
It happens all the time in the world of Public School Education.
Mostly because the people who run the public schools have few real marketable skills, and questionable academic achievements, and so they need to cheat in order to avoid having to work for a living in a Private Sector they’re poorly prepared for, secure in the knowledge that they have the backing of a union machine which exists solely to suck up money, manipulate and subvert the political process, and intimidate it’s enemies, real and perceived.
After all, every idiot in America deserves a $76,000-a-year-for-eight-months-job, complete with sweetheart pension and gold-plated health benefits that most Wall Street types would have to perform several acts of forced oral sex in order to obtain.
Every last one of us pays for this kind of bloated, corrupt, irresponsible system, and our children are being cheated of their opportunity for a better future the longer this state of affairs is allowed to continue.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Your Children Are Still In Public Schools, Because...?
New York spends more per pupil, only manages to create more and bigger idiots than any state in America.
Here's a laugher: a good many of these doofuses will, eventually -- because it takes them six to eight years to finish their (remedial) 'education' at City College, where German Shepherds teach English and lack of involuntary muscle responses is no bar to admission -- become the next wave of overpaid teachers in this City. Only in New York could you accept the worst graduates, from the worst colleges, obtaining the easiest-to-get major, and then pay them to teach others.
It's a well-established fact that 'Education' majors are commonly drawn from the lowest echelon of academic achievers, and most of those will have switched majors at least once before settling on 'Education' because most other worthwhile degrees require work. Remember: those who can, do, those who can't, teach...
Nowhere is this more evident than in New York.
Without a cushy public sector union job to fall back on, many of those...ahem...City College graduates...would never be employed in an above-minimum-wage job.
Money Quote fromMichael Goodwin in yesteryday's NY Post:
MANY NYC GRADS CAN'T READ THIS
Responding to my Sunday argument that city schools deprive students of the freedom to fail by promoting too many who aren't ready, a professional aide in a Manhattan high school offers front-line evidence. Here is what she wrote:
"The increased graduation rates are being achieved by means that are absolutely fraudulent and are generally known as 'credit recovery programs.' In exchange for completing a minimal amount of work (and I do mean minimal ), students are granted credit for courses that they previously failed.
"In addition, teachers are 'encouraged' by the principal to pass 80 percent of the students in each of their classes. I can attest, with great confidence, that at least 80 percent of our graduates are functionally illiterate."
The writer, who asks to remain anonymous to protect her job, then quotes from student statements that are rife with errors: " . . . so they started hitting me and I felt to the floor." "I triped and fall with caused bleeding and my pants to torn."
Students say they are "dessie" (dizzy), hurt a "risk" (wrist), have a "hedick" (headache) or are "bruced" (bruised).
"Obviously," she adds, "social promotion is alive and well at all grade levels."
Sadly, her experience is not unique or even unusual. This is the real outrage of too many New York schools.
But then again, the priority is not education at NYC Schools. It can't be, not with all that money to be divvied up. And of course, where's there's taxpayer money to be passed out, there's Political Correctness and Corruption, too. Like these cases, from Andrea Peyser in today's NY Post
:High-school math teacher Rivky Love hounded a girl whom she called her "best friend and sister" with late-night texts signed, "Love you."
The married 36-year-old even offered to slip the Edward R. Murrow student an advance copy of a test. Love was suspended for six months without pay from the Brooklyn school. Then she's back as if nothing happened.
Meanwhile, a devout Christian elementary-school assistant teacher, Anita Wooten-Francis, 52, says she was ridiculed and fired by her principal because she prayed in an empty classroom at Brooklyn's PS 224. This, after more than 16 years of unblemished service.
Why can't Johnny read? At city schools, pervs are a protected class. And quiet devotion is punished.
It's supposed to be all about the chidlren, right? Apparently not in this state, where you have the highest property taxes in the nation and this is the sorry result. Tear thepublic school system down and replace it with private schools supported by tuition. If the dregs of this city can't afford it, then give 'em a voucher; it'll still be cheaper and more effective than continuing to warehouse kids in a state-run babysitting service, run by mouth-breathing retards.
Here's a laugher: a good many of these doofuses will, eventually -- because it takes them six to eight years to finish their (remedial) 'education' at City College, where German Shepherds teach English and lack of involuntary muscle responses is no bar to admission -- become the next wave of overpaid teachers in this City. Only in New York could you accept the worst graduates, from the worst colleges, obtaining the easiest-to-get major, and then pay them to teach others.
It's a well-established fact that 'Education' majors are commonly drawn from the lowest echelon of academic achievers, and most of those will have switched majors at least once before settling on 'Education' because most other worthwhile degrees require work. Remember: those who can, do, those who can't, teach...
Nowhere is this more evident than in New York.
Without a cushy public sector union job to fall back on, many of those...ahem...City College graduates...would never be employed in an above-minimum-wage job.
Money Quote fromMichael Goodwin in yesteryday's NY Post:
MANY NYC GRADS CAN'T READ THIS
Responding to my Sunday argument that city schools deprive students of the freedom to fail by promoting too many who aren't ready, a professional aide in a Manhattan high school offers front-line evidence. Here is what she wrote:
"The increased graduation rates are being achieved by means that are absolutely fraudulent and are generally known as 'credit recovery programs.' In exchange for completing a minimal amount of work (and I do mean minimal ), students are granted credit for courses that they previously failed.
"In addition, teachers are 'encouraged' by the principal to pass 80 percent of the students in each of their classes. I can attest, with great confidence, that at least 80 percent of our graduates are functionally illiterate."
The writer, who asks to remain anonymous to protect her job, then quotes from student statements that are rife with errors: " . . . so they started hitting me and I felt to the floor." "I triped and fall with caused bleeding and my pants to torn."
Students say they are "dessie" (dizzy), hurt a "risk" (wrist), have a "hedick" (headache) or are "bruced" (bruised).
"Obviously," she adds, "social promotion is alive and well at all grade levels."
Sadly, her experience is not unique or even unusual. This is the real outrage of too many New York schools.
But then again, the priority is not education at NYC Schools. It can't be, not with all that money to be divvied up. And of course, where's there's taxpayer money to be passed out, there's Political Correctness and Corruption, too. Like these cases, from Andrea Peyser in today's NY Post
:High-school math teacher Rivky Love hounded a girl whom she called her "best friend and sister" with late-night texts signed, "Love you."
The married 36-year-old even offered to slip the Edward R. Murrow student an advance copy of a test. Love was suspended for six months without pay from the Brooklyn school. Then she's back as if nothing happened.
Meanwhile, a devout Christian elementary-school assistant teacher, Anita Wooten-Francis, 52, says she was ridiculed and fired by her principal because she prayed in an empty classroom at Brooklyn's PS 224. This, after more than 16 years of unblemished service.
Why can't Johnny read? At city schools, pervs are a protected class. And quiet devotion is punished.
It's supposed to be all about the chidlren, right? Apparently not in this state, where you have the highest property taxes in the nation and this is the sorry result. Tear thepublic school system down and replace it with private schools supported by tuition. If the dregs of this city can't afford it, then give 'em a voucher; it'll still be cheaper and more effective than continuing to warehouse kids in a state-run babysitting service, run by mouth-breathing retards.
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Report: Half of Detroit Functionally Illiterate.
Only half? That sounds to me like maybe no one in Detroit can count, either.
Tell me again why the Public School system -- and the Unionized, tenured, over-paid, lowest-on-the-scale-of-academic-achievement 'teacher' who lords over it -- is a good thing?
Last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Doofus-NY) was pilloried in the press for making a rather stupid remark that the Federal Government should turn Detroit into holding area for immigrants who should be "required" to live in there before they are granted full American Citizenship. Somehow, this plan is supposed to repopulate and rejuvenate one of America's worst cities, although true to form, the details of his 'plan' are very sketchy and probably involve a slew of Upper-East-Side-Solon-approved social experiments, huge tax increases, and an increase in government authority, because that's what people like Bloomberg always do -- when they're not busy changing political affiliations from week-to-week, depending upon which political party is for sale this month.
There are five demented ideas, never examined by the Press because that would mean, like, work, that run through Bloomdouche's ...I hesitate to call it a thought... process:
1. That left to their own devices, the people who already live in places like Detroit, Washington, D.C. or Cleveland are incapable of making life in their cities better for themselves. They require government to 'do' 'things' and direct (i.e. ruin) their lives because they're all knuckle-dragging apemen who see their IQ's drop every time they take a dump. People like Bloomberg love stupid citizens because they're so much easier to control and take advantage of.
2. According to some political idiots, it is only Government action that is capable of making life better for anyone, and the more drastic that action, the better life is supposed to get. Except that we have tons of undeniable evidence that this very formulation has made life in some places considerably worse, if not bordering on unbearable.
3. Government, suitably empowered to 'make life better', should then be able to create racial and ethnic ghettos as it sees fit, if Mike's ideas are taken to their logical conclusion. It's worked so fabulously well here in New York, you know. Oh wait, the government already does this...
4. The Government does things so spectacularly well, according to the Bloomberg set, but it's just that we're too stupid to appreciate all this fine work. We should never, ever think to hold government and it's policies accountable or responsible for the wasteland that is Detroit; it's always the people who live there who are to blame, so why not just replace those doofuses with a whole bunch of new, even bigger doofuses? (in fact, this may be at least half-right; after all, if Detroit is a shithole, the people and the politicians they elected help make it so).
5. What makes anyone think that filling Detroit with people who come from countries where concepts like individual rights, respect for the rule of law, constitutional government, the importance of an education, a work ethic, and tolerance are, literally, inconceivable, is going to save the city? Isn't that indicative of the sort of people they already have in Detroit? And contrary to all the politically correct mushiness out there; immigrants don't come here to 'make a better life for themselves' in the conventional sense, anymore; they don't come here for freedom and opportunity, like the immigrants of old, the New Breed comes here for the no-strings-attached social benefits, which we hand out like candy. The Ideal of the hard-working immigrant who wants nothing more than to become an American and be a contributing member of the greatest society on Earth was sooo last century. Now we attract immigrants who sneak across borders to use our hospitals, suck on the welfare teat, work off the books, use the schools, etc., who avoid contributing to American society (i.e. they don't pay income taxes) like they would bubonic plague.
If you doubt this, come to my neighborhood and watch the Mexican ladies buy groceries with food stamps while their husbands/boyfriends overrun the local (taxpayer-funded) playing fields waving Mexican flags, playing a game most Americans consider gayer than Tim Gunn.
Detroit, and cities like it, will never be 'saved' by an influx of more immigrants. If anything, the problems in those cities will become worse as they become government-sponsored ethnic enclaves full of people who are never encouraged (or made) to assimilate because that would offend everyone's multi-culti sensibilities, and deprive the democratic party of easily-manipulated voters. The solution to the problems of Detroit are not to be found in a mass migration from Afghanistan, Mexico, or Upper Volta; they are to be found in ordinary citizens, exercising their rights in a responsible fashion, auditing their public servants and demanding better services for their tax dollars. The Government -- at all levels -- should either respond to their will, or get the hell out of their way.
This would mean a wholesale rejection of 20th century 'liberalism' (a misnomer; it's really Libertine-ism, when it isn't outright Socialism), and electoral defeat of the entire Liberal establishment, including the parasites that cling to the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party like barnacles to a rusty hull; the poverty pimps, the racial hucksters, the unionized douchebags, the professional bureaucrats.
One of the hallmarks of the 2000 Presidential election (the one Al Gore lost, as he attempted to sue his way into the White House) was the incredible lack of literacy shown by many of the democratic voters in Florida (Al Sharpton and Je$$e Jackass called this stupidity-on-display 'disenfranchisement'); many, (according to the Press reports of the time) having been told to 'vote for Number 2' on the now-infamous 'Butterfly Ballot' -- that would have been Gore, except that he was actually Number 3 -- didn't even bother to read the damn thing, even to make certain they punched out the right chad!
Naturally, Gore only demanded a recount in the districts where a large number of minority voters were present, i.e. where he knew all the illiterate folks were. Gore was, in effect, saying "check these districts because we know that's where all the stupid people are!" Hence all the talk about scratches, and dents, and swinging chads, hanging chads, and 'divining the will of the voter, as if someone who punched out Number Two but left a scratch mark at Number 3 should have their vote overturned. Gore, the biggest pile of Number Two in History, had to find ways to turn all those Twos into Threes, even if it meant stealing an election on national television.
Literacy, or rather lack of it, has far-ranging consequences. Just ask Al Gore; he lost the White House because of it, and he's made billions off of fake environMENTALism on the backs of the illiterate, as well. People who can read would know that if you take away carbon dioxide, you kill plants, and thus, destroy the planet's oxygen supply, thereby, killing us.
If you want to know why Detroit is a toilet that rivals the open sewers of Yemen, Somalia or Tegucigalpa, here's your first clue. It's a pity no one in Detroit will ever read this, because if they did they might become embarrassed and do something about it.
And as for Micheal Bloomberg, he's the last person on Earth you should ever ask for advice on anything.
Tell me again why the Public School system -- and the Unionized, tenured, over-paid, lowest-on-the-scale-of-academic-achievement 'teacher' who lords over it -- is a good thing?
Last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Doofus-NY) was pilloried in the press for making a rather stupid remark that the Federal Government should turn Detroit into holding area for immigrants who should be "required" to live in there before they are granted full American Citizenship. Somehow, this plan is supposed to repopulate and rejuvenate one of America's worst cities, although true to form, the details of his 'plan' are very sketchy and probably involve a slew of Upper-East-Side-Solon-approved social experiments, huge tax increases, and an increase in government authority, because that's what people like Bloomberg always do -- when they're not busy changing political affiliations from week-to-week, depending upon which political party is for sale this month.
There are five demented ideas, never examined by the Press because that would mean, like, work, that run through Bloomdouche's ...I hesitate to call it a thought... process:
1. That left to their own devices, the people who already live in places like Detroit, Washington, D.C. or Cleveland are incapable of making life in their cities better for themselves. They require government to 'do' 'things' and direct (i.e. ruin) their lives because they're all knuckle-dragging apemen who see their IQ's drop every time they take a dump. People like Bloomberg love stupid citizens because they're so much easier to control and take advantage of.
2. According to some political idiots, it is only Government action that is capable of making life better for anyone, and the more drastic that action, the better life is supposed to get. Except that we have tons of undeniable evidence that this very formulation has made life in some places considerably worse, if not bordering on unbearable.
3. Government, suitably empowered to 'make life better', should then be able to create racial and ethnic ghettos as it sees fit, if Mike's ideas are taken to their logical conclusion. It's worked so fabulously well here in New York, you know. Oh wait, the government already does this...
4. The Government does things so spectacularly well, according to the Bloomberg set, but it's just that we're too stupid to appreciate all this fine work. We should never, ever think to hold government and it's policies accountable or responsible for the wasteland that is Detroit; it's always the people who live there who are to blame, so why not just replace those doofuses with a whole bunch of new, even bigger doofuses? (in fact, this may be at least half-right; after all, if Detroit is a shithole, the people and the politicians they elected help make it so).
5. What makes anyone think that filling Detroit with people who come from countries where concepts like individual rights, respect for the rule of law, constitutional government, the importance of an education, a work ethic, and tolerance are, literally, inconceivable, is going to save the city? Isn't that indicative of the sort of people they already have in Detroit? And contrary to all the politically correct mushiness out there; immigrants don't come here to 'make a better life for themselves' in the conventional sense, anymore; they don't come here for freedom and opportunity, like the immigrants of old, the New Breed comes here for the no-strings-attached social benefits, which we hand out like candy. The Ideal of the hard-working immigrant who wants nothing more than to become an American and be a contributing member of the greatest society on Earth was sooo last century. Now we attract immigrants who sneak across borders to use our hospitals, suck on the welfare teat, work off the books, use the schools, etc., who avoid contributing to American society (i.e. they don't pay income taxes) like they would bubonic plague.
If you doubt this, come to my neighborhood and watch the Mexican ladies buy groceries with food stamps while their husbands/boyfriends overrun the local (taxpayer-funded) playing fields waving Mexican flags, playing a game most Americans consider gayer than Tim Gunn.
Detroit, and cities like it, will never be 'saved' by an influx of more immigrants. If anything, the problems in those cities will become worse as they become government-sponsored ethnic enclaves full of people who are never encouraged (or made) to assimilate because that would offend everyone's multi-culti sensibilities, and deprive the democratic party of easily-manipulated voters. The solution to the problems of Detroit are not to be found in a mass migration from Afghanistan, Mexico, or Upper Volta; they are to be found in ordinary citizens, exercising their rights in a responsible fashion, auditing their public servants and demanding better services for their tax dollars. The Government -- at all levels -- should either respond to their will, or get the hell out of their way.
This would mean a wholesale rejection of 20th century 'liberalism' (a misnomer; it's really Libertine-ism, when it isn't outright Socialism), and electoral defeat of the entire Liberal establishment, including the parasites that cling to the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party like barnacles to a rusty hull; the poverty pimps, the racial hucksters, the unionized douchebags, the professional bureaucrats.
One of the hallmarks of the 2000 Presidential election (the one Al Gore lost, as he attempted to sue his way into the White House) was the incredible lack of literacy shown by many of the democratic voters in Florida (Al Sharpton and Je$$e Jackass called this stupidity-on-display 'disenfranchisement'); many, (according to the Press reports of the time) having been told to 'vote for Number 2' on the now-infamous 'Butterfly Ballot' -- that would have been Gore, except that he was actually Number 3 -- didn't even bother to read the damn thing, even to make certain they punched out the right chad!
Naturally, Gore only demanded a recount in the districts where a large number of minority voters were present, i.e. where he knew all the illiterate folks were. Gore was, in effect, saying "check these districts because we know that's where all the stupid people are!" Hence all the talk about scratches, and dents, and swinging chads, hanging chads, and 'divining the will of the voter, as if someone who punched out Number Two but left a scratch mark at Number 3 should have their vote overturned. Gore, the biggest pile of Number Two in History, had to find ways to turn all those Twos into Threes, even if it meant stealing an election on national television.
Literacy, or rather lack of it, has far-ranging consequences. Just ask Al Gore; he lost the White House because of it, and he's made billions off of fake environMENTALism on the backs of the illiterate, as well. People who can read would know that if you take away carbon dioxide, you kill plants, and thus, destroy the planet's oxygen supply, thereby, killing us.
If you want to know why Detroit is a toilet that rivals the open sewers of Yemen, Somalia or Tegucigalpa, here's your first clue. It's a pity no one in Detroit will ever read this, because if they did they might become embarrassed and do something about it.
And as for Micheal Bloomberg, he's the last person on Earth you should ever ask for advice on anything.
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Word...
It was Saturday evening, and we're all sitting around the Lunatic's Sister's kitchen table. The cake has just been served, this day being her birthday (Happy Birthday, Dear Sister!). One of my nephews has just called another "retarded", as kids are wont to do.
What happened next was something that sent douchechills down my spine, and produced a violent urge to vomit.
"You know", The Lunatic's Sister says to her child, "you're not supposed to say 'retarded' to people, because it's hurtful. What did they tell you at school about that?"
"Why not?" asks the Lunatic, innocently, wishing he hadn't asked just as soon as the words are uttered, because it has just dawned upon him at that very second that he's about to listen to an explanation of why that word has become verboten that will be long, pointless, and...well...umm....rather retarded.
The Lunatics Sister, after all, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But, he asked for it, the Moron ( I wonder: Am I allowed to use that word, if I apply it only to myself?), and by God, he's gonna hear it -- if only because My Sister sometimes behaves as if she's my Mother, as well. This pisses me off because:
a) I already have a Mother who lectures me (still) while having nothing intelligent or positive to say, and
b) Nothing pisses me off more than being lectured to in that annoying and condescending tone which both Mother and Sister adopt, as if they're talking to a wayward child, with that irritating habit they have of being unable to explain themselves without a lengthy pre-amble, a diversion to a parable which might only be tangentially related to the subject at hand, and that slow and deliberate diction that would make one believe that I'm a retard, too, if you'd ever heard it.
I can hardly wait.
It turns out that a child at my nephew's school is what they now refer to as "mentally-challenged". I happen to know the child in question; he's autistic, and is given to unpredictable outbursts. I disagree, strongly, with the label "mentally-challenged" when applied to the Autistic because of my experiences with several autistic people. I know autistics that would put the greatest mathematicians of history to shame, who hold down important and complicated jobs, or who are capable of doing anything most people could do, infinitely better, and with a level of precision that would give a German engineer a permanent hard-on.
I'm a fanatical believer in the theory that we, the Human Race, would not live in the world we do if it hadn't been for some autistic dude sitting in the back of a cave, spending hours and days flaking away at a pierce of flint to form the perfect spearhead. I believe that some of the greatest scientific, literary and artistic minds in human history were probably autistic, or at least possessed some of the same qualities that we ascribe to autistic people. Autism does not mean"challenged", nor does it mean"stupid". Anyways, back to our story.
So, The School recently had another of it's fund-raiser evenings -- why a public school, supported by tax dollars, requires an almost-continuous series of fundraising drives is a question that no one can adequately answer for me. It seems that while the City and State of New York see fit to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $14,000 per student per academic year, it does so without buying supplies for the classroom. The money raised, I'm told, often goes to buy the Basics: from art supplies to toilet paper -- and this particular child caused a commotion during the festivities.
This kerfufle caused the parent of another child to remark "I think that kid's retarded" , apparently whispered to another, but still within earshot of the autistic boy's mother. This observation, made by an ignorant clod with no social graces, apparently troubled her to no end because within days there was a PTA meeting where the subject of the word "Retarded" -- and the evil and incorrect applications and connotations connected with it -- became the main subject of intense debate.
Some observations on the 'debate', as it was explained to me;
1. The child in question is NOT retarded, he's autistic. Most people do not make the distinction, or even know the difference. Mother-with-a-Stick-up-Her-Ass wants everyone to know that her son is Autistic and NOT Retarded. In the often-confusing world of politically-correct causes, Autism somehow rates higher than simple Mental Retardation. Angry Mother is offended that someone may have used a word that somehow downgrades her son's condition. Like being Retarded is akin to living in the ghetto to Autism's Gated Community? Autism is to Mercedes what Retarded is to Ford Pinto? By what standard we say that this particular affliction is more worthy or honorable than another is beyond me, and I think my head exploded when I heard this ridiculous 'argument' about a distinction most people are incapable of making without conscious effort.
It all probably has to do with some sort of competition between "Special Needs" childrens' parents for state aid, I'll bet.
2. The word 'retarded' is hurtful, mean-spirited, and damages an already-fragile child's self-esteem, and shouldn't even be used to describe a child who is, you know, actually retarded. Unless, of course, you -- as the parent of a retarded child -- choose to wear your genetic failure as a badge of courage, shout "RETARDED!" at the top of your lungs in order to get to the head of the line at Disneyland, or use your child's affliction to get yourself some charity money, taxpayer funds, special consideration, sympathy, or fake affirmations of your 'courage'. Life, and the vagaries of Genetics, have handed you a veritable Lemon; make Lemonade. Love your child, by all means, but don't expect that others should have to give you a medal or some special accommodation because of his/her condition.
That Society often does so is a matter of courtesy; you don't get to elevate that into a special set of extra-constitutional rights.
3. Henceforth, sayeth the School, the word "retarded" is hereby banned from the vocabulary of all the Inmates..errr...Students...and there will be a 'Zero-Tolerance' policy regarding the use of the word. Penalties are not specifically discussed, but promises are made by the Gods of Education that they will, indeed, be harsh. Just what 'harsh' means in the context of children between the ages of 5 and 10 is an open question. I rather doubt flogging is going to make a comeback, and quite frankly, expulsion would probably do some of the students more benefit than real harm. After all, this is a school which has a janitor with a huge yearly budget, but somehow he's not allowed to spend any of it on cleaning supplies, because parents are constantly being asked to send the children to school with all sorts of anti-bacterial products.
'Zero-Tolerance' policies, mind you, often trip over their own self-defeating logic; if the original argument was over context (as in this case), then the application of the policy must, by it's very nature, also trip all over context. Since no one feels capable, or willing, to make a decision regarding context the easist thing to do is to simply avoid the discussion altogether. One hopes. This is not an enlightened policy: it is an abrogation of responsibility. In the context of educators guiding and shaping young minds, it is a surrender of the intellectual to the emotional, and ultimately serves no one well. This should have served as one of them 'teaching moments' I keep hearing about; why not take the time to instruct the children on the differences between retarded and autistic, stress a little understanding, patience and courtesy, and then tell Mommy-Run-Amok to shut the fuck up and deal, like an adult?
Anyways, I listened to my Sister relate the whole sordid tale, and wanted to reach across the table and strangle the life out of her, because she swallowed the whole 'Zero-Tolerance' nonsense completely, and was determined to enforce it within her own home.
Okay, fine. It's your house and they are your kids, so do what you like, but you have, Dear Sister, missed the Bigger Point (this is, indeed, my Sister's greatest talent, so I'm not entirely surprised). Actually, she's missed a bunch of points.
The first is that a greater mass of people are being punished for the thoughtlessness of another. Some asshole with no class mutters something he shouldn't, and gives offense. In the Old Days when people simply sucked things up and soldiered on -- or just got into a fistfight and solved their problems Mano-a-Mano -- this would have been taken care of immediately, and would not have required a public meeting and a censorship regime.
The Second is that it's kind of ridiculous that one person should be allowed to impose this sort of censorship over hundreds simply because she was offended. How it came to be that we, as a society, began to empower those with often-petty axes to grind is something I often wonder about, and then fervently wish we could reverse with a carefully-planned program of street executions. Unfortunately, there are some people who haven't learned the very simple lesson that Life Sucks, and that on any given day, you will probably be offended at least once, and then there are other people who haven't learned the lesson that once you allow a petty grievance to become a Federal Case -- and then crafted an all-encompassing policy to address that specific grievance -- you've opened the floodgates to all sorts of stupidity.
Today, it's the use of the adjective 'retard' in an offensive context; tomorrow, it'll be wearing a cross or yarmulke to school, wearing certain colors on certain days, a particular item in a bagged lunch, or a student's superior fashion sense which will make someone, somewhere, groan about 'unfairness' and 'offense'.
The simple truth is that the majority of people who inhabit this Blue Marble are dumber than dogshit; addressing their petty concerns in such a sweeping manner only leads to a coarsening and constriction of Life for the rest of us.
The final problem I have with this is that a word, which is perfectly valid and has a meaning outside the context of handicapped children, is being taken away from other children at a point in their educational lives where they are forming the primary abilities they will need to express themselves later in life. They are learning to expand their vocabulary, they are learning the lessons of context and contrast within language. The word 'Retarded', in and of itself, is not offensive; it's an adjective. The only power it has to offend is the power that people choose to give it.
Banning it's use may make Mother-Mind-Everyone-Else's-Business happy, but she has done, I think.a great disservice to the other children in the school. What, for example, would happen if it should turn out that Shakespeare, or perhaps a Great Poet, happened to use the word 'Retarded' in their works? Should we ban Shakespeare? Should we rewrite the entire literature of the Western World so as to remove all the words that are personally offensive to her? What if the word appeared in a scientific treatise? Should we develop a new way to teach sciences with an entirely new and non-offensive terminology?
No sooner did I hear this sorry tale then I went right home and broke out my copy of George Orwell's 1984.
In that tale of Political Correctness run amok, the Protagonist, Winston Smith, is a newspaper reporter (in a sense; what he actually 'reports' is not 'news', but rather Politically Correct lies and a continuous rewriting of history for political puposes) is having a conversation with a colleage who is involved in the recrafting of the English language (called Newspeak in the book).
This collegaue is openly bragging about his work, which is the destruction of words; especially words that have political signifigance. These words must be purged from the lexicon because they can be used to express discontent, to foment counter-revolution, or because they would expose some politically-inconvenient truths that The Party would rather keep hidden or obscured. This colleague postulates that in the future, the English Language will eventually contain but ONE word, and it's meanings and context would be rigidly defined and no other meaning or context could ever be permitted.
The ultimate purpose of the destruction of words was to deprive the people of the ability to communicate with one another, or to express dissent and discontent, as a means of keeping the directing brains of society (The Inner Party, i.e. The Government) in power forever.
Perhaps it is a great leap to make -- from the banning of a word in order to soothe one person's ruffled sensibilities to the loss of ability to express Political Dissent -- but the effect is the same. With each banning of a word, with each narrowing of the scope of thought, with each attack on the individual's right of free expression, we're one step closer to tyranny. Whether it's the tyranny of a panty-bunched school board, a hyper-sensitive Mother, or an overbearing Government, matters not: we're slowly being trained to avoid saying what we feel. When you forbid people from speaking freely -- even inartfully or meanly -- you no longer have the most basic of freedoms.
I can understand why a Mother with a difficult child might be offended by the insensitive comment of a total dipshit; I don't understand why it was that someone gave her the power to remove a word from the vocabulary of hundreds of children -- and though she may not have intended to do this -- given an unelected, and largely unaccountable, school administration the power to limit the way in which people might choose to express themselves.
I also don't understand how it is that my Sister swallowed this dangerous precedent whole without thinking about it's implications. She's not THAT dumb, after all, but perhaps she's just been trained better than I have.
Before I get a flood of e-mail accusing me of being indifferent to the plight of 'challenged' children and harried parents, let me make it clear that I am not without sympathy. Let me also make it clear that your Autistic child's 'limitations' are mostly of your own making, and ultimately speak more about YOU than about HIM. The child in question is a sweet, loving, beautiful little boy -- I know him personally -- and I'm convinced that if you (his Mother) didn't dote on him, and try so hard to 'protect' him, he'd find himself a nice little niche in this society and be far more useful, productive and relevant than a goodly number of so-called 'normal' people.
The first obstacle that you -- as a parent -- have put in his way is to hide the truth from him; that this world is inhabited by thoughtless morons who learned how to whisper in a sawmill, and who have no manners, and now that you've taught him that to get ahead all he has to scream louder and brandish his 'disability' like a club, don't be surprised when he starts doing the same to YOU.
After all, he's not stupid.
I would wager that he's smarter than any ten people you know combined.
I would, however, hope that one day Mommy Dearest might realize what she has done, and how she has behaved, and come to regret it. Unfortunately, when that day comes it'll only be after someone has dictated how she should live her own life in much the same way that she has just dictated that others should live theirs.
Such is human nature.
That's far a more offensive possibility, to me, than someone misapplying the word 'Retard' in a way that you find irritating.
UPDATE: Edited for spelling and grammar. My apologies!
What happened next was something that sent douchechills down my spine, and produced a violent urge to vomit.
"You know", The Lunatic's Sister says to her child, "you're not supposed to say 'retarded' to people, because it's hurtful. What did they tell you at school about that?"
"Why not?" asks the Lunatic, innocently, wishing he hadn't asked just as soon as the words are uttered, because it has just dawned upon him at that very second that he's about to listen to an explanation of why that word has become verboten that will be long, pointless, and...well...umm....rather retarded.
The Lunatics Sister, after all, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But, he asked for it, the Moron ( I wonder: Am I allowed to use that word, if I apply it only to myself?), and by God, he's gonna hear it -- if only because My Sister sometimes behaves as if she's my Mother, as well. This pisses me off because:
a) I already have a Mother who lectures me (still) while having nothing intelligent or positive to say, and
b) Nothing pisses me off more than being lectured to in that annoying and condescending tone which both Mother and Sister adopt, as if they're talking to a wayward child, with that irritating habit they have of being unable to explain themselves without a lengthy pre-amble, a diversion to a parable which might only be tangentially related to the subject at hand, and that slow and deliberate diction that would make one believe that I'm a retard, too, if you'd ever heard it.
I can hardly wait.
It turns out that a child at my nephew's school is what they now refer to as "mentally-challenged". I happen to know the child in question; he's autistic, and is given to unpredictable outbursts. I disagree, strongly, with the label "mentally-challenged" when applied to the Autistic because of my experiences with several autistic people. I know autistics that would put the greatest mathematicians of history to shame, who hold down important and complicated jobs, or who are capable of doing anything most people could do, infinitely better, and with a level of precision that would give a German engineer a permanent hard-on.
I'm a fanatical believer in the theory that we, the Human Race, would not live in the world we do if it hadn't been for some autistic dude sitting in the back of a cave, spending hours and days flaking away at a pierce of flint to form the perfect spearhead. I believe that some of the greatest scientific, literary and artistic minds in human history were probably autistic, or at least possessed some of the same qualities that we ascribe to autistic people. Autism does not mean"challenged", nor does it mean"stupid". Anyways, back to our story.
So, The School recently had another of it's fund-raiser evenings -- why a public school, supported by tax dollars, requires an almost-continuous series of fundraising drives is a question that no one can adequately answer for me. It seems that while the City and State of New York see fit to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $14,000 per student per academic year, it does so without buying supplies for the classroom. The money raised, I'm told, often goes to buy the Basics: from art supplies to toilet paper -- and this particular child caused a commotion during the festivities.
This kerfufle caused the parent of another child to remark "I think that kid's retarded" , apparently whispered to another, but still within earshot of the autistic boy's mother. This observation, made by an ignorant clod with no social graces, apparently troubled her to no end because within days there was a PTA meeting where the subject of the word "Retarded" -- and the evil and incorrect applications and connotations connected with it -- became the main subject of intense debate.
Some observations on the 'debate', as it was explained to me;
1. The child in question is NOT retarded, he's autistic. Most people do not make the distinction, or even know the difference. Mother-with-a-Stick-up-Her-Ass wants everyone to know that her son is Autistic and NOT Retarded. In the often-confusing world of politically-correct causes, Autism somehow rates higher than simple Mental Retardation. Angry Mother is offended that someone may have used a word that somehow downgrades her son's condition. Like being Retarded is akin to living in the ghetto to Autism's Gated Community? Autism is to Mercedes what Retarded is to Ford Pinto? By what standard we say that this particular affliction is more worthy or honorable than another is beyond me, and I think my head exploded when I heard this ridiculous 'argument' about a distinction most people are incapable of making without conscious effort.
It all probably has to do with some sort of competition between "Special Needs" childrens' parents for state aid, I'll bet.
2. The word 'retarded' is hurtful, mean-spirited, and damages an already-fragile child's self-esteem, and shouldn't even be used to describe a child who is, you know, actually retarded. Unless, of course, you -- as the parent of a retarded child -- choose to wear your genetic failure as a badge of courage, shout "RETARDED!" at the top of your lungs in order to get to the head of the line at Disneyland, or use your child's affliction to get yourself some charity money, taxpayer funds, special consideration, sympathy, or fake affirmations of your 'courage'. Life, and the vagaries of Genetics, have handed you a veritable Lemon; make Lemonade. Love your child, by all means, but don't expect that others should have to give you a medal or some special accommodation because of his/her condition.
That Society often does so is a matter of courtesy; you don't get to elevate that into a special set of extra-constitutional rights.
3. Henceforth, sayeth the School, the word "retarded" is hereby banned from the vocabulary of all the Inmates..errr...Students...and there will be a 'Zero-Tolerance' policy regarding the use of the word. Penalties are not specifically discussed, but promises are made by the Gods of Education that they will, indeed, be harsh. Just what 'harsh' means in the context of children between the ages of 5 and 10 is an open question. I rather doubt flogging is going to make a comeback, and quite frankly, expulsion would probably do some of the students more benefit than real harm. After all, this is a school which has a janitor with a huge yearly budget, but somehow he's not allowed to spend any of it on cleaning supplies, because parents are constantly being asked to send the children to school with all sorts of anti-bacterial products.
'Zero-Tolerance' policies, mind you, often trip over their own self-defeating logic; if the original argument was over context (as in this case), then the application of the policy must, by it's very nature, also trip all over context. Since no one feels capable, or willing, to make a decision regarding context the easist thing to do is to simply avoid the discussion altogether. One hopes. This is not an enlightened policy: it is an abrogation of responsibility. In the context of educators guiding and shaping young minds, it is a surrender of the intellectual to the emotional, and ultimately serves no one well. This should have served as one of them 'teaching moments' I keep hearing about; why not take the time to instruct the children on the differences between retarded and autistic, stress a little understanding, patience and courtesy, and then tell Mommy-Run-Amok to shut the fuck up and deal, like an adult?
Anyways, I listened to my Sister relate the whole sordid tale, and wanted to reach across the table and strangle the life out of her, because she swallowed the whole 'Zero-Tolerance' nonsense completely, and was determined to enforce it within her own home.
Okay, fine. It's your house and they are your kids, so do what you like, but you have, Dear Sister, missed the Bigger Point (this is, indeed, my Sister's greatest talent, so I'm not entirely surprised). Actually, she's missed a bunch of points.
The first is that a greater mass of people are being punished for the thoughtlessness of another. Some asshole with no class mutters something he shouldn't, and gives offense. In the Old Days when people simply sucked things up and soldiered on -- or just got into a fistfight and solved their problems Mano-a-Mano -- this would have been taken care of immediately, and would not have required a public meeting and a censorship regime.
The Second is that it's kind of ridiculous that one person should be allowed to impose this sort of censorship over hundreds simply because she was offended. How it came to be that we, as a society, began to empower those with often-petty axes to grind is something I often wonder about, and then fervently wish we could reverse with a carefully-planned program of street executions. Unfortunately, there are some people who haven't learned the very simple lesson that Life Sucks, and that on any given day, you will probably be offended at least once, and then there are other people who haven't learned the lesson that once you allow a petty grievance to become a Federal Case -- and then crafted an all-encompassing policy to address that specific grievance -- you've opened the floodgates to all sorts of stupidity.
Today, it's the use of the adjective 'retard' in an offensive context; tomorrow, it'll be wearing a cross or yarmulke to school, wearing certain colors on certain days, a particular item in a bagged lunch, or a student's superior fashion sense which will make someone, somewhere, groan about 'unfairness' and 'offense'.
The simple truth is that the majority of people who inhabit this Blue Marble are dumber than dogshit; addressing their petty concerns in such a sweeping manner only leads to a coarsening and constriction of Life for the rest of us.
The final problem I have with this is that a word, which is perfectly valid and has a meaning outside the context of handicapped children, is being taken away from other children at a point in their educational lives where they are forming the primary abilities they will need to express themselves later in life. They are learning to expand their vocabulary, they are learning the lessons of context and contrast within language. The word 'Retarded', in and of itself, is not offensive; it's an adjective. The only power it has to offend is the power that people choose to give it.
Banning it's use may make Mother-Mind-Everyone-Else's-Business happy, but she has done, I think.a great disservice to the other children in the school. What, for example, would happen if it should turn out that Shakespeare, or perhaps a Great Poet, happened to use the word 'Retarded' in their works? Should we ban Shakespeare? Should we rewrite the entire literature of the Western World so as to remove all the words that are personally offensive to her? What if the word appeared in a scientific treatise? Should we develop a new way to teach sciences with an entirely new and non-offensive terminology?
No sooner did I hear this sorry tale then I went right home and broke out my copy of George Orwell's 1984.
In that tale of Political Correctness run amok, the Protagonist, Winston Smith, is a newspaper reporter (in a sense; what he actually 'reports' is not 'news', but rather Politically Correct lies and a continuous rewriting of history for political puposes) is having a conversation with a colleage who is involved in the recrafting of the English language (called Newspeak in the book).
This collegaue is openly bragging about his work, which is the destruction of words; especially words that have political signifigance. These words must be purged from the lexicon because they can be used to express discontent, to foment counter-revolution, or because they would expose some politically-inconvenient truths that The Party would rather keep hidden or obscured. This colleague postulates that in the future, the English Language will eventually contain but ONE word, and it's meanings and context would be rigidly defined and no other meaning or context could ever be permitted.
The ultimate purpose of the destruction of words was to deprive the people of the ability to communicate with one another, or to express dissent and discontent, as a means of keeping the directing brains of society (The Inner Party, i.e. The Government) in power forever.
Perhaps it is a great leap to make -- from the banning of a word in order to soothe one person's ruffled sensibilities to the loss of ability to express Political Dissent -- but the effect is the same. With each banning of a word, with each narrowing of the scope of thought, with each attack on the individual's right of free expression, we're one step closer to tyranny. Whether it's the tyranny of a panty-bunched school board, a hyper-sensitive Mother, or an overbearing Government, matters not: we're slowly being trained to avoid saying what we feel. When you forbid people from speaking freely -- even inartfully or meanly -- you no longer have the most basic of freedoms.
I can understand why a Mother with a difficult child might be offended by the insensitive comment of a total dipshit; I don't understand why it was that someone gave her the power to remove a word from the vocabulary of hundreds of children -- and though she may not have intended to do this -- given an unelected, and largely unaccountable, school administration the power to limit the way in which people might choose to express themselves.
I also don't understand how it is that my Sister swallowed this dangerous precedent whole without thinking about it's implications. She's not THAT dumb, after all, but perhaps she's just been trained better than I have.
Before I get a flood of e-mail accusing me of being indifferent to the plight of 'challenged' children and harried parents, let me make it clear that I am not without sympathy. Let me also make it clear that your Autistic child's 'limitations' are mostly of your own making, and ultimately speak more about YOU than about HIM. The child in question is a sweet, loving, beautiful little boy -- I know him personally -- and I'm convinced that if you (his Mother) didn't dote on him, and try so hard to 'protect' him, he'd find himself a nice little niche in this society and be far more useful, productive and relevant than a goodly number of so-called 'normal' people.
The first obstacle that you -- as a parent -- have put in his way is to hide the truth from him; that this world is inhabited by thoughtless morons who learned how to whisper in a sawmill, and who have no manners, and now that you've taught him that to get ahead all he has to scream louder and brandish his 'disability' like a club, don't be surprised when he starts doing the same to YOU.
After all, he's not stupid.
I would wager that he's smarter than any ten people you know combined.
I would, however, hope that one day Mommy Dearest might realize what she has done, and how she has behaved, and come to regret it. Unfortunately, when that day comes it'll only be after someone has dictated how she should live her own life in much the same way that she has just dictated that others should live theirs.
Such is human nature.
That's far a more offensive possibility, to me, than someone misapplying the word 'Retard' in a way that you find irritating.
UPDATE: Edited for spelling and grammar. My apologies!
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