Posted on 05/29/2015 6:41:39 PM PDT by reaganaut1
A student walks down a Harding High hallway wearing headphones, chanting along to violent rap lyrics. Teacher Erik Brandt taps him on the shoulder. Turn it down, he gestures.
The kid stares at Brandt with chilling intensity. He points at the older man, fingers bent in the shape of a gun, and shoots. Then moves on.
Within Harding's corridors is a turbulent clutter of students who push and cuss and bully their way from one end of the building to another. Brandt, a finalist for Minnesota's Teacher of the Year and a 20-year veteran of the English department, doubles as a hall monitor. It is his job to somehow tame them.
When the bell rings, the majority trickle into classrooms. But 50 or so roamers remain. They come to school for breakfast and lunch and to wander the halls with their friends. He commands them to get to class, but his authority is empty.
Brandt, a bespectacled Shakespeare devotee who leads Harding's International Baccalaureate program, doesn't know the majority of kids in this school of 2,000 on St. Paul's East Side. Calling the principal on dozens of kids each day is impractical. Written requests for disciplinary action are a toothless paper trail of unenforceable consequence.
Harding isn't much different than most big city schools. It squats in St. Paul's most economically depressed zip code, where 83 percent of kids receive free or reduced-price lunch. This is a multi-ethnic, multi-national place, the majority the sons and daughters of Asian immigrants.
By the inverted logic of poverty, some of the lowest-achieving students ironically have the best attendance. Even on snow days, they can still count on free breakfast, heat, and wi-fi.
Every year kids reach the 12th grade with elementary-level reading skills.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.citypages.com ...
I had this discussion with my brother one day. He said that he bets if he or I raised one of these kids since their birth, they would be getting good grades, have no record, and lead a normal life.
I don’t know how much of a part the bell curve would play.
If I had done that in high school, I would have gotten knocked across the room, suspended, and caught hell from my parents when I got home. ‘Course, I’m just an old white male, so what do I know?
I grew up with a lunch box and my mom gave me sandwiches, fruits and milk or sometimes my thermos had leftovers or soup.
This is a multi-ethnic, multi-national place, the majority the sons and daughters of Asian immigrants
Funny how the article doesn’t clarify that.
I've watched this happen. But "culture" (term used loosely) is a powerful force; it sucks the kids into a vortex of failure before they're out of diapers.
A couple of generations ago, the Democrats were openly the party of the Klan. They burned several hundred black churches and lynched over 3,000 blacks, with a goal of putting people they openly hated in their place. The Democrat/Klan strategy failed to have any major effect on the black population as a whole beyond fear.
Today, the Democrats are openly the party of helping the unfortunate whom they claim cannot compete on a level playing field. They have created dozens of programs to take care of adults they see as needing surrogate parents, even healthy adults. The Democrats have destroyed urban schools, destroyed the black family, and created a black-centered prison industrial complex. They have intentionally inflicted devastating damage on the black population as a whole, and I imagine the surviving Klansmen are proud of their Democrat party finally accomplishing their long-term goals. Democrats and other racists disgust me.
Vlad would stick it to them.
I went to a Catholic all-boys high school - not that terribly long ago. Discipline was not a problem - at all. Anyone making a gesture like that to a teacher would have been expelled before the afternoon was over.
To allow it in black majority or “poor” schools is a slur against these kids. They can’t be held to the same standards as others? What about those who want to learn?
I’ll never forget Sister Mary Robert, all 5’1” of her, slapping a 7th grade boy for raising his hand to her. Left, right, left, right, from her desk, down the aisle, across the back and out the door, down three flights of stairs to the principal’s office. She never missed a beat.
Next day, his father brought him to school. He had a black eye. He was made to apologize to Sister Mary Robert and the whole class. There were no more incidents in the entire school.
That was discipline before parents somehow decided that it was cool to be a friend, rather than a parent, to their children.
Yeah, whenever I got in trouble at school, I knew that the discipline would be even worse for me when I got home. My parents ALWAYS took the side of my teacher. And it was for my good.
The key term is “reduced” not free. Probably. I’d like to see the actual breakout between the two.
There’s a trick, used mainly by colleges for tuition but trickling down to other places, of jacking up “official” prices well beyond actual costs, but then offering price-relief programs. It can be a sneaky way of getting people hooked on the concept of accepting subsidies and welfare.
The article notes that the majority of students are Asian. I’d love to see the racial demographic breakouts too ...
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