Posted on 08/01/2013 6:41:37 AM PDT by markomalley
Dave Miceli doesn't know me from a hole in the ground, but he's my new hero.
Anyone that can dredge up the guts to teach in Baltimore's public schools automatically becomes a candidate for hero status in my book, especially if said anyone has taught in these schools for 20 years, as Miceli has.
But it was his bold, insightful, no-punches-pulled letter to the editors of the July 15 edition of the Baltimore Sun that put Miceli on my hero's list. I'm reprinting that letter in its entirety.
.................
"Regarding your recent editorial, 'How to end the killing,' your last paragraph made me want to vomit. 'No doubt, Baltimore needs effective police and prosecutors, ample drug treatment, better schools, and more economic opportunities.'
"How dare you accuse, through implication or otherwise, that the need for 'better schools' is a reason there is so much killing. Had you defined the loosely used term, 'better schools,' perhaps I and probably others may not have been so nauseated.
"I have taught in the Baltimore public school system for the past two decades. What we need is better students. We have many excellent teachers. I cannot count the number of students who have physically destroyed property in the schools.
"They have trashed brand new computers, destroyed exit signs, set multiple fires, destroyed many, many lockers, stolen teachers' school supplies, written their filth on the tops of classroom desks, defecated in the bathrooms and stairwells, assaulted teachers (beyond constantly telling them to perform certain impossible acts upon themselves) and refused to do any homework or class work.
"Need I go any further? I won't even bother addressing the other 'causes' you listed. Too inane. In summary, the problem seems to be a total disregard for life that exists not only in our crime-ridden city, but also in all of the major cities throughout the United States.
"So, go blame other root causes, but please leave our city police, prosecutors and teachers out of the finger wagging."
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Touche, Dave Miceli! Finally, someone has cut through the bat guano and had the guts to say precisely what's wrong with way too many public schools — and public school systems — in America today.
That would be "Bad Students, Not Bad Schools," as author Robert Weissberg named his 2010 book. Weissberg, like Miceli, recognizes that American schools won't improve until students attending them do.
You can bet that Baltimore school honchos and some elected officials want Miceli fired so badly they can almost taste it. Oddly enough, what probably saves Miceli from being canned are two things that conservatives — rightly so, in most cases — feel are precisely what's wrong with American education.
That would be teachers' unions and tenure. With his two decades of teaching, Miceli has tenure. Members of the Baltimore Teachers Union — and its leaders — probably don't know whether to love or lynch the guy.
So Miceli probably knew that he wouldn't be fired for his letter, but he's courageous for saying what he said in a city that's majority black, with a school system that's majority black, and where most of the elected officials are black Democrats.
Miceli didn't bring up the issue of race in his letter, but you can bet that, somewhere in Baltimore, someone or a bunch of someones are chomping at the bit to call him a racist for his observations.
That's because, among liberals and Democrats, there is this notion that the poor — especially the black poor — can do no wrong. If you criticize any poor and black person who displays inappropriate, boorish or egregiously bad conduct, you'll be dismissed as a racist if you're not black.
And as an Uncle Tom or sellout if you are.
Miceli decided to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. That's why he goes to the top of my 2013 list of heroes.
How do public schools “take over” the raising of kids except parents cede this responsibility to them. This did not happen overnight, but took decades and decades to achieve. And now, here we are and folks are surprised. When Dewey got his foot in the door and started to drastically shift the focus of “public education” to “social engineering” Americans did little to stop it. And, after decades and decades of that engineering we have a land where 50% thinks it’s okay to kill the unborn, homosexuality is acceptable behavior, whites are alone to blame for the failure of black achievement, an Obama presidency is not only possible, but repeatable.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, America’s public schools are merely a reflection of the society America has become - Godless, unproductive, immoral, violent, left-leaning, ill-informed, sick, broken, dying. That’s America—yet we expect some type of Nirvana in America’s public schools.
Dave is the Rick Santelli of the education improvement movement. Tell it like it is, Dave! Great letter!
How convenient.
The notion that the type of behavior described here goes on in suburban, mostly non-black schools is ludicrous.
Did I say that? Either way, urban or suburban, public education is a system designed to deliver a substandard product, a drone prepared for global socialism.
Read the link at #46, it’s an eye-opener.
I don't need my eyes opened thank you. I've lived in central Oakland, California. I've worked in South Central LA. You need your eyes opened.
Ever heard of Jamie Escalante? That's what a REAL teacher can do.
Good people with bad tools and bad training still produce bad product.
Also, the disintegration of the family in general hinders efforts at school. So many of my students who struggle academically or behaviorally are not in two-parent homes. It can't be coincidence.
The disintegration of the family as the way to socialism was first articulated by Antonio Gramsci in the 1920s. His ideological heirs were the Frankfurt School in Germany. When Hitler kicked them out, they came to America and the Roosevelt Administration placed them in American universities.
The rest is obvious.
Schools, like families, corporations and countries are people.
Schools are made up of teachers, parents and students
1. Teachers - Bad teachers cannot be fired because of unions supported in bed with liberal democrats.
2. Parents - Parents have been made into parent, singular, by social programs implemented by liberal democrats.
3. Students - Bad students cannot be properly disciplined thanks to liberal democrats.
Liberal democrats are at the root of nearly all our major social and economic problems.
It’s basic TQM You can’t control the output until you control the input.
There is monetary poverty and then there is moral poverty.
This teachers frustrations show the result of humanizm in our local schools, and also in the DEA as a federal policy.
Thanks for your efforts. Wish more were like that. Sadly, I don’t see teachers standing up to administrators, curriculums, or the unions.
See post #33 for more information.
A former colleague of mine used to say that learning was a subversive activity. The idea being that, for the most part, folks are not interested in learning and those that are are doing something that flies in the face of the norm.
Today, I would say, real teaching is a subversive activity. When I shut my door, like any teacher who is actually trying to “fight the good fight,” I engage in something that may not necessarily please the powers that be, but that actually teaches kids to think.
detective for President!
Paging Colin Flaherty . . .
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
You can’t fix stupid.
The average African-American IQ is 85.
That is the IQ of criminality and not the IQ of academic excellence.
Add to that 17% more testosterone and high self-esteem...
....American schools won’t improve until students attending them do.
&&&
And the students will not improve until their parents step up to the plate and do the important job of civilizing them.
I feel sorry for the students who actually want to learn.
&&&
Exactly. During my teaching career, I spent one year in a public high school, and one of my laments was for the 90% of my students who were being cheated while I spent too much of my time on the 10% who were disrupting the class.
For this teacher, I am sure it is much, much worse than I had it. And, in that school where I taught, it is probably dangerous today to just walk down the hall.
Yep. Student who actually come to school to learn will look at you with expressions of “Please do something about the idiots in here who don’t want to learn” on their faces.
I remember one time talking to the mother of a promising young student who had a similar look on her face during a parent-teacher conference. I could tell she was desperate, dissatisfied with what was happening to her daughter as she began to see evidence of diminished effort/motivation/results, fearful of where this was all going to end up. After silently debating within myself the chance I was about to take, I suggested to her that if there was any way she could homeschool her child, she would never regret it.
Oh, I know the feeling. I told the mother of one ninth grader that I would put him in another school if I were his parents. They did. Fortunately, they had the money to send him to a private school.
Here’s a suggestion you might like:
Let any child of any age take the GED or similar private exam. If they pass give them the option of graduating with an **official** high school diploma from their local high school. This would immediately make available to them all state and federal scholarships for college or technical training and allow the option of joining the military.
Another option would be to let a specified ACT or SAT score qualified for an official high school diploma.
Wow! Just that **one** reform would likely balance every state budget in the nation as students fled their government school prisons.
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