AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM WHERE BOTH TEACHERS AND STUDENTS HAVE OPTED OUT

Wow! THIS NYT article tells it like it is in NYC public schools. And I don’t blame the teachers one bit for not caring. It is the most reasonable response in a system which has given up on discipline. I feel sorry for the kids who want to learn, though. Political correctness has certainly destroyed what little chance a lot of black kids had of getting a decent education.

Some excerpts:

“I've been talking recently with a handful of dedicated teachers about the classroom conditions that have festered over the past several years at some of New York City's least successful high schools. These are places where fear and loathing take up the space that could have been occupied by progress and reform. You'll find these noisy, chaotic classrooms in almost any of America's big cities, not just New York. They are ruthlessly destructive, and scary to students and teachers alike. They are places where childhood dreams all too frequently expire.

The teachers would not go on the record. They were afraid of being punished by school officials for speaking out. And some worried about reprisals from their own union because of comments critical of teachers.

"What goes on in these classrooms, that's the story of urban education," said a teacher from Brooklyn. "You've got kids playing dice in the back of the classroom. You've got kids listening to their Walkman, or writing rap rhymes. And rapping to girls. And also practicing gang signs.... The teacher just teaches the ones in the front."

"You have violence in some of our schools, and people react to violence in different ways," he said. "You have teachers who have categorized all of the students as a problem. So they walk into the room afraid of the students without ever knowing them. To them, the students are one-dimensional. Everybody's a thug. Everybody's a problem. So they don't require anything of any of them.

"Meanwhile, the students themselves are scared. The class becomes undisciplined, and therefore dangerous. So the good students cut out because they don't want to be in that environment. That's one way you lose the good kids. You have a lot of students who are not thugs, but who left school because they couldn't learn — they couldn't even hear — in that noisy, disruptive atmosphere."

But there are many, many [teachers] who are not remotely interested in these kids. They tell the kids to their faces: `I don't care what you do. I'm still going to get paid.' "They mean it. They don't care. The kids pass classes they don't even attend, and attend classes they aren't even assigned to."