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RE: lex24 - JustAnotherFan - 10-20-2020
(10-20-2020, 09:12 AM)Genuine Realist Wrote:(10-18-2020, 09:54 PM)Mick Wrote:Mick,(10-18-2020, 03:53 PM)JustAnotherFan Wrote:(10-18-2020, 03:27 PM)Mick Wrote: black and brown kids. We actually may find some common ground - improving schools (and scholastic options) in economically depressed areas is needed. On that I think we may actually agree. But I truly don’t think staying home is the better of the two current options.
black and brown kids, but the leap to "no school would be better" is surprising, so I'd like to hear the entirety of brevin's thoughts before jumping in.
increases disparities between BIPOC and white kids, or poor and rich kids
"no school" is better than conventional, white supremacist, hierarchical schools of BIPOC and poor children reward those who can play a meaningless game and win.I refuse to overlook the scores of millions of Black and brown children who have been harmed by conventional schooling in America.
fixing the problem with”conventional” schools and black and brown kids.
I'm working in the poorest neighborhood in the Bay Area. All of the kids are now in online school. Most of the parents are close to illiterate. They cannot help their kids learn in these circumstances, and many do not bother having their kids attend class. For the poorest families, having their children go to school is the only hope for a future decent life. Your ideas about school are naive and ill informed. The problems these kids have in getting a good education are so complex that any issues with public schools probably account for 10% of the problem. They are malnourished, their parents are grossly under educated, the families are destitute, they don't always have housing, and they have medical problems that are the result of abject poverty. The public schools are the only place where they eat fruits or vegetables, the only place where an adult is in their life who understands what they will need to do to survive in our culture, and the only place they go where they feel safe.
That being said, kids are resilient, and missing one year of school won't doom most of them. Missing more than that would be a disaster.
And if you think school is the one place where poor Black and brown kids feel safe ...
Kids are resilient. But chronic stress tears almost everyone down.
JAF...just one minor question. You've referred to poor black and brown kids a lot. Do you also include poor white or Asian kids in your description, in which schools don't help them either? Or are you saying that poor Asian or white kids don't exist? Or are you omitting them because you haven't seen poor white or Asian kids? Or that the "white supremacist" system works for poor white and Asian kids? Or are you omitting them for some other reason?
I see what you're doing and I do not appreciate it.
I don't think you see what I'm doing. You're framing poverty and bad schools as exclusively, or at least largely a black and brown problem. I would submit to you that there are far, far more whites who live in poverty, so the problem of poverty and bad schools cuts across ethnic lines.
To that end, here's some statistics for you. Current census estimates that there are 328,239,523 people in the U.S. Here's the breakdown by population:
60.1% are non-Hispanic whites or 197,271,953. 10.1% of those live in poverty, or 19,924,467
5.9% are Asian, or 19,366,123. 10.1% of those live in poverty, or 1,955, 979.
18.5% are Latinx, or 60,724,312. 17.6% of those live in poverty, or 10,687,479.
13.4% are African American, or 43,984,096. 20.8% of those live in poverty, or 9,148,692.
1.3% are indigenous, or 4,267,114. 25.4% of those live in poverty, or 1,083,847.
In other words, 20,920,018 African American, Latinx and Indigenous people fit the definition of poverty. About 1 million more, or 21,880,447 white and Asian people fit the definition of poverty. I'm just suggesting two things:
- first, that poverty and poor schools are not exclusively limited to black, brown and indigenous people, which is what I inferred from your comments.
- second, white non-Hispanic voters preferred Trump by a 21% margin in 2016. Maybe if the Democrats hadn't both completely ignored impoverished whites and also equated all whites with white supremacy, then perhaps Trump wouldn't have been elected and the COVID problem wouldn't have been so bad under the benign overlordship of Hilary Clinton.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
I admire your stamina, and - as always - the diligence in providing actual facts and links.
FWIW, I regard posts by JAF more as anthropological curiosities than meaningful comments. I wouldn't bother answering if I were you.
Thanks for making very clear that responding to you is a waste of time as you are not interested in actually learning anything. It'll save me time from responding to your nonsense moving forward.
RE: lex24 - BostonCard - 10-20-2020
(10-20-2020, 03:16 PM)JustAnotherFan Wrote: Thanks for making very clear that responding to you is a waste of time as you are not interested in actually learning anything. It'll save me time from responding to your nonsense moving forward.
From someone who might be sympathetic to your cause and who is definitely interested in learning something: your case would be much stronger if you actually gave us an argument to support your case and recommendations for what you would like to see. I may have missed something in this thread, but everything I have read from you was a critique of the educational system. And, while I don't doubt that critiques of the system are warranted, they are pretty empty in the absence of ways to improve, alternatives. If you support the unschooling movement (as one of your earlier posts intimated), I would be very interested in how to operationalize it. I support many of the values it espouses (encouraging exploration and self-direction; eschewing competition and testing), but (perhaps) paradoxically, I think that those goals ought to be achieved by re-orienting existing educational institutions rather than abolishing them altogether, which is what your posts seem to support. If that's the case, then I'd really like to hear the how.
BC
RE: lex24 - JustAnotherFan - 10-20-2020
(10-20-2020, 03:27 PM)BostonCard Wrote:(10-20-2020, 03:16 PM)JustAnotherFan Wrote: Thanks for making very clear that responding to you is a waste of time as you are not interested in actually learning anything. It'll save me time from responding to your nonsense moving forward.
From someone who might be sympathetic to your cause and who is definitely interested in learning something: your case would be much stronger if you actually gave us an argument to support your case and recommendations for what you would like to see. I may have missed something in this thread, but everything I have read from you was a critique of the educational system. And, while I don't doubt that critiques of the system are warranted, they are pretty empty in the absence of ways to improve, alternatives. If you support the unschooling movement (as one of your earlier posts intimated), I would be very interested in how to operationalize it. I support many of the values it espouses (encouraging exploration and self-direction; eschewing competition and testing), but (perhaps) paradoxically, I think that those goals ought to be achieved by re-orienting existing educational institutions rather than abolishing them altogether, which is what your posts seem to support. If that's the case, then I'd really like to hear the how.
BC
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. I used to be a supporter of the charter school movement and then of community school solutions to improve schooling, but I now recognize that the notion that we can turn an oppressive institution into a liberatory one is a foolish one. Instead of spending my life trying to marginally lessen the harm of schooling I prefer to support liberatory efforts that can make oppressive institutions obsolete. Schooling as an institution is structured to harm children, whether or not educators are willing to recognize it. It takes away autonomy from children and forces them to perform, sometimes making the kids believe that it is the only way that they can be successful in life. We can lobby and beg for generations to eliminate age segregation, mandated curriculum, homework, testing, grading, and ranking, but the change won't come by lobbying and begging. So I'm sorry but I don't have any suggestions on how to re-orient existing educational institutions. Like policing, they must be abolished and something better needs to be developed in order to prove that we can have a healthy, educated society without having to accept the collateral damage of millions of lives destroyed in the process.
Unschoolers are leading the way, and there are Self-Directed Education communities around the country showing that children can be trusted to take the lead on their education. That eschewing the standard school curriculum, and all the practices and structures built up around it, does not leave these kids any worse off, and in many cases allowing them to escape schooling is saving their lives. When a critical mass of children are allowed to opt out of conventional schooling (public and private), and there is no data that suggests they are worse off for it (other than temporary performance related to the meaningless curriculum), and there is ample data that shows they are better off for it, then ideally we would be able to reallocate public funds to support children instead of supporting schools (and schools of education need to start studying this). That money could then be used to support education resource centers (e.g., libraries, maker spaces, workshops) where the Learners are free to come and go and use it as it fits their needs, as well as funded apprenticeships for those who are interested. Both would be far easier to take advantage of when children are freed from being forced to spend 15,000 hours in school.
And it's okay if most people grasp their chests and can't believe that kids might not be forced to learn long division or the components of a cell. We don't need their support.