The weird thing is, the sticking point for the mother of the Baltimore high school senior seems not to be that he's 18 now and hasn't learned anything, or that she's not allowed to send him to a school that actually functions, but that he's being "punished" by being sent back to 9th grade after being socially promoted for years.
“Why would he do three more years in school? He didn’t fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that’s the problem here. He didn’t deserve that. He’s a good kid. Where’s the mentors? Where is the help for him? I hate that this is happening to my child,” said an emotional France.She never minded before that he wasn't learning anything and failed nearly all of his classes. It's just that now he doesn't get a diploma.
11 comments:
Maybe it's not so much the school system that failed him as much as it is the Mother that failed him by not kicking him off the video games, and making him do his homework and studying more.
Not just him. It sounds as though half the class didn't bother showing up either--his class rank was about midway.
I wonder if this is the result of the educational equivalent of "going fetal" in policing. And I wonder why somebody finally said No--maybe state rules they couldn't dodge?
Juxtaposition (Steve Hayward, Powerline)
Ms French has enrolled her son in a "choice-lottery" school. She and her son had to pick that school AND be picked BY that school.
It's a bit odd that either of them only now complains.
From Christopher B's link:
"Finally, for more than 25 years Charles Murray has been attacked by everyone who doesn’t actually read his books for pointing out that the differences within groups on things like standardized tests are more important than differences between groups."
That's a reasonable point that I don't think I've ever heard any of his critics address.
So this appears to be a dreadful exemplar of the multi-generational failure of Baltimore's public schools. The mother is incapable of critical thought, cannot reason her way through the problem at hand, does not realize her son is permanently disadvantaged by his school system (because she is, too), and can only think to blame the school in a show of emotion. It's the school's fault. Of course, I'm making assumptions about her. But how could any politician stand by and watch this transpire?
I guess that answer is somewhere in their reactions to the work of Charles Murray.
" But how could any politician stand by and watch this transpire?"
Is that politician more likely to be re-elected by an emotional easily swayed person or by an analytical logical person?
That's how education...including higher education...has been marketed for several decades: Get the (diploma, degree) or you will be a failure.
Good point, Raven.
Yes, it's the old political calculus of the Democrat Machine. There's no real opportunity there, all the industrious people left for greener pastures, the intelligent people have left the wasteland and gone on to better and more interesting opportunities elsewhere, leaving the ghetto intact and still crumbling - but there's still plenty of revenue left in a city full of the underclass, still scams to be run, plenty of legislative relief to keep the kleptocracy subsidized in their lifestyles.....
...there's still plenty of revenue left in a city full of the underclass, still scams to be run....
It's how the dime stores made money and today's deep discount stores make money. All those nickels and dimes add up for the seller. Except that, for the vast most part, the dime and discount stores were and are honest operations where the buyer gets some actual value for his nickel.
Eric Hines
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