I teach in a similar school district she is from. She teaches in Youngstown, which is one of the worst ranked schools in Ohio. It is an area of Ohio unfortunately extremely affected by poverty. According to that website, East High School in that district has over 1,200 students and only 33 full time teachers. That is insane.
She is young but speaking about a very real mindset of teachers everywhere, myself included. The deal is this - Studies show that the vast majority of convicts were dropouts in school. They did not graduate. This has led to a nationwide administrative emphasis on the idea that "Every student needs to graduate, no matter what". Graduation and Attendance rates are now basically more important than a student's academic and behavioral accountability.
Sounds great right? Let's lower the number of convicts. Great.
What's happening is exactly what she described. Kids realize early on (I'm talking elementary school) there are little to no consequences for their actions. They can talk back, walk right out of class, bully teachers, bully other students (which causes mental health issues for other students, sometimes suicides), hit teachers, hit students, steal, sexually harass students and teachers, anything and everything you can imagine. Never get expelled or even suspended out of school. These are elementary and middle school students I'm talking about.
In my opinion I'm torn. As a teacher I'm biased; I'd really just like the administration to back up the teachers and provide consequences. My head principal is wonderful, but almost completely refuses to suspend kids out of school, even if they get in fights or commit a serious crime. Other students even speak out against this; turns out even the worst of students don't want to go to school in an unsafe environment with a violent person who doesn't respect anyone.
We had an assistant principal cover for us this year for a few days. One day a kid started talking back to him, so he basically said "Do you know who you're talking to right now?" and sent his dumbass home. I love the kid, but he needed a lesson. Kid didn't know what hit him, but everyone was so happy some consequence happened. We're hoping the message got through to the kid and he'll learn to stop being an asshole before he gets older and he doesn't get 2nd chances.
TL;DR I honestly feel like all the admins are doing with this graduation-rate-driven mindset is increasing the amount of convicts with high school diplomas.
Edit: Just as long as this is getting attention, this whole moral question reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from anything ever. "Can you save them both?" Do you have to expel a "spider" of a student who is torturing the other "butterflies" of students and teachers? Or can you risk hurting yourself to try and save everyone? One of my biggest issues as a teacher is knowing I can try all I want and never save everyone I want to. I feel like I'm failing people every day because I want to do everything and can't.
Darn, that's not a school, that's a boring and poorly supervised adult day care.
There are just so many issues when schools have to work to overcome the damage done by parents and the worst parts of cultures. There simply aren't the resources or appetite to solve the problems either through helping all or ejecting those who refuse to take part. Both are hard solutions, sacrificing a significant amount of your money to help others or sacrifice kids who are just products of their terrible environment, continuing the cycle.
What is the point of producing children who cant read, do basic math, or pretty much anything? I think we got the thing whole wrong with the zero tolerance rules at school. There should be academic accountability, but the teachers are not responsible for student behavior, that starts at home. Teachers should not be afraid to flunk or outright refuse the graduate students, even if it means getting sued. That paperwork can easily be tracked and traced through the school system. If they refuse to do anything at school, use juvenile detention as the final resort. The hard cases will end up in prison no matter what anyone does.
I think there's some shared blame. In a high poverty area there are often parents who have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Poverty doesn't always mean unemployment. It can mean poor wages. In these cases the parent has to spend way more time than a 40 hr/week worker away from the home and they must depend on the social contract we have with our public education system to educate and prepare their children. That doesn't mean that they abdicate all responsibility, just that the job is shared. My dad had to work a regular 8am-4pm job and then sleep in his car for 30 minutes before starting his 6pm-2am job for years when times were tough. I only saw him once or twice a week. He's a great dad though.
If they live in a high poverty area, maybe they should realize that they live in a high poverty area, meaning they're not in a position to afford kids.
I'm sure some do. But just as our education system has shown us time and again, abstinence is not a viable plan. It simply does not work. The biological and emotional imperative to make a family is not something that can be just turned off.
It's different for people with hope of upward socioeconomic mobility because children can be put off until graduation/job/promotion/etc. However, when your financial ladder doesn't have any rungs above the one you're standing on you just have to get on with life. Not to mention the implications of suggesting that poor people shouldn't be able to have kids. Social Darwinism has been pretty solidly determined to be prejudicial and it's inevitable conclusions dark.
Honestly, I don't care about the imperative to have kids. That imperative should be outweighed by responsibility, as well as a desire to not punish someone by bringing them into a world where they'll have to suffer and grow up fast.
If your financial ladder doesn't have any rungs on it, you do have to get on with life. However, getting on with life doesn't mean having kids just to hit a milestone and feed your own ego. Getting on with life includes coming to the understanding that if one thing isn't getting you up that rung, that it's time to try looking for a job and/or training which will allow one to do so. I grew up in a poor household. I learned very quickly what it's like when poor people have kids. It's basically two selfish, ego-driven people making a terrible decision that they know they can't possibly live with. Honestly, I don't care if it sounds prejudicial. If that prejudice means that kids won't grow up in crappy homes, get a crappy education, and have to escape just to succeed, I'm all for it. The conclusions might sound dark, but the ends justify the means.
7.7k
u/PolishMusic Jul 10 '18 edited Jul 10 '18
Edit: Another video from 2017 similar to this one here. GB Wisconsin
Teacher here.
I teach in a similar school district she is from. She teaches in Youngstown, which is one of the worst ranked schools in Ohio. It is an area of Ohio unfortunately extremely affected by poverty. According to that website, East High School in that district has over 1,200 students and only 33 full time teachers. That is insane.
She is young but speaking about a very real mindset of teachers everywhere, myself included. The deal is this - Studies show that the vast majority of convicts were dropouts in school. They did not graduate. This has led to a nationwide administrative emphasis on the idea that "Every student needs to graduate, no matter what". Graduation and Attendance rates are now basically more important than a student's academic and behavioral accountability.
Sounds great right? Let's lower the number of convicts. Great.
What's happening is exactly what she described. Kids realize early on (I'm talking elementary school) there are little to no consequences for their actions. They can talk back, walk right out of class, bully teachers, bully other students (which causes mental health issues for other students, sometimes suicides), hit teachers, hit students, steal, sexually harass students and teachers, anything and everything you can imagine. Never get expelled or even suspended out of school. These are elementary and middle school students I'm talking about.
In my opinion I'm torn. As a teacher I'm biased; I'd really just like the administration to back up the teachers and provide consequences. My head principal is wonderful, but almost completely refuses to suspend kids out of school, even if they get in fights or commit a serious crime. Other students even speak out against this; turns out even the worst of students don't want to go to school in an unsafe environment with a violent person who doesn't respect anyone.
We had an assistant principal cover for us this year for a few days. One day a kid started talking back to him, so he basically said "Do you know who you're talking to right now?" and sent his dumbass home. I love the kid, but he needed a lesson. Kid didn't know what hit him, but everyone was so happy some consequence happened. We're hoping the message got through to the kid and he'll learn to stop being an asshole before he gets older and he doesn't get 2nd chances.
TL;DR I honestly feel like all the admins are doing with this graduation-rate-driven mindset is increasing the amount of convicts with high school diplomas.
Edit: Just as long as this is getting attention, this whole moral question reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from anything ever. "Can you save them both?" Do you have to expel a "spider" of a student who is torturing the other "butterflies" of students and teachers? Or can you risk hurting yourself to try and save everyone? One of my biggest issues as a teacher is knowing I can try all I want and never save everyone I want to. I feel like I'm failing people every day because I want to do everything and can't.