Just more evidence that the world has gone mad
[Hat tip: Ace.]
Well, well, well, who could have possibly predicted this? And please, make sure you schedule in ten minutes of meditation before and after you read it, because it’s going to cause some serious upset:
Convinced traditional discipline is racist because blacks are suspended at higher rates than whites, New York City’s Department of Education has in all but the most serious and dangerous offenses replaced out-of-school suspensions with a touchy-feely alternative punishment called “restorative justice,” which isn’t really punishment at all. It’s therapy.
“Every reasonable effort must be made to correct student behavior through”¦restorative practices,” advises the city’s new 32-page discipline code.
Except everywhere it’s been tried, this softer approach has backfired.
Yes, other large urban school districts are reporting fewer suspensions since adopting the non-punitive approach. But that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer infractions.
In fact, many districts are seeing more classroom disruptions and violence ”” a national trend that ought to set off warning bells for New York school officials.
What’s more, the movement ”” which is driven by new race-based anti-discipline guidelines issued by the Obama administration ”” is creating friction between teachers unions and the liberal mayors they otherwise support…
Last month, for instance, the Chicago Teachers Union complained the city’s revised student-discipline code has left teachers struggling to control unruly kids.
“It’s just basically been a totally lawless few months,” one teacher told the Chicago Tribune.
Please read the whole thing. One more excerpt:
“I was terrified and bullied by a fourth-grade student,” a teacher at a Los Angeles Unified School District school recently noted on the Los Angeles Times website. “The black student told me to ”˜Back off, b””h.’ I told him to go to the office and he said, ”˜No, b””h, and no one can make me.’ ”…
In neighboring Orange County, teachers are dealing with increasingly violent and disrespectful student behavior since schools there also switched to the restorative strategy.
Recently mandated “positive interventions” have only exacerbated discipline problems in the largely minority Santa Ana public school district, where middle-school kids now regularly smoke pot in bathrooms ”” some even in class ”” and attack staff ”” spitting on teachers, pelting them with eggs, even threatening to stab them, according to the Orange County Register.
It goes on and on and on.
[NOTE: About a year and a half ago I wrote a post about how Obama and Holder were intent on transforming the schools in this way in order to make the stats work out they way they’d like them to.]
Does anyone believe that if the majority of incidents were white students attacking black or white teachers, instead of the other way around, that these new discipline methods would be imposed.
jvermeer:
I think “discipline methods” should be in quotes, don’t you?
Officer Krupke, you’re really a square
This boy don’t need a judge, he needs an analyst’s care
It’s just his neurosis that oughta be curbed
He’s psychologically disturbed!
Any policy in fundamental opposition to reality will, in direct proportion to the degree of denial of reality, increase the severity of reality’s reactive consequence.
In practical terms, it is just a matter of time till the consequential result of “restorative justice” is the murder of teachers by those
unruly kidsmoral barbarians.It is a certainty that the ‘unrulyness’ will escalate into homicides.
“In 1940, teachers were asked what they regarded as the three major problems in American schools. They identified the three major problems as: Littering, noise, and chewing gum.
Teachers last year were asked what the three major problems in American schools were, and they defined them as: Rape, assault, and suicide.” William Bennett
I have it all figured out. These ideas are pushed by people who are getting the big bucks from the private school industry.
Oakland is mentioned in the linked article as a place trying this approach but that still has bad discipline problems. Yet they announced in January that they’re expanding the program to all schools in the district. I guess it’s because they’re mostly interested in bottom-line numbers — for example, they report that “graduation rates increased 60 percent at high schools with the programs, compared to 7 percent at schools without them, and chronic absenteeism dropped 24 percent at middle schools with the programs, compared to a 62 percent increase at those middle schools that didn’t have them.”
Denigrating individual dignity and debasing human life has consequences. Conflating and idealizing the four logical domains: scientific, philosophical, faith, and fantasy, has set our civilization back several hundred years. Liberal indulgence in [statistical] inference to claim causality has warped our society, civilization, and humanity.
That said, the madness did not begin, but was conclusive, when we not only tolerated but normalized the fantasy of spontaneous conception and a pro-choice or selective religion; cult, really.
Dissociation of risk is the opiate of the masses and elites too.
Which reminds me of that old Toyota commercial: “You asked for it, you got it.”
I suspect that very few of the people who believe that racism, not poor behavior, is the leading cause for higher discipline rates for black students have spent any time teaching.
The black administrators I knew certainly didn’t believe it. Most of them were pretty hard-nosed.
Though there are potential exceptions. There was the black principal who wrote her doctorate on some thing like “critical race theory applied to black female principals.” What made the dissertation topic amusing was that she didn’t get her principal contract renewed. Competence, not “critical race theory,” was the issue.
encounter daily micro-invalidations,-aggressions, and -assaults
I’m waiting for the complaints about nano, pico and femto-invalidations etc.
The Tao explains it all – the bigger the front, the bigger the back, i.e., the greater the insanity, the greater the insanity that follows it. Status quo ante is an option only theoretically. As with most theories there isn’t a chance of it happening until all crackpot remedial options – in this case positive reinforcement, self-esteem boosterism, therapy, third ways, and last, but not least, approbative dispensation, – are all exhausted and all that remains is social rubble.
On a second’s thought though, they’re not really crackpot remedies, they’re more a subset of Cloward-Piven demolition tacticians — yes? Is there anyone, living and sentient, so obtuse to as to think any of this has anything to do with anything but razing Western Christian civilization to the ground — of which these remedies act as pretense in the form of nostrums? Who’ll notice?
“Is there anyone, living and sentient, so obtuse to as to think any of this has anything to do with anything but razing Western Christian civilization to the ground”
Put me down for obtuse George. Approximately 9% of Americans rarely or never take pride in being an American. Those are the Marxist-‘Progressives’, who fervently wish to raze “Western Christian civilization to the ground”.
The other 41-43% of Americans who voted for Obama in 2012 are the duped, useful idiots that have bought into the left’s narrative. They are blind to their manipulation in the destruction of America by that traitorous 9%.
Elements of that 9% may well have originated “restorative justice” but it is the liberal dupes that enable it to inculcate itself into American schools. Those well-meaning liberal dupes have no wish to raze Western civilization but having been indoctrinated into the left’s memes and narrative… believe in and base their perceptions of reality upon that leftist indoctrination. Accordingly, that 41% sincerely believe in leftist prescriptions like “restorative justice”, as part of the ‘answer’.
The Achilles heel of that 9% is the duped 41%, without them the left’s power evaporates. We cannot defeat the left by placing all who voted for Obama into the same ideological cart.
TWO EPIC FAILS: STARBUCKS ON RACE, OBAMA’S BIBI VENDETTA
http://radio.foxnews.com/2015/03/18/two-epic-fails-starbucks-on-race-obamas-bibi-vendetta/
“The other 41-43% of Americans who voted for Obama in 2012 are the duped, useful idiots that have bought into the left’s narrative.”
Not buying it. Not any more. No more benefitting them the doubt. I’d have bought the ‘dupes’ and ‘useful idiots’ defense when it was not yet known what the Lib/Prog/Left had wrought. But we have now the evidence — exhibits A through ZZ. Anyone still unaware of the societal/cultural, rubble about them, anyone who is insensate to the fetor, is either not sentient, or is of such as nature as is the wont of evil, but are too lazy to make political pretense of there animus, virulent execration, of all that is good, decent, all that had built the greatest civilization, and even nature itself. No more excusing the inexcusable. Nicht mehr. Non pié¹. Pas plus. No mas. ×œ× ×™×•×ª×¨. لا أكثر.
The left sow and nurture the seeds of their own destruction. Robespierre ultimately put his own head under the blade of the guillotine. Unfortunately they take everyone else down with them. Prepare to crawl out from under the rubble and the ashes.
I personally am not unhappy to see the tumult in the big city public schools. Kids from decent families don’t attend, and our esteemed Federal government and teachers’ unions will not give struggling poor families an alternative to the public school crap, fighting charter schools tooth and nail. The touchy-feely self-esteem whites-are-racist movement is simply inheriting what it planted.
Serves them right. Beat Up Mor Teetchers, and Eat Mor Chiken.
DC,
I agree. Without destruction of the leftist agenda, there can be no return to sanity. Let a thousand Fergusons, Detroits, DC, and Oaklands burn down to the ground. We are on the cusp of the burning time. Let it burn. Flyover country will survive.
“Not buying it. Not any more. No more benefitting them the doubt. I’d have bought the ‘dupes’ and ‘useful idiots’ defense when it was not yet known what the Lib/Prog/Left had wrought.” George Pal
But they don’t know and no amount of “but they ought to” will change the reality of their ignorant blindness. ALL human beings process information through their belief systems, which act as ‘filters’ just as surely as rose colored glasses make the world look rosy. This is why the effects of the leftist academia and MSM are so profound.
It’s part of the human condition that once indoctrinated, once ‘brainwashed’… contradictory information tends to be dismissed as unreliable and false. When conservatives argue with liberals, their arguments are dismissed on an emotional level because anyone who promotes contradictory points of view to the political correctness with which they’ve been indoctrinated has already been labeled as racist, greedy and evil.
So, would you really listen to and accept the POV of a Nazi? Or would you decide that the more persuasive, the less believable because Nazis are bad people, whose motives are hateful…
And it is quite possible that if they had enforced stricter punishment – instead of playing it down and changing the language from “stolen” property to “found” property – maybe, just maybe Trayvon Martin would not be dead.
If his parents had grounded him instead of letting him go to the store for “skittles” he wouldn’t have been something for Zimmerman to check out.
To so easily dismiss the troubles Black (or any race) young males (or females) get into is setting them up for failure in life.
If not detention or suspension now; then prison (or death) tomorrow.
Blame racism all they want; But, Zimmerman is alive Trayvon is dead.
HUG those Feeeelings,’Yo. Wascally wacists spewing disciplinary wacism at po’innocent black kids. Baaaaad.
See my old post Penny in the Fusebox:
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_archive.html#111697211443154968
Also, read about this British school that knew how to improve the educational climate for a single day…the day the Inspectors were coming…but would not, or was not allowed to, use the same method to improve the school on an ongoing basis.
Potemkin Schoolhouse:
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_archive.html#112101137433534663
”ALL human beings process information through their belief systems…
… once ‘brainwashed’… contradictory information tends to be dismissed as unreliable and false…
…So, would you really listen to and accept the POV of a Nazi?
Geoffrey,
You continue to make a point that all this is just a matter of expositional competition, dueling narratives, a tournament of poses. It is well beyond that point. A NAZI’s POV might have my interest if he had made the argument that National Socialism had revived the German middle class (ruined in the great inflation), had made Volkwagen — the people’s car, and had built the Autobahn. Now, who could not be for a strong national/economic backbone, industry, and infrastructure? I would not be so beguiled, though once I’d seen the death camps, slave camps, Zyklon B showers, limed mass graves, ovens, lamp shades of human skin, etc.. etc., etc. I’ll say it again, the empirical evidence of our decay is superabundant. When up to the neck in decaying bodies or decaying civilization, there are no more excuses.
In the 1980s, novelist John Updike had this to say about Bill Ayers’ (Barry Obama’s political mentor) Weather Underground radicals.
— “For years I carried in my wallet, like a fortune-cookie slip somehow more than amusing, a statement from the underground Weathermen:
“We are against everything that’s good and decent in honky America. We will loot, burn, and destroy. We are the incubation of your mother’s nightmare.”
That’s it in a nutshell. You see, they KNOW they’re evil: and they EXULT in it.
I did my part today. I bought more ammo.
“You continue to make a point that all this is just a matter of expositional competition, dueling narratives, a tournament of poses.” George Pal
No, that is not my point. I fully agree as to the malevolence of the hard core left and have repeatedly indicated agreement with that viewpoint. It is in the assertion that all/most liberals to be of that ilk where I strongly disagree.
That the 9% have, with the assistance of the 41% brought things to this disastrous pass I do not dispute and have repeatedly indicated that IMO the core of America’s problem is the spiritual/willful blindness of that 41% without whom the 9% are powerless. But most LIV’s “spiritual/willful blindness” is that of the well meaning fool not that of those who seek power and control for its own sake.
The tragedy is that if America’s 41% continues its obtuseness, violent confrontation will be unavoidable because the hard core left is preparing for it and, at a time of their choosing, will instigate it as a necessary means to finalizing permanent control.
Two points:
The MSM propaganda machine helps keep those 41% (or more) utterly clueless; or at least does its best to prevent them from seeing and knowing things it wants to prevent them from seeing. (Though this is not to absolve people of seeking alternatives to their blinkered “reality”.)
The VW bug (as long as we’re talking about them), it seems, was designed/invented by a Jew in the 30s. (Shushhh…)
I would find it more humiliating to emote away with a “talking stick” (!) than to just get scolded or kicked out of the classroom…
On a separate note, many children do very well with a gentle approach and non-punitive methods. The latter, however, can only function in a context in which there is *also* a possibility of getting punished “for real”.
It reminds me of the debate they are currently having in France – they have it every couple of years – as to whether they should follow the enlightened EU directives and expressly outlaw all physical correction of children in all contexts. Most people recognize that the point is not that children “should” be slapped around when they misbehave, but that something does change psychologically if they know that that is *also* a (legal) means for their parents to re-establish order. An implied threat is often enough to virtually never have to actually _use_ a weapon at your disposal. It is there in your arsenal, but _because_ it is there, you can be much softer at your discretion.
A similar dynamic goes on in schools. If teachers *have* proper punitive measures in their arsenal – if they *can* yell, suspend, kick the kids out of the classrooms until they behave, scold them in front of the class, remove any privileges etc. – paradoxically, they may find themselves using those a lot less than they thought AND having enough room for discretion and for a soft, “restorative” approach where they see fit.
It is not that they are _wrong_ who claim that many children can be raised with much more gentle ways than the “traditional” ones, it is that it is dangerous to _rule out_ a possibility of being punished – which is what these schools are doing.
The left seems to think it can fix the problems that arise from lousy parenting. In fact, having to do so provides lots of jobs for “their people.” Maybe they should find a way to punish the parents.
Teaching, the reality. Sad.
Those Who Are Kind To The Cruel, In The End Will Be Cruel To The Kind…
TWICE!