The solution would have to start with a heavy proactive police initiative in those neighborhoods with the highest crime rates and inside the schools as well.
Gary is a failed city, the schools simply reflect it.
If you want real change it has to start at the ballot box, quit repeating 77 years of failure.
Hell, they don’t even attempt to define it.
No they are not a worse option by any measure. In many cases they produce superior outcomes for far less money.
If that’s the case we don’t need them, we need teachers dedicated to the welfare and education of the students.
Create the proper conditions and the good teachers will return and the education departments at colleges will be turning away applicants because they lack the room for them.
Bad public schools also taught me to read. So, just point out, you originally used the word never.
This is a pretty pedantic interpretation of what @SottoVoce was getting at.
I don’t think the claim was that a school will literally be unable to teach kids from 'weak homes" anything at all. I think the point being made was that the influence of a bad home life is a much stronger force in most kids lives than a school generally is. Kids from weak homes often bring their baggage, and troubles, and fears, and worries to school, and a massive weight is laid at the feet of the people at school to try to help this kid meet their educational needs, emotional and mental needs, nutritional needs, etc. 7-8 hours a day to overcome, well, their entire way of life outside school.
Just pointing out, not all poor kids from bad homes are stupid kids who are unable to understand education is their ticket out of a bad situation.
There’s that pedantic fog I mentioned earlier.
This would seem to be about the poster.
[quote=“SottoVoce, post:56, topic:233971, full:true”]
There are definitely anecdotal accounts of people growing up in broken homes and finding ways of overcoming the odds, but Sotto is right those are the exceptions. Let me ask this Zantax, what were the influences in your life that prompted you to succeed?
[quote=“Eagle-Keeper, post:70, topic:233971, full:true”]
Books, school, television, radio, life, my wife. It was fairly easy to find out there were other ways to live, better ways, than what my family was doing.
I am of course not saying that people born into poverty aren’t more likely statistically to stay there, but that doesn’t mean its incredible rare that they don’t. Three out of four of us made it out and the fourth was due to mental illness.
The fog of pedantry might give that impression, but no, it was most certainly about the pedantic nit picks and assertions.
There’s really no such thing as “bad schools” in an actual sense. What is a school other than a building with desks, books, computers, teachers etc. The teachers there are largely good people and knowledgeable in their subjects (I’ve met many of them). I can tell you that the problem is that the so-called difficult students have not desire to conform to the traditional method of education that largely has not changed in 50-60 years. They don’t want to sit in classrooms and listen to boring lectures on material that is largely irrelevant to the practical matters of employment and earning a living. Reforming education to take a more practical approach I believe could do a lot to help fix so-called bad schools.
So basically that exploration helped you find it within yourself to desire a better way of life. The unfortunate reality is that for many kids in broken homes what influences them are their peers and environment around them.
When I say bad school, for the most part, I mean schools full of poor kids with parents who don’t value education. The schools were fine, if you could avoid being beaten, robbed or killed by the other students and tolerate the excruciatingly boring class time wasted by discipline problems.
And you are not wrong. It is an oversimplification to claim that the home environment predominates the school environment, they are not separate but rather subs of the environment. In fact it is likely the opposite. Approval from school seems to be more important than that of one parent.
Many children with bad home environments seek what they are not getting at home from school.
Male teachers (coaches) become surrogate fathers. Older peers become big brothers or uncles. Cliques provide herd requirements. Female teachers meet nurturing requirements.
It’s fine, as long as the school is able to meet (to at least some level) those needs. That’s when we see the Lean On Me movie. When the school fails as well as the family, we see utter failure. Unless the individual has the will to take what they can get (reading) and overcome everybody not being there for them. Tough row to hoe and not everybody has the strength to do it.
I would offer you probably learned to read in spite of the bad school, not because of it. Survivors tend to do that.
The use of the word “pedantic” was dismissive and pretentious in my opinion. Especially the second time. I wouldn’t expect further serious conversation from that quarter.
School didn’t teach me to read, I learned that so young I have no memory of not being able to do so.
Just going by what you posted here:
And one of the first things I did after I learned to read, was seek out information on family dysfunction and poverty, started doing that in fourth grade. So it didn’t take long to find the answers I needed about what was happening to me and why and how not to repeat it. So when I was failing in my twenties I also knew why and who’s fault it was, mine.
