American Education

[anon71262119]

@pat

I tried and tried to steer my daughter to take latin, but noooo, she picked spanish. I tried to explain that not only is latin easier, but if she were to go into nursing or veterinary, it would help A LOT. Nope…

HA! We only like dead languages, or languages spoken by a very small percentage of the earth’s population. wink. Spanish can be so useful, so that’s great, Pat!

Sometimes it comes down to find the best teacher, and take whatever they’re teaching. The Latin teacher at our high school is this really popular, on fire with passion, clearly loves their job, just fantastic teacher. All the kids just love him, and say he’s fun but HARD, and they learn a ton from him. And they do Junior Classical League (JCL) where they grab their bed sheets and travel up to San Fransisco or LA and run around competing with other schools in a toga. If you have the option to take Spanish from a kinda average, not very exciting teacher, or take Latin from the most fabulous teacher EVER then you take Latin.

[hugh_gilly]

@anon71262119

Black children, or at least inner-city black children, are ineducable.

While this is wrong, what do you attribute the cause of the racial disparity in education between White and Black people?

[anon71262119]

@hugh_gilly

While this is wrong, what do you attribute the cause of the racial disparity in education between White and Black people?

Gosh, I don’t know if I’m qualified to answer that question, Hugh.

Please, anyone else with ideas feel free to jump in. This could really be a great topic in itself.

Just a couple of thoughts.

It’s a combination of factors. First, I highly recommend watching episodes of Everybody Hates Chris. Start with season one. Great show.

Let’s say you start a great school like Boys’ Latin, and you recruit some really strong, dedicated teachers. You’ve still got poor kids dealing with urban gangs and basic safety. Single moms who are often young and uneducated or elderly grandmothers who can’t always help with homework. A lack of strong male role models. Fathers are profoundly important. We could go into all the problems with unemployment and disproportionate incarceration rates among Black men, and unintended effects of generational welfare.

Just a host of factors working against these kids, so despite having a really great school, you’re likely to have more kids really struggle or drop out. Still, the great school and usually a parent who is motivated enough to get their kid into the school, will be the thing that will save some of those kids. A strong church community can help mediate some of this, definitely, but nothing replaces a strong intact family very well, Hugh.

Once you have an economically blighted area, it’s very hard to bring businesses and jobs in, which has a snowball effect in giving people less reason to value education and job skills. Fewer opportunities. Nobody wants to go start a new business in a high crime area. Really, for the residents, teaching small business development and giving micro loans for trade schools, or helping parents start a small businesses out of their homes is one way to go at this.

About economically blighted areas, New Haven, CT is a good example of a poor, urban, high crime area. When a pizza chain announced that they were opening up a new restaurant, they got something like 500 applications for maybe 15 minimum wage level jobs. Yale University is just down the street. It’s easier to get into Yale than for a local kid to get a job at this pizza place. That’s just stunning, right?

[MoreMuscle]

@pat

At least she didn’t take French…I don’t know anybody who passes French.

I did 4 years of French. Wish I would’ve done Spanish.

[hugh_gilly]

This is quite a challenging question with lots of points so I’ll address them separately.

@anon71262119

You’ve still got poor kids dealing with urban gangs and basic safety.

No one can prosper when their own safety and security is at risk. A farmer wouldn’t make lots of crops if wolves were trying to eat him everytime he went outside. I agree with you on this.[quote=“anon71262119, post:243, topic:226179”]
You’ve still got poor kids dealing with urban gangs and basic safety. Single moms who are often young and uneducated or elderly grandmothers who can’t always help with homework. A lack of strong male role models. Fathers are profoundly important.
[/quote]

Broken families as some put it is one of the main reasons for the disparity as Black families have significantly higher single motherhood rates.

@anon71262119

disproportionate incarceration rates among Black men

Black people commit far more crimes than White people do proportionally in America.

Another issue for the disparity I can think of would be the ridiculous amount of Black vs Black "gang"warfare occurring.

[MoreMuscle]

@hugh_gilly

Black people commit far more crimes than White people do proportionally in America.

This is really only truly valid for murder and robbery which make up 4,000 and 44, 000 of the 9.5 million crimes in America respectively.
We have had this discussion before unfortunately.

AA Folks use/deal drugs at about the same rate as other races (+ or - 1-2% with exceptions of Asians who use at at a remarkably lower rate than anyone else) but are locked up at a much higher rate --likely related to higher rates of policing and population density with some bias thrown in I’m sure.

Outside of those two crimes, most crimes are within reason given population size and general density.

Edit: for Clarity cause Raj might say Blacks commit 48,000 murders

[anon71262119]

@hugh_gilly

Black people commit far more crimes than White people do proportionally in America.

Another issue for the disparity I can think of would be the ridiculous amount of Black vs Black "gang"warfare occurring.

Well, by disparity I was thinking of things like this. When you look at crime, Black men are more likely than Whites to do jail time, and to get a harsher sentence for the same offense.

In terms of violent crime rates, I read recently that the high homicide rates in Chicago can mostly be accounted for by looking at approximately 2,000 young gang members intent on killing each other. I’m not an expert on this, but I think we have a small number of young Black men doing the vast majority of violent crime in those areas. It’s not the whole community. It’s a community being terrorized by a few very violent young felons.

Once you move away from the young urban gang member, I’m not so sure you really have a big crime problem. Young men are WAY more likely to commit violent crimes. In fact, when you look at men in their 40s or older, you get a lot less impulsive or criminal behavior so if you can keep young men out of gangs, they become far less likely to do violent or impulsive stuff as they age.

This belongs in the Biology and Gender thread I guess, but Youth with immature frontal lobes plus Testosterone plus violent gang culture. Not good.

[anon71262119]

You beat me to it!

About young men - Notice those youtube vidoes that show idiots jumping off the house on a Pogo stick, or racking themselves while trying to ride a skateboard off something that you should never jump a skateboard off of? It’s always young men. What is wrong with you people?

[Legalsteel]

@anon71262119

It’s always young men. What is wrong with you people?

Hormones and women. We could probably eliminate most crime if we locked males up from 17-30.

Honestly, we are our own worst enemy, especially in our 20’s.

[MoreMuscle]

@anon71262119

About young men - Notice those youtube vidoes that show idiots jumping off the house on a Pogo stick, or racking themselves while trying to ride a skateboard off something that you should never jump a skateboard off of? It’s always young men. What is wrong with you people?

We are stupid. Take some really stupid risks lol.

As one of the social workers at a hospital I used to work at would say “there’s a reason they send 18 year olds to war.” I would always say they are conditioned to just go full rambo, and she would say “nah, they think they’re invincible.”

I’ve done some really stupid shit thinking I was invincible. We used to jump off our shed into the pool and onto the trampoline in our backyard. It’s a wonder my brother and I aren’t dead.

[hugh_gilly]

@MoreMuscle

This is really only truly valid for murder and robbery which make up 4,000 and 44, 000 of the 9.5 million crimes in America respectively.

I realised after powerpuff responded that I should have elaborated my statement a bit as saying crime is a bit general. Black people commit average amounts of sexual assault and other crimes but a disproportionate amount of certain violent crimes. [quote=“anon71262119, post:247, topic:226179”]
Once you move away from the young urban gang member, I’m not so sure you really have a big crime problem.
[/quote]

What do you think should be done about gangs. My problem with gangs is that they have the group anonymity factor causing deindividuation and the large amount of them causes conformity. It’s not the individual gangs that are the problem but just the whole concept of it which leads to crime. Same issue everywhere.

[pat]

I weep for the future…

War on campus | CNN

[hugh_gilly]

It’s got to the point where people are having a peaceful protest over their right to free speech, a group of Anti-Fascists show up trying to remove the “fascism” and "hate speech"of others and in turn making themselves the actual fascists by suppressing other peoples freedom.

It’s really quite astounding the level of hypocrisy and stupidity shown by the ANTIFA crowd. They should all be imprisoned for wearing masks in public, the only reason you hide your identity in public is so you can get away with crimes.

[anon71262119]

Hi Hugh. Just letting you know that I’m not ignoring you. I want to come back to your questions when I have a bit more time.

BTW, I lurked your log. Well done with your PLing. Also, I’m impressed that you’re only 17 or 18 and are so interested in American politics and history. Don’t let anyone give you a hard time here. I’m sure most posters don’t realize that you’re so young, and are not American.

I’m not sure I can adequately answer your questions about what to do about gangs, but I wanted to gather a few good sources that you might like from an educational/ know the history perspective.

[chrono]

Schools need more cultural diversity.

- YouTube

[anon71262119]

@hugh_gilly

What do you think should be done about gangs. My problem with gangs is that they have the group anonymity factor causing deindividuation and the large amount of them causes conformity. It’s not the individual gangs that are the problem but just the whole concept of it which leads to crime. Same issue everywhere.

Hugh. It’s a great comment, and your last sentence got me thinking. Since you’re from the UK, I thought I’d ask you a question. When England experienced the wave of urban riots in 2011, you had young hooligans, mostly White, moving like a gang or a mob, setting fires, breaking windows, etc… Do you see anything in common between those mostly white youths, and the youths in urban Chicago or people in Ferguson who were rioting?

Attributions for the rioters’ behaviour include such social factors such as racial tension, class tension, economic decline and the unemployment that it had brought, as well as individual factors like criminality, hooliganism, the breakdown of social morality and the development of gang culture. from the wikipedia article below
_2011 England riots - Wikipedia

Second, here’s a great clip by Thomas Sowell, talking about social policy, and education. It’s just 11 minutes. He gets into some of the problems that emerged with urban crime and fatherless families. It’s very interesting to me that these problems of very violent gangs were NOT happening post slavery, nor was Black crime or fatherless families big problems during the Jim Crow era, or for 100 years post slavery. It if were a matter of genetics or even some cultural flaw that came from earlier times, why would it NOT be a problem in the 1920s, 30s, 40s. Suddenly this problem emerges in the 1960s and gets worse over the next 50 years until the present. This points to social policy change. That is NOT to say that slavery and Jim Crow had only negligible effects, or were not important, or that Blacks did not experience discrimination, and do not continue to do so.

Thomas Sowell - Black Lives and Social Policy

[hugh_gilly]

The causes of the Ferguson and London riots were both very similar in the primary cause, a “unjustified” shooting of a young coloured man. The similar primary causes were helped by other factors that you mention.

The main difference was the ethnicity of those rioting, London riots were incredibly multi ethnic.
I think the main issue for the London riots was just people wanting a excuse to commit crimes, how is burning public transport and looting in anyway helpful to solving the situation at hand? It was criminal activity in the name of “justice”.

Both instances didn’t improve relationships between the oppressed and the supposed oppressors. Injuring police dogs on behalf of the actions of a police officer is unacceptable.

I don’t remember the London riots to well given me being 10 at the time but it was very scary for others in the cities across the country.

I can’t watch the video now but will watch later.

[ActivitiesGuy]

@anon71262119

Once you move away from the young urban gang member, I’m not so sure you really have a big crime problem. Young men are WAY more likely to commit violent crimes. In fact, when you look at men in their 40s or older, you get a lot less impulsive or criminal behavior so if you can keep young men out of gangs, they become far less likely to do violent or impulsive stuff as they age.

@hugh_gilly

What do you think should be done about gangs. My problem with gangs is that they have the group anonymity factor causing deindividuation and the large amount of them causes conformity. It’s not the individual gangs that are the problem but just the whole concept of it which leads to crime. Same issue everywhere.

Purely anecdotal here, but I’ve read a wonderful book titled The Miracle of St. Anthony that tells the story of Bob Hurley, high school basketball coach, and the St. Anthony Friars from Jersey City, NJ (sadly, after just barely hanging on financially for many years, the school is supposedly going to close next year; just can’t get enough tuition-paying students in the door).

A common theme in the book is that, over Hurley’s decades coaching at the school, many of the kids he turned into state-championship basketball players (and, much more importantly, college graduates) were running around with gangs in their youth. Only after they became part of the St. Anthony basketball team did they have a new identity, their new “colors” to wear around town.

This is much easier said than done, of course, but the key is somehow giving those would-be gangbangers an identity other than their gang; something they’re proud of, something they want to be part of. This is one reason I’m a passionate supporter of publicly-funded scholastic sports at the middle-school and high-school level. Many kids who would otherwise be going nowhere are turned into better men by participating in team sports. I’ve seen 13- and 14-year-old kids that were headed for a life as a burnout shape up after joining a sport; sure, most of them won’t become scholarship athletes but many of them just straighten out and head to college, join the military, or find some other positive avenue.

I don’t think it’s realistic, but I think it’s at least worth discussing something like compulsory participation in at least one extracurricular activity per school year. Could be the chess club, debate team, school play, sports, whatever. Just give the kids some identity. Of course, the worst of the worst deadbeats are often no-shows for school anyway, so inevitably some will not be saved. But some of those “on the fence” teetering between a productive existence and trouble might shape up.

[hugh_gilly]

@ActivitiesGuy

Just give the kids some identity.

Very good idea, it’s part of a humans social needs to be part of a in group. Making that in group be something productive and safe like a Sports team rather than a gang is a great idea.

[pat]

This is the scary part for me, we were just told, “don’t worry about it, there is nothing to see here really”, yet the stories of, I am not even sure what to call it? “Anti free-speech facism?” Are increasing everyday. Please let me go a day without hearing yet another story about speech being shut down due violence.
I agreed at first that the stories are being exaggerated and that would be that if new occurrences where freedom of speech is literally shutdown on an ever increasing basis, I changed my mind. Now is precisely the time to panic. We have to stomp this shit out where it rear’s it’s ugly head before it’s a problem we cannot stop.
One day another Berkeley incident, next UCLA, next Washington University, to marches being cancelled due to threats of violence.

Maybe we shouldn’t be sweeping this under the rug so callously and carelessly before rights start to really, really actually die.