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Dealing with Dysfunction: A Review of “What It Is Like to Teach in Failing Schools,” Part 2

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Part 1 of “Dealing with Dysfunction”

Another of Mr. Teacher’s idiosyncrasies is his view on race. Although he does not explicitly identify his ethnicity, apparently he is a White man. And despite having plenty of real-world experience dealing with Blacks and Browns he does not address race as a biological concept. When discussing the Program in International Student Assessment (PISA) that compares student academic achievement across national borders the author notes that “American educators produce similar outcomes as Finland and Korea when looking only at White and Asian students” (99). Okay, that is to be expected. But then he goes on to state that the PISA “results help to show that biology is not the leading or most significant cause for assessment differences between subgroups (eduspeak for races) because largely non-white United States Hispanics significantly outscore biologically ‘White’ Uruguayans” (101).

The above is pretty slim evidence to base a conclusion regarding the role of race in educational achievement. A closer look shows that AT’s comparison is not apt. While Uruguay is 88 percent White, that is within a Latin American context. In addition, Uruguay has a far smaller per capita income than the US, and spends a significant smaller percent of its GDP on education.[1] As a result the South American country has a shorter school day, larger class sizes, and more basic educational facilities.

Strangely, later in the book the author gives evidence that race is a significant factor in educational outcomes.

Black Canadians are just 2.5 percent of the Canadian population. Black Canadian students in Toronto — the largest concentration of Blacks in any Canadian location — have a dropout rate of 40 percent — a much higher dropout rate than their Canadian peers. There is also a large scholastic achievement gap between Black Canadians and other Canadians (212).

In addition, AT notes that Black Canadian students have disproportionately high rates of absenteeism, suspension, and expulsion. So here you have two different countries with two different educational systems with the same racial disparities. This seem to be more convincing than the author’s Uruguay example. Mr. Teacher describes himself as an Orthodox Christian, and he affirms “God’s sovereign Will in human affairs” (213). He might not believe in biological evolution, which could explain his ambivalence on race. Read more

Dealing with Dysfunction: A Review of “What It Is Like to Teach in Failing Schools,” Part 1

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What it is Like to Teach in Failing Schools: A Memoir, an Inquiry and a Critique (2016)
by A. Teacher

Even without the students present, a visitor familiar with middle-class White schools would notice that Atlanta’s “Fairfield Junior Academy” is different. Walking the halls he would observe that there were no lockers. “[W} e moved all the lockers into the classrooms because most of the fights and drug deals took place during transition time when students went to their lockers” (76). If the visitor was unfortunate enough to need the restroom, he might see “dried diarrhea on the walls and toilet in the bathroom stalls” (111). Venturing into a classroom he might encounter vandalized computers and locked file cabinets that had been broken into.

As the subtitle indicates, this book is part a memoir, part a scathing critique of the educational establishment that some call Big Ed. This reviewer has twenty years’ experience in secondary and tertiary education. Fortunately, I have not experienced many of the problems the author relates, at least not to the same degree. Thus some of the dysfunction A. Teacher (AT) describes is particular to his type of school — a failing junior high — while other problems are systemic and likely to be experienced by most public school teachers in America.

The reader might conclude from the opening paragraph that Fairfield in one of those neglected, underfunded minority schools one hears about. While it is a non-White school (70 percent Black, 27 percent Hispanic), it is not underfunded. “Our school was flushed with money” (12). There was plenty of technology — computers, iPads, smartboards, and printers in every room. There was also widespread theft and vandalism, plus poor maintenance of the facility.

American education is often top heavy with administrators. This is particularly true of urban schools. So, in addition to student misbehavior, a major complaint of Mr. Teacher was the reams of paper work and endless meetings his position required. These demands left little time for lesson planning, and made classroom management more difficult. Because every behavior issue needed to be thoroughly documented it was less likely a teacher would take action.

One way a bureaucracy insulates administrators from day to day problems is the put-it-in-writing strategy. A “Response to Intervention” form was required “to document every infraction a child commits, complete with where the incident took place, what preceded the incident, what the infraction entailed, and the consequences that followed” (89). Even with documentation teachers at Fairfield felt the administration did not support their efforts to maintain order. Read more

How the Media Preys upon our Values

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The Cultural Marxist media adorns their arguments with “holy relics” which cannot be criticized. This diabolical strategy is deployed to persuade normal Americans to act contrary to their own self-interest.   It entails playing upon our inherent respect for certain institutions and principles, which are held in uniquely high esteem by Western/Anglo-Saxon peoples.  This unique foible of ours is actually a good thing while it stays within a basically White society—but it becomes a huge liability when it is exploited by those who hate us. Unfortunately for them, they have tried to tap this emotional reservoir too many times, and so their strategy is currently yielding diminishing returns.

First of all, our media elites do not even believe their own pieties, though perhaps some credulous liberals lower down on the food chain are in fact foolish enough to believe them.  For example, we saw via WikiLeaks that John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager, is perfectly aware of the disaster that the refugees in Europe have created.  He received intel that “Muslim immigration and Multicultural Madness have left a trail of mayhem across Germany—with far worse to come because of demographics.”  He was almost sociopathic, however, in his enthusiasm to wreak this same havoc on the US, should Clinton have won.  Woe to the liberal dumb enough to actually believe in the benefits of bringing in Middle Eastern and African refugees.

What should we consider more deplorable: the sociopathic cynicism of Podesta and Clinton, or the naïve stupidity of liberals who actually believe in their own professed values?  The elites are certainly counting on the American public’s naiveite.  And all too often, the American public has obliged.  As such, every time they try to play on our emotions, I ask myself, “Are people actually going to buy this?” I have some trepidation in answering that question.

Surely Blacks are a holy object in leftism; John Derbyshire has long expounded upon this droll metaphor.  But there is an ever-shifting array of entities which our media seeks to exploit for their perceived symbolic significance among the American public.  This process is based on a subtle psychology of what the media divines to be held as sacred by your average White person.  Hence this is an insidious psy-ops campaign, meant to pull at our heart-strings and enlist us in causes we would otherwise have nothing to do with. Read more

Björn Höcke and the Potential Return of Sanity in German Politics

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On January 17th 2017, one of the leading members of Germany’s new alternative conservative party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Björn Höcke, gave a speech before his party’s youth organization (Junge Alternative) in the city of Dresden. In his 20-minute speech, Höcke addressed the future of his party, its rebellious function and patriotic orientation, the architectural disfigurement of landscapes and cities, the failures of the political establishment in the refugee crisis, German cultural identity and — yes, he did — the World War II guilt cult and the Holocaust memorial. The speech had the potential of ringing in a new era of self-liberation from the shackles of the post-war historical narrative that denies the German people their sense of self-worth.

However, Höcke clearly poked a hornet’s nest, given the hysterical reactions across the political establishment, including the media and representatives of the Jewish lobby in Germany. Although the speech was well-received by young patriots, some remarks did not go over well with the ruling class. Höcke had been bold enough to suggest that

  1. Instead of focusing primarily on those twelve dark years of the country’s history, German youth should be allowed to develop a positive identity by remembering and honoring the achievements of Germany’s numerous composers, poets and philosophers, of which the country had produced perhaps more than any other.
  2. Germany was the only country in the world that had decided to plant a ‘monument of shame’ in the heart of its capital, and had made the most horrible event in its history the foundation of its national identity.
  3. The Allied fire-bombing of Dresden was a war crime comparable to the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The guilt cult, however, allowed for a portrayal of Germans as perpetrators only, preventing them from mourning their own victims.

The press reacted “with disgust and horror” — as if Höcke had denied the Holocaust (which he didn’t). Although Höcke had remained rather factual in his description of the status quo without attacking anyone in particular, vocabulary from the familiar arsenal of curses was hurled at him: “Nazi”, “right-wing extremist”, “Goebbels”, “hard right”, “populist”, “nationalist”, “national Romantic”, and so on and so forth. In an article by Amanda Taub and Max Fischer in the New York Times, his brownish-grey hair suddenly turned blonde, more or less subtly conjuring up images of the blonde Germanic beast, familiar from countless anti-German Hollywood productions and books. Read more

Words as Weapons: Asymmetry and Advantage in Linguistic Competition

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What’s the connection between chess and peacock feathers? For most of human history, there was no sensible answer to a question like that. Today we can reply: “They can both be analysed using the branch of mathematics known as game theory.” Games like chess are about competition, about strategies for improving success and avoiding failure. So is evolution. Genes compete in ever more complex ways.

Camouflage and deception

Peacock feathers are a good example of advanced evolution. You can’t understand them without reference to the eyes and brains of peahens, whose mating preferences down the millennia have selected for ever more dazzling male plumage. Males send signals, females read them. Similarly, you can’t understand flowers without reference to the nervous systems of insects. Flowers send signals, insects read them.

Lunar Hornet Moth (Sesia bembeciformis) by Ian Kimber. False signal: Wasp-mimic moth

Or misread them, because biological signals can be deceitful. Some species of orchid trick male bees with flowers that mimic the appearance and odour of female bees. The males pollinate the orchids by trying to mate with the flowers. False signals can also repel or conceal: some harmless insects mimic wasps, others mimic leaves or sticks. Like parasitism, camouflage and deceit are found everywhere in the natural world. All three aspects of biology can shed light on human behaviour. Read more

Jewish activists urge aid to refugees: Is it good for the Jews?

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Because of the executive order by President Trump (what a great feeling to write that!) closing down the refugee industry from seven predominantly Muslim countries, there is an entirely expected outcry from the usual suspects. Quite often the argument reverts to events in the 1930s in which Jewish refugees were prevented from entering the U.S. This article, originally posted in September, 2015, provides some context on those events. The fact that he signed the EO on Holocaust Remembrance Day was particularly galling.

Make no mistake. Pres. Trump is embarking on a revolutionary path here. By banning several (but not all) predominantly Muslim countries, the order avoids the accusation that it is discriminating against a religion. But that will count for exactly zero in how this is perceived by the media and the left generally. In fact, this is about Muslim immigration and that is enough to send the establishment into absolute hysteria.  The idea of any limitation on immigration to the West by a particular racial/ethnic or religious group is completely at odds with the ideology of multiculturalism and diversity, the “we’re all the same” mantra, and the ideology that Western countries are “proposition nations” committed only to abstract ideas like “freedom” and “democracy,” with no ethnic or religious content. This ideology has been promoted by Jewish intellectual movements at least since World War II—a theme of The Culture of Critique. It has been internalized across the elite spectrum—by Republicans and Democrats, Jews and non-Jews alike — so much so that political figures like Chuck Schumer can confidently assert that the executive order goes against the entire grain of American history: “a grand tradition of America, welcoming immigrants, that has existed since America was founded has been stomped upon.”

Either Sen. Schumer failed American History 101 or he is lying through his teeth, probably the latter. The idea that “American values” include importing tens of millions of people from different cultures, many with values hostile to America and the West, is a post-1965 creation of the media intent on redefining what it is to be American, nothing more. Until then, U.S. immigration law clearly and unapologetically favored the traditional European majority. Like every non-European country, we were intent on preserving our people and culture.

From the Left’s point of view, this is the beginning of the Battle of Armageddon. I think that a lot of the anger and frustration following Trump’s victory was that the endgame was in sight. Another presidency, either by Hillary or by one of the many Republican cuckservatives who ran against Trump, would have pretty much sealed the deal. The much hoped-for Hillary landslide would have ensured the passage of “Gang of Eight”-type immigration legislation, amnesty for illegals, and endless “refugees.” And a Republican Jeb Bush-type presidency would likely have overcome GOP resistance to the same. The demographic transformation would have been solidified yet further.

It’s very late in the day for a complete turnaround. But Trump’s first week has exceeded expectations. And he is unlikely to be dissuaded by the moral chorus from the media condemning his actions. He’s already well aware that the media is the “opposition party,” as Steve Bannon phrased it.

To be sure, there is much unfinished business, beginning with ending birthright citizenship (probably best put off until after another Supreme Court appointment or two), ending DACA. And the Holy Grail: Repealing the 1965 immigration act.

There can be little doubt that the Jewish community favors very generous policies toward refugees. One reason for this is that Jews tend to see the situation in terms of the Jewish experience as refugees during World War II rather than from the point of view of the present interests of the US and its people. That non-Jewish countries should be open to refugees is widely, if not universally, seen as a basic Jewish interest. Deep in the Jewish psyche is the memory of the voyage of the St. Louis in May, 1939 in which Jewish refugees from Europe were not admitted to Cuba and the U.S. did nothing because of pervasive anti-immigration attitudes at the time.

Indeed, there is no question that Jews were under intense pressure during the 1930s that went well beyond the U.S. In 1936 Chaim Weizmann observed that “the world seems to be divided into two parts—those places where the Jew cannot live, and those where they cannot enter” [1]. Anti-Semitism was pervasive. Jewish pressure groups acknowledged the role of anti-Semitism in motivating the rejection of Jews by, for example, couching pro-refugee advertising in universalist terms and not mentioning that the refugees would be Jews. Read more

The Self-Defeating War Hypocrisy of the Left

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Drone alone: unbothered by protests.

The world tends to run more on unintended consequences than intended ones, it seems. One of the reasons that Trump is now in the White House tearing through Obama’s flimsy legacy like an angry tornado is because he was ultimately seen as the “peace candidate,” while Hillary came to be perceived as the “war candidate.”

The seal of approval from the Neocons during the campaign may have been the kiss of death. This was just another example of the power of unintended consequences to call the shots.

So, how did this happen? Of course, part of it was Hillary’s readiness to sell out to the highest bidder, but this is not the whole story. Hillary could only become such a “war whore “because of the hypocrisy of Leftists in general.

As Mike Whitney at Counter Punch observes:

The election of Donald Trump has sent millions of people pouring out onto the streets to protest a man they think is a racist, misogynist, xenophobic bully who will destroy US democracy in his quest to establish himself as supreme fascist ruler of the country.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe Trump is a fascist who will destroy America. But where were these people when Obama was bombing wedding parties in Kandahar, or training jihadist militants to fight in Syria, or abetting NATO’s destructive onslaught on Libya, or plunging Ukraine into fratricidal warfare, or collecting the phone records of innocent Americans, or deporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers, or force-feeding prisoners at Gitmo, or providing bombs and aircraft to the Saudis to continue their genocidal war against Yemen?

Where were they?

This obvious double standard effectively means that it is a lot harder for a Republican President to be a war president than it is for a Democrat.

Any Republican President getting involved in a war will face far tougher criticism than a Democrat from the so-called “Peace Movement” and their many friends in the media. This is because it is mainly a status signalling device for tribal Lefties. Both Bushes were savaged for the wars they fought. Clinton and Obama not so much.

This may even have been a factor in GHW Bush’s decision to limit the Gulf War to the expulsion of the Iraqis from Kuwait, even though his Saudi backers wanted to see a lot more blood on the sand.

GW Bush went full neocon of course, because 9-11, whoever did it, changed the national mood, but he soon became the whipping boy of the Peace Movement. In fact, he was so widely reviled at home and abroad as the moronic war president, that his chief ally Tony Blair lost all legitimacy, and the global position of the United States itself was undermined.

Among other things, Obama’s fast-tracking to the White House could thus be seen as an attempt to revamp America’s hawkish capability, and, to a degree, that is exactly how it turned out, as Obama, Nobel Peace Prize in tow, kept America’s military profile as high as it could go under the circumstances.

This realization that only a Democrat could be a successful hawk may even have prepared the way for Trump’s race through the ranks of the GOP primary field from “joke candidate” to historical inevitability. There was obviously something rather fake about the likes of Jeb or Ted or Mario pretending they could don GW’s war mantle, something that Trump started to realize, as he grew stronger and started to directly attack the Neocon pieties.

Down near the base of the GOP reptile mind was a visceral fear of having yet another unpopular war president, assailed by the Peace Movement assisted by the liberal media, and vilified both at home and abroad. When Trump started talking about being pals with Putin, who’s to say that a subterranean switch wasn’t thrown in the minds of the Republican base, followed by a barely perceptible sigh of relief?

The neocons, wedded to war and bloodshed by the eternally precarious position of Israel, certainly seemed to sense something similar, explaining their defection en masse to Hillary’s camp during the campaign – little realizing that rather than hurting Trump they were instead hurting her.

In short, the hypocrisy of the Peace Movement made their preferred candidate into the war candidate, and thus may well have damaged her campaign, while bestowing the mantle of peacemaker on her rival and aiding his victory. Irony doesn’t get much richer or sweeter than that.