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posted by: PastorDave (reply) post date: 01.13.06 (8:32 am) Wow! Now I do respect and like this effort to offer and thoughtful and differing viewpoint to what I have to say. You are certainly formidable with your words. I'll admit to sometimes having points of view that are not thoroughly investigated. I'm not yet ready to admit such with this two matter! Right now I am cleaning the refigerator after 6 months of incubation on the part of its contents. Then I procede to the storage room, a truly dangerous task. Than I'll finish with my side of the bedroom, for I have been told I must do so today before my wife will sleep with me tonight. Once these priorities are settled, I'll try to offer some response to your comments. Welcome aboard t-blog. Glad to have you. posted by: surrogate (reply) post date: 01.13.06 (8:39 am) Man.. funny you even had to make the points you made. They will fall on deaf ears of course... If one has made it in Hollywood, evidently any opinions offered are unreliable and ill-thought out because... one has made it in Hollywood. I don't get it. posted by: TaBooTenente (reply) post date: 01.13.06 (9:34 am) Dave, Sorry . . . I do have a tendency to rant sometimes, huh? A lot of the frustration comes from another blog site on which I occasionally particpate. i like that site because, while they offer no flexibility to tweak your own page, everything is forum oriented. you get lots of comments. the frustration stems from the fact that the forum draws a one-dimesional crowd. i often feel like i have to work OT to champion a new perspective. anyway, obviously your article must have had plenty of grit to get my juices going. i look forward to your comments. tbt posted by: TaBooTenente (reply) post date: 01.13.06 (9:35 am) by the way, dave, i hope you understand why i didn't dump that rant on your own blog's doorstep. i'd be happy to paste this one on, if you're looking for some comments. tbt posted by: TaBooTenente (reply) post date: 01.13.06 (9:38 am) surrogate, yeah, that's the hardest thing to deal with for me. speaking face to face with someone is one thing, but when writing, it's so easy to strip everyone else's opinions of their original context. if you're not willing to look at a larger perspective, then how can you have a dialogue? how can you learn anything? yeah. thanks for the comment, surrogate. tbt posted by: PastorDave (reply) post date: 01.13.06 (6:48 pm) What is amazing to me is the solution this member of the school board is moving toward, to end the practice of most school suspensions because of the apparent unfair ratio of blacks who receive the discipline. The inference is that these kids are being mistreated. Alright, it should be investigated. I'm sure there is a trail of paperwork and personal decisions behind every suspension. They can be readily observed. Just because there is a statistical disproportion does not necessarily mean mistreatment. You counter that underpriveleged minorities are being mistreated because they have a culturally different point of view. I think you come to the truth of the matter, not with the assessment of mistreatment but with the recognition of a cultural difference. I fear to even discuss the matter because of the ever-present danger of being branded "racist". I live in a multicultural community and pastor a multicultural church. My daughter dates a young man who is Hispanic, my other daughter's best friend is a male who happens to be Jewish, and my son recently had his first date with a young lady who is African American. I have no problem with any of these fine people. A big problem in our school systems, including I think Seattle, is not a problem with race but culture. Correct me if I am wrong. I am an outsider. Is there not a major part of the inner city black culture that is oppositional to education and the school system? I know the Atlanta city schools spend more per student than any other system in our state, yet their students are among the poorest in their performance. Why? It is not because blacks are intellectually inferior. I surmise it is because of culture. The hip-hop culture frowns on conventional matters of society, including education. And, I know many young blacks respect and want to emulate the associated lifestyle. Fatherless households. A politial belief that the government and society "owes me something" because of racism. When some young people are raised without a male influence in their primary household, when their role models are hip-hop singers, when significant members of the community downplay the importance of education and acceptable manners of culture (dress, speech, etc)- then you create a real problem in the school systems. No wonder teachers get burned out, and the best and the brightest stay away from such situations. I think the school boards should do everything they can to support and help these heroes who sacrifice to teach young people. Don't you agree a great key to moving beyond limitations in life is education? ----------- Now, concerning Sean Penn, the point I was trying to make concerned his inference that his return to smoking cigarettes was the fault of George Bush. That's silly. He takes a cigarette and sucks the toxins into his lungs because he makes a deliberate choice; the pleasure derived from that smoke is worth more to him than the health that would be derived from abstaining. George Bush does not hold a gun to his head and force him to smoke. Why does a person choose a life of crime? Choose not to get an adequate education? Choose to have unprotected sex and get pregnant as a teenager? Again, cultural factors are involved, but it is all about personal choice. In the final analysis, nobody made you do it. It was your choice. Now, I insulted Mr. Penn. At least by inference. And, that is improper. I am particularly impressed by your statement, which I will quote: "I think that if I had his kind of money, his kind of time, I would still lack the heart or guts or motivation to get off my ass to investigate the political workings of an ultra-different system like Iran's; nor would I get my own gear and spend my time attempting to save the forgotten survivors of Katrina." You are right. He is seeking to do good. His heart is big. I should admire that kind of person, and I stand corrected. Obviously politics is not my forte. And I may have had a couple of classes in Sociology, but there is much I do not know about human behavior. I'll try to learn something as we go along here on t-blog. posted by: TaBooTenente (reply) post date: 01.14.06 (5:37 am) dave, first of all, thanks for the original article as well as the comments. concerning the school system and the manner in which it deals with disciplinary issues: let's suppose an intelligent 15-year old boy is acting out in class. perhaps he's causing a disruption, perhaps he's picking on another student, or perhaps he's challenging the teacher's authority with belligerence. one way to deal with problem is to ignore it altogether, either hoping that it will go away, or resigning yourself to an assumption that there's nothing you can do to fix the problem. another way to deal with the problem is to suspend or expel the student, hoping either to cut out the problem like cancer, or to deter bad behavior from other students. for the moment, let's say that these are the only two options. what if i now tell you that the student is from a well-to-do family, has parents who attend family night. if this student receives a suspension, there is a good chance that this system of discipline meets with the morality he's been raised with. the suspension may mean something; and if he's expelled, there's a reasonable chance that his folks could pull some strings, or at least organize and enforce a transfer to a new school. what if i tell you that the boy was raised by his mother, or his brother, or by neglectful or overworked parents? if you suspend this boy, you are turning him away, letting him down. if you have the boy expelled, you are abandoning him. you might say you are doing it for the other students . . . but if you stick to this policy, you're going to end up with a homogenous collection of kids who probably needed the school's help much less than the kids who you've sent away. you might say, then, that it is the parents who are at fault, rather than the school system (you refer to atlanta's system) or the money spent by the school system. well, of course this is true to some extent, but if the parents received the same school experience that the child is receiving, then you know what to expect. then you might say that it is a cultural issue--or more specifically, that it is the CULTURE that is tainted, rather than the system that tries to accommodate the culture. you mention a lack of male role-models; you mention the hip-hop culture. first of all, i think it is very dangerous to suggest that black culture doesn't encourage male role-models. why do poor, uneducated black families in inner cities tend to lack male role-models? because poor black male students are more likely to have fathers who were poor black make students who had fathers who were poor black male students . . . . if the original question was whether or not this seattle school should stop punishing black students for misbehaving, then there would be no debate: the answer would be no, of course not, never. but that's not the question, nor was it implied. the question is HOW to discipline students from a population who have no support network to learn from being suspended or expelled. if a statistic shows that a marked percentage of a cultural demographic is being suspended or expelled, with no positive swing in the trend as a result, then you have to face the fact that you need to meet the problem in a new way--or else abandon the attempt to teach everyone who faces adversity. and if, decade after decade, you abandon the attempt to help an entire underprivileged, undereducated, utterly unrepresented culture within the school system, should you be surprsied at the emergence of the new hiphop culture, a culture that, as you say, "frowns on conventional matters of society, including education. And, I know many young blacks respect and want to emulate the associated lifestyle. Fatherless households. A politial belief that the government and society 'owes me something' " i don't think we surprised. if, as you seem to be saying, that hiphop culture frowns on education and demands that the government owes them something, i think we should be well-aware that there is a valid, currently-reinforced experience that young, poor black kids are having, especially in the school system. if a boy needs attention and cant find it at home (because his father didnt find it there, or his father's father), and then the school system turns them away, too, then these kids are going to frown, rightfully so; if the government sits on its hands, then these kids are going to think that the government owes them something more . . . and, i believe, rightfully so. tbt posted by: TaBooTenente (reply) post date: 01.14.06 (5:56 am) that was long, i know, so here's just a brief comment on penn the nutjob: it's an interesting thing, that you find yourself agreeing with me on this idea, while i find myself agreeing with you, for the most part. while i'm willing to believe that bush is responsible for many of the world's problems (sorry, couldn't resist), sean will have to face up to his own smoking problem (and some of his other problems, too). i mean, look at GW: the story goes that he quit cocaine and no longer drinks alcohol--and he has to live in the same house as himself. if penn can't deal with quitting marlboros while reading tea-leaves in bangladesh, then that's his own bad look-out. but still, what do you do when you get a zillion unshaven strangers poking microphones and cameras in your face every day? you're going to slip up some time--though not everyone will slip up by punching out a camera man. (remember the good ole days when he was doing the madonna thing?) i wasnt at the anti-war rally that this article referred to, where he stated that his bush-related stress prevented him from kicking the nicotine habit. penn may very well be a bit nutty, and sometimes he may be a dope, but he's not dumb. i imagine that he knows that he is addicted to smokes, and THAT is the reason he has a hard time quitting. again, i wasnt there, but, again, i imagine that most likely he was joking. so, after all this blather, my rant begins and ends with what i see as the point: that most of the statistics and quotes that form the gutrock of quik-fix journalism today are too mutilated and removed from context to be used for political and social debates. but they still are used for political and social debates. and that what triggered this rant, dave. i love these dialogues because i cant stop believing that these conversations are the only real way to make things change--and i think that everyone (especially me) needs to understand the largest perspective possible before we pass any irrevocable judgments. tbt |
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