Writes Karen Vieth in a long blog post titled "Closing the Door on the Madison Metropolitan School District," which is the subject of an article by Chris Rickert in The Wisconsin State Journal, "Ex-teacher blog post a 'public shaming' of black principal, Madison school leaders say."
In response to Vieth’s blog post, district Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham and the School Board’s president and vice president sent an email Tuesday to Sherman parents... “We have grave concerns regarding the type of personal, public shaming of a principal, in this case a principal of color, that has taken place in recent days.” Vieth’s original blog post does not disclose Foreman’s race... In a statement Wednesday, Cheatham said the Tuesday message referenced Foreman’s race “because we think it is important.”Interesting phrase, "providing grace." Is that like providing cover?
“There is a history in our community, and our school district, of not sufficiently welcoming, supporting, and providing grace to staff and principals of color,” she said. “This is not about deflecting criticism. We have to do better as a community.”
ADDED: David Blaska writes:
Ms. Vieth describes student fighting, swearing, teachers injured breaking up fights, do-nothing restorative justice, and nap time in Room 120 — all since adoption four years ago of the school district’s legalistic and impenetrable Behavior Education Plan (BEP). A Rubik’s cube of political correctness.... It was adopted in subservience to the Left’s obsession with implicit bias and racial equity. Too many children of color were suspended (or not enough whites. Take your pick)....ALSO: To my ear, "grace" has a whiff of racism about it, and not just because four-fifths of the word is "race." It feels oleaginous and patronizing and quasi-religious.
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106 comments:
I'm assuming they mean "courteous goodwill" when they use the term grace. If the principal was given "chance after chance and three years of her being coddled and coached with no substantive change" then it sounds to me like the principal in question was in fact given grace, yet remains incompetent and ineffective. How many more years of damage must be endured before a change is made?
Would a white principal have been given the same grace? If not...isn't that racism?
If we can't be critical of a black female principal we're not ready for a black female principal.
Madison's school problems are higher up the chain of command than the principal.
If we can't be critical of a black female principal we're not ready for a black female President.
The racism of low expectations isn’t so soft anymore.
The soft bigotry of low expectations......
This is racial discrimination. We discriminate when we make sacrosanct a group of people based on skin color.
In other words, a dysfunctional principal — whether due to incompetence or other causes — must not be held responsible if black? If this is what anti-racism has come to it is no better than racism. It makes the case for a color blind society.
It takes time to get it right. Madison schools need to keep plucking that chicken!
Don't tell me this school district cares about the kids and their future. Doesn't even seem to be on their radar.
Looks like the district is obsessed with giving "grace" to Black people (principals and students) because they have lower expectations for them.
What a terrible thing for the students at that School.
A Principal should be held accountable for all things happening in her school.
"our environment has become unpredictable and chaotic...."
The student:teacher ratio of 11:1 is lower than the WI average of 15:1.
Chaotic when there are almost 40% more teachers than average?
"Minority enrollment is 73% of the student body (majority Black and Hispanic), which is more than the state average of 29%."
Oh. That explains it.
"They" didn't mention that in the articles, did They?
"It feels oleaginous and patronizing and quasi-religious."
Like a cult?
"MadisonMan said...
What a terrible thing for the students at that School.
A Principal should be held accountable for all things happening in her school."
Who would take the job if that were true, in any profession? No, a principal should be held responsible for his/her actions in regard to what's happening in his/her school.
Only the exalted can dispense grace. It's Kipling's burden without the poetry.
A male black principal could fix it.
I believe the use of "grace" was purposefully meant to echo the hymn "Amazing Grace".
From the site "Afropunk":
"...As Facebook user Nic Few pointed out on Friday, John Newton, who penned “Amazing Grace”, was the captain of a slave ship in his youth. According to his journals, Newton not only transported Africans into a life of torture and bondage, but sometimes he even partook in raping the slave women aboard his ship...
Newton eventually became an abolitionist, and, as the song illuminates, came to look back on his past crimes as the sins that they were. This was a praiseworthy development, and maybe if all white people were to have a similar epiphany about their role in anti-Black violence, we might get somewhere.
But perhaps the reason we are here now is that even when white people like Newton express regret for their anti-Black brutalities, they still center their own story and redemption, not the story of those who were the victims of their violence. It’s no wonder many people don’t know the history behind the hymn, “Amazing Grace” never even bothers to mention the story of the slave women Newton raped, because its all about the grace God gives him...."
In this context, the response of the school board is pretty much in line: the protecting of the principal because of her race is more about the perceived redemption from racism of the whites on the school board.
Her situation is a vehicle for them to put their righteousness on display: they have been saved by their belief in their own woke goodness.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
Of course, they no doubt view the ones that were lost not as themselves, but the other racist whites for which they are continually atoning.
The teacher who wrote the blog post?She is the wretch, i.e., a deplorable.
She and her like are still blind; the school board can see.
The school board believes that it alone can determine where grace shall be delivered, where it is due, and who it is for.
Once you get God out of 'Amazing Grace' you can really get things done.
-LWL
Seems to be an awkward rephrasing of "grace period," which would have been a lot clearer with the second word included instead of omitted.
So do we need to treat President Obama with more grace when discussing the failures that occurred under his administration?
Color me "skeptical". Pretty typical scenario that has played out in our school district too. A few common elements - union hack teacher creating public spectacle of herself (I assume that this is a career ending move for her, at least to any school district with Google capabilities) and the weaponization of a group of parents (angst about teacher turnover may be related to other factors - in our school district it was always because of mean administrators or Governor Walker/Act 10).
The WI DPI issues "report cards". In 2014 Madison District scored 69.8 & Sherman Middle School scored 64.9. In 2017, Madison District scored 66.5 (a decrease) and Sherman Middle School scored 68.1 (an increase). While these report cards are of dubious value, hardly points to this particular school as being in a state of dysfunctional chaos.
Mike
I don’t think it suggests a period per se, simply the automatic forgiveness/absolution for failure. It actually sounds like it is intended to be perpetual .
oleaginous is a great word. best use I've ever seen of it was by Conrad Black, in some article about an obsequious person involved in the oil industry. that guy can write.
'the Tuesday message referenced Foreman’s race “because we think it is important.”' It certainly is important. It will help the rest of Wisconsin understand what they need to do to fix their schools. Publicize it.
Normally I'm in favor of local control over schools. But maybe Madison should be an exception. Or, the parents and citizens of Madison who care about kids have to get up and do something about it.
LWL aptly observes that it's all about the atonement of whites, not the civil liberties of blacks.
there was even a photo of the guy in the article, and he had greasy hair.
This is a simple case of the school district holding the black school principal to the same standard as the black students. No one should be surprised.
Results matter, except in Madison.
What would Albert Einstein say?
Alan Markus
If there is no problem why does the school board response seem to concede there is, but ask for “grace”? You only need grace if there has been failure.
Well, they aren't talking about Grace in the Christian sense, so my guess is they are using whatever bastardized straw man version of what grace means to them. Just like they do with all meanings, reduce it to nothing.
I'm with Gahrie, grace is a synonym for goodwill in this context. Offering it for an extended period of time (3 years) turns it into negligence. I doubt a principal not of color would be allowed so much time. Of course, it would be useful to know the extent and intractability of the problems this principal inherited. Maybe three years isn't a long enough time to right all wrongs.
-sw
"To my ear, "grace" has a whiff of racism about it"
The soft bigotry -- oh well, ef it.
Progs are playing a nasty game: telling blacks they are so inferior, they need progs' special support, and telling whites to suck up any black misconduct or poor performance for fear of being called racist and destroyed. The interminable race baiting works both ways.
I need two hands to count the people I know who went into an urban school district to teach ossified in leftist pieties and emerged within a week horrified by leftist realities, always including mass chaos and violence directed at them and other students in their classrooms, entirely un-punished and now un-punishabl by design.
Yet to a person, once they escaped and licked their wounds, not one of them would speak of it again. They all buried the experience deep in some ideological wormhole in order to keep worshipping at the altar of political correctness.
If this is not a cult and a proto-fascistic re-writing of historical realities and an object lesson in ignoring all those classics of dystopia we were made to read in suburban high schools, I don't know what any of these things are anymore.
The first time I walked into a poor urban school in internal lock-down (then called lock-in), I immediately recognized I had been supporting the wrong socio-political team, as it were. Those children's living conditions were unacceptable. They were being taught little or nothing. It was a refugee camp, not a school. Our poverty policies had created the war. Liberal lies and denials were sustaining the war zone across generations of casualties. It was and is many times worse than anyone will admit.
Yet we keep on. Half a century now.
looks like he uses that word a lot, so hard to find the article I'm talking about. it was a really great usage though. lol, he really likes that word. searching for that article, came up with this review of autobiography:
His autobiography is replete with words such as oleaginous and multipusillanimity. Sentences like: "A Wagnerian blitzkrieg in May gave way to a Flaubertesque bourgeois salon farce in June."
To my ear the word "grace" has an air of redemption to it. Regardless of race.
Of course, it would be useful to know the extent and intractability of the problems this principal inherited
As I stated above, the DPI report card score as a metric shows improvement during her tenure. There are about 10 Middle schools in that district, and hers seems to be in middle range in comparable scores.
In our school district, teachers lose their shit over anything that smacks of accountability.
Ken Langone, co-founder of Home Depot, has a new book out. He was on CNBC recently and he said public education is the number one problem in America and nothing is being done to fix it. Langone gave big money to Ann's alma mater, NYU, for its medical school. Big success. He knows what he is talking about.
Vouchers are the only way to fix this problem. Make the public schools in the cities compete for money and students. In Omaha, the public schools are 2 to 3 times more expensive than the Catholic schools and the outcomes are horrible. The Omaha World-Herald has a "blind" recognition program for all the area high school seniors. Omaha South high school graduates about 500 per year. Only one or two qualify as scholars. Pathetic. OPS is failing its customers.
The principal is the one with the power, not the teacher.
Parents, or lack thereof, are the biggest problem with education, and this is rarely touched on, because of the PC implications.
But bad teachers have a much higher impact than exceptional teachers do, and it doesn't take very many to have a devastatingly bad impact.
Example: a K-5 elementary school, with 4 classrooms per grade, will have 24 total teachers. 1 bad teacher would be just 4% of the teacher population, but will affect 25% of the students that go through that school.
A bad principal impacts 100% of the students negatively, to varying degrees.
Sometimes a negro needs a good dressing down. Sometimes a white person needs one, too.
alan markus said...
As I stated above, the DPI report card score as a metric shows improvement during her tenure.
"Student Achievement" has improved all the way to "Fails to meet expectations".
There seems to be no more male principals. More and more administrators are women. Does it matter?
If the parents and citizens of Madison who care about kids have to do anything, it would be to stop voting for the same types of people who enable this to happen.
Negative results seem to be happening in all the large school districts that implemented a positive school discipline policy.
What’s interesting is the school system they started this craze, lied on their improvements as a way to get more federal funding, dates back to bush.
Restorative justice is another word used for it.
Wish I could find the article...
The key question in education is whether black parents will accept the Democratic Party trade offer:
We'll pass your children and use race preferences to get them into college and then government sinecures, in return you allow us to use them as political leverage instead of educating them.
It's the Lutheran / Roman Catholic divide applied to liberal school administrators. Grace and faith alone will save you vs. necessity of good works.
Gak!
Fernandistein said...
alan markus said...
As I stated above, the DPI report card score as a metric shows improvement during her tenure.
"Student Achievement" has improved all the way to "Fails to meet expectations".
Again, she outperformed the school district. In 2014, Madison School District was 62.8 on that metric, Sherman was 47.2 In 2017, Madison School District was 58.9 (a decline of 3.9), Sherman was 45.2 (a decline of 2.)
I hear stuff like this every day from my patients who are teachers. It's not just a problem in Madision or in Wisconsin. It's wide spread throughout our nation's education system.
There are decades of examples of left-wing ideology destroying organizations, cities, states, and countries. Entire civilizations. Yet we have universities teeming with gender and race identity departments who's sole purpose is the undermining of the society. You would think that no one learns from history, and you would be correct.
This is just another school, one of thousands across this country, where the young minds are either being denied a proper (yes- I used that word) education, or being indoctrinated into useless bullshit. The end product of which is a society which will require full-time baby-sitting by a 'benevolent' government. Good luck with that.
That a Bernie Sanders is not laughed off the stage every time he shows his face is proof of where we are at. He's not very bright, he's not produced anything of value to this earth in his lifetime, and he's a socialist (but I repeat myself). Socialists scream about eduction, but they don't want an educated public. They like them dumb & manageable. We're there.
Wow.
In football, the coach makes a difference. The corollary also applies to schools and principals.
Grace is like Mercy, which droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath.
Grace is, by definition, unmerited favor. And this is a striking example.
Temujin is right: Socialists don't produce anything but useless theories and truckloads of bullshit but they presume to instruct those who do produce. Like the Shavian quote, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
The superintendent is inviting the public to think of this former teacher as doing something that is wrong because of race. You've got a public and outspoken opponent and you try intimidate her by making her feel that people will think of her as infected by racism.
There is also an implicit message to others: This will happen to you to if you don't keep quiet. So it feels like an effort to isolate this one person. Where's the grace for teachers who want to speak up about problems?
The real problem is the disservice to the students, all of them. What student is benefited if the principal is immunized from criticism because of her race? Really, the higher-up officials are claiming immunity for themselves.
mockturtle: "Socialists don't produce anything but useless theories and truckloads of bullshit but they presume to instruct those who do produce."
Socialists: the only individuals for whom the phrase "you didn't build that" ALWAYS applies......
Interesting
5.8% of all teachers assaulted
10% threatened
In the 2015-2016 school year per a fed study...
When Students Assault Teachers, Effects Can Be Lasting
By Madeline Will Education Week Feb. 6, 2018
https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25919901&bcid=25919901&rssid=25919891&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Few%2Findex.html%3Fuuid%3D07CD78E2-0B76-11E8-84BB-9D98B3743667
The soft bigotry of low expectations strikes again. "She's a person of color. Check your white privilege and let her fail with quiet dignity."
Ann Althouse said...
"The superintendent is inviting the public to think of this former teacher as doing something that is wrong because of race. You've got a public and outspoken opponent and you try intimidate her by making her feel that people will think of her as infected by racism."
They aren't "trying to intimidate her by making her feel" something. They are publicly branding her as a racist, in hopes that she will be destroyed. And all you good little eat-me-last non-racists are the ones they are counting on to do the destroying.
alan marcus,
None of the four numbers in your 8:58 comment match your 7:49 comment.
Blogger AllenS said...
If the parents and citizens of Madison who care about kids have to do anything, it would be to stop voting for the same types of people who enable this to happen.
You're kidding, right ?
You have to know that Trump is the answer to all the questions Madison voters have.
One solution that might help would be to go to a "school leaving" practice like Britain. Mandatory attendance keeps big kids who don't want to learn around little kids who do.
Schools now serve as babysitters for teenagers who have no interest.
I don't expect anything to be done because teachers' unions are all about ADA and the money coming in for salaries.
Shrug. As always, when the Left can't argue on the merits, they try to dismiss and villainize by race, gender or other issues.
An incompetent and ineffectual leader is one no matter her melanin levels and since I believe in equality, I believe that a WOC can be just as much an idiot as a White Male at screwing things up.
Sadly, that school district is not so color blind and open minded.
The kids are shouting the Empress has no clothes, school board. Now how about getting something besides melanin to cover up her bare ass.
I wouldn't have known the race of the principal if the superintendent hadn't said so.
Ann Althouse said...
The superintendent is inviting the public to think of this former teacher as doing something that is wrong because of race. You've got a public and outspoken opponent and you try intimidate her by making her feel that people will think of her as infected by racism.
There is also an implicit message to others: This will happen to you to if you don't keep quiet. So it feels like an effort to isolate this one person. Where's the grace for teachers who want to speak up about problems?
I got this exact treatment recently after privately communicating safety concerns at a major university.
I work at a HS in Philadelphia and have seen the same results from the implementation of the Obama era education policies. The school I work at is 99% black and they still blame discipline problems on racism and "systemic injustices". It's a crutch used to excuse 40 years of failed Liberal policies in education.
Wow, I'm not often the one crying this out but....
Won't somebody think of the children?
"Gahrie said...
Looks like the district is obsessed with giving "grace" to Black people (principals and students) because they have lower expectations for them."
I read it as:
they feel that unlike White people, Black people are Graceless (whatever they mean by Grace), so They have to give it to them .
Isn't that nice of them? Helpin' out the disadvantaged?
So, Madison's flipped.
The new formula is, "Speaking power to truth." Aka STFU if you know what's good for you. Else you'll be branded as "racist" (or whatever shaming terms we can find).
What's next, "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the public school establishment!"?
Teacher: "The principal is incompetent"
Superintendent: "She's black."
School: "We only let in students with high test scores."
Mayor: "That's racist against African-Americans."
School: "If students commit crimes, they need to be punished."
Obama: "That's racist against blacks."
Liberals sure spend a lot of time insulting African-Americans.
alan markus said...
Again, she outperformed the school district. In 2014, Madison School District was 62.8 on that metric, Sherman was 47.2 In 2017, Madison School District was 58.9 (a decline of 3.9), Sherman was 45.2 (a decline of 2.)
Sure, if you define "outperformed" as "continued to be a lot worse".
Those "getting better" metrics - and their slight changes - are mostly noise based on a changing student population since there's no net improvement over time.
Simple fix: get about 10 retired Marine and Army DIs into this school as teachers.
Let them play for about 3 months without supervision. The number of students will be lower, but the quality will increase IMMENSELY.
A Big Black Teen is not going to be intimidated by a Little White Liberal Lady, particularly an old one.
The very novelty about facing an experienced, fit LARGE male teacher should stun said teen long enough that he might accidently learn a few things.
Since Black Mom can't trouble herself to provide a Black Dad for her children, why shouldn't the school board provide one themselves? It worked with school lunches and breakfasts.
"If this is what anti-racism has come to it is no better than racism"
It's exactly the same as racism.
I transferred to a huge public high school in a blue city in a blue state, that was about 50% black, 50% white.
There was very little racial tension. The reason? The blacks, culturally and socially, ruled the school, and the whites knew that if they popped off they would get their asses whooped big time. So, there was a form of social comity.
The trouble-makers? Probably 95% were black, the remainder a small set of white druggies/future dropouts.
But, there was a 2-tiered scholastic segregation. (I didn't understand this at the time). Most of the white kids were on the college track curriculum, most of the black kids were on the default curriculum.
Nobody complained about this at the time, but I'm sure, at some point, some educrats looked at the macro numbers, wrote a scathing report and blew this system up. Probably, 50% of my class went to a 4-year University, and probably 80-90% of these kids were white.
The Left generally wrecks whatever it touches. No surprise here.
Since the scores go down and the fighting goes up after this type of feel good Progressive bullshit is out in place, let’s call this for what it is: institutional racism. Progressive Whites have kept blacks down for 50 years.
This is The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectstions in action.
A principal should never bee in the office during the school day. In the classroom, the lunchroom, and on the playground. After the first three months, the principal should know every students name. Each and every one.
Do your fucking job
Althouse is right.
This is a particularly vile tactic intended to silence a critic and intimidate others.
That is a corrupt way of doing business on the part of public servants.
It does serve to identify your school district administration as the root cause of at least some of this schools problems. No doubt they have heard plenty of internal criticism, but resisted doing something about it.
Also, from personal knowledge, the school district offices are usually a snake-pit.
The Calvinist definition of grace is "unmerited favor". I think the superintendent unwittingly spoke the truth,
Schools now serve as babysitters for teenagers who have no interest.
And the Onion asks:
Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give a Shit?
There is also an implicit message to others: This will happen to you to if you don't keep quiet. So it feels like an effort to isolate this one person. Where's the grace for teachers who want to speak up about problems?
So...what to do about it?
I am just a commenter who doesn't live in the state. I am a White Male, so by default, racist. I am not in that field of study, ergo have no particular expertise in the field.
So while I would happily write to the newspaper in question, and drop a kind word to the teacher involved on her blog, I can be dismissed for ANY of those three reasons.
What we need is someone who is or was a former educator. But not just any educator...but an educator at a FAR higher level than high school...say university! One familiar with the system and its legal ramifications.
A RETIRED teacher on a pension who has a cherry resume. That's the ticket.
And since any MALE commenting on a female is immediately suspect, it needs to be a woman. A black woman for preference, but a Privileged White Woman would do. One to rally the Sisterhood behind her. Preferably a woman with a large audience in the media or the blogosphere. One who knows some political people. Perhaps a former Chair holder.
Someone who is brave enough to call a spade a spade in a public forum and has the debating and literary chops to cut this obstreperous school board down to size.
Too bad we don't know anyone who lives in WI with those kind of credentials...
exhelodrvr1 said...
So do we need to treat President Obama with more grace when discussing the failures that occurred under his administration?
As we were told Ad nauseam, any criticism of Obama had to be attributed to racism. There could be no other possible reason to be critical of him. It seems that applies to all black people.
Really, the higher-up officials are claiming immunity for themselves.
Maxine Walters did the same thing a few months ago. She got someone bumped from their first-class seat so that she could have it. When the bumpee complained about it on the internet Maxine accused her of racism, which was supposed to be the end of it. Its a standard tactic that has been going on for decades. Get caught smoking crack on video, your accusers are racists. Get caught shoplifting a couple of bottles of wine, racism.
I can't help but feel a little sorry for educators today. When I was in public school the average class size was 30-32 students but the discipline was better because we'd all been through 'basic training' at home. Old movies like Up the Down Staircase and To Sir, With Love gave us a view of the breakup of families and the breakdown of discipline even in white schools.
For all his faults, Bill Cosby was an outspoken proponent of family and discipline. I often think his belated crucifixion had more to do with his ideology than his behavior.
As we were told Ad nauseam, any criticism of Obama had to be attributed to racism. There could be no other possible reason to be critical of him. It seems that applies to all black people.
By excluding any white advice, they also remove any onus on white people to lend a helping hand.
And by them being obnoxious about it, this makes it very easy to leave them to putrefy in peace.
I wish there was an oleaginous tag, like for when there's an oil spill in the Gulf, or when politicians say things. such a great word.
The real problem is the disservice to the students, all of them. What student is benefited if the principal is immunized from criticism because of her race? Really, the higher-up officials are claiming immunity for themselves.
Wait, are you telling me institutions prioritize their own benefits over the benefit to their customers? If only there were some mechanism which aligned their interests with satisfying their customers.
No, surely socialism is the way to go. We can rely on human nature to ensure everyone does the hard work of improving incredibly complex systems.
Public schools are literally child abuse for the inner cities.
For all his faults, Bill Cosby was an outspoken proponent of family and discipline. I often think his belated crucifixion had more to do with his ideology than his behavior.
Yes, you never heard a word about him until he made the mistake of stepping off the plantation.
Any potential grace should be clearly specified in the employment contract, unless the person writing those contracts has some incoming grace of their own. Etc. on up. AKA - good enough for government work.
It's simple. Black people can not be put in charge of anything. They scew it up every time. Dinkins. Obama. Detroit. Baltimore.
As the great Al Zcampanis once opined they "lack the necessities" to be successful.
Of course liberals will use affirmative action to promote them to positions where they are sure to fail and attack anyone who will tell the truth.
I have never seen a building as deeply in crisis as Sherman Middle School, yet my cries for help went unanswered for three years. .... I saw a principal being given chance after chance and three years of her being coddled and coached with no substantive change. .....We have a principal who is not visible in the halls or classrooms.
Same old, same old.
That describes the situation not long ago at an urban middle school not in Wisconsin. The school district did not renew the principal's contract. The principal got a doctorate in education- one reason for her not being very visible in the school building.
Race angle? Her dissertation dealt with "critical race theory" applied to the problems of black female school administrators. The main problem that SHE had as a black female school administrator was that she was incompetent.
While she was black, she was several shades lighter than the principal she replaced- who was promoted to a central office position. Teachers at the school universally respected the former principal, but ~40% of the teachers signed a grievance against her replacement.
As a tenured Education professor, she concentrates on training prospective school administrators. Rather ironic, as she was the very model of an incompetent school administrator. Them that can't administrate, train administrators.
People should stick to what they are good at. Let the Jews handle the money. Let the Pollacks handle the bratzs and bowling. The Micks will run the pub. The Guinea's can bend the spaghetti.
Leave the blacks to basketball and tap dancing. And pancakes.
There is some opportunity there. Since IHOP is abandoning their heritage the can open some pancake houses. That's a winner pancake dinner!
Ex teacher: This principal is terrible and here's why!
Public: She certainly sounds like she's in over her head and should be replaced by someone who is competent.
School District: But she's black. That is important.
Public: Oh. Carry on, then.
I agree that oleaginous is a great word.
langford peel
It's simple. Black people can not be put in charge of anything. They scew it up every time. Dinkins. Obama. Detroit. Baltimore.
No, it's NOT that simple. The issue is ideology. The ideology that black students are unfairly disciplined is total nonsense. Black students are disciplined more because they misbehave more. (Is it an accident that black students are much more likely to come from single parent homes? Is it an accident that black teenagers are much more likely than other teenagers to murder or be murder victims?)
Before that nonsense ideology, there were plenty of hard-ass black teachers and administrators who applied appropriate discipline consequences to misbehaving black students.
The issue is not race, but ideology.
Leave the blacks to basketball and tap dancing
Ah, the Irish. The Irish have a wicked step.
Langford, how could you forget Chinese and laundry?
The same thing happened with D.A. Ozanne. He got called out for being lazy and incompetent by a better qualified prosecutor, so he played the race card. Naturally, the good eat-us-last liberals of Madison re-elected him.
Richard Johnson: I think [and earnestly hope] that Langford Peel is just trolling us with his tongue-in-cheek diatribes.
"Maxine Walters did the same thing a few months ago. She got someone bumped from their first-class seat so that she could have it."
Wrong. Sheila Jackson Lee.
Wrong. Sheila Jackson Lee.
The Jews made him mix that up.
You really need to read the full blog post and its comments to gain a proper understanding of how truly terrible the Madison public schools have become. Wowsers.
It could be worse;
"The Post reported that, like many schools up and down the East Coast, MS-13 has turned Wirt into a battleground. There have been near-daily gang fights, rampant drug dealing, one reported rape, gang signs on the walls, one shooting — more in nearby schools — and teachers afraid to be alone with their students. At least two students are required to have security officers assigned to them, walking them from class to class and watching them during lunch hour, on account of MS-13 threatening to kill them."
Superintendent Cheatham married a Black guy, so it's unfair to question her commitment to the cause. She's all in.
As a former confirmation teacher and a practicing Lutheran, we taught the students that grace is undeserved love. Any principal deserves grace under that definition, but it is hardly a reason for not holding them responsible for inadequate performance as a principal.
Sounds a bit like the school I tutored at in Chicago. Half the time I came there the teacher wasn't even in the classroom because the stupid principal was holding a faculty meeting during class time. The kids were reasonably well behaved, but they weren't being educated.
Althouse wrote, To my ear, "grace" has a whiff of racism about it, and not just because four-fifths of the word is "race." It feels oleaginous and patronizing and quasi-religious.
I dunno about the racist, but definitely quasi-religious. The school board is like God or something? Do they also throw thunderbolts on those who aren't sufficiently adoring or orthodox? Sheesh.
Folks here seem to be forgetting one thing: Yes, hold all people to the same high standards- AGREED! However, the cultural decimation resulting from 200 years of slavery and the subsequent rascist oppression of a people has generational CONSEQUENCES even for the most resilient. Perhaps true "grace" might look like genuine intensive support, true understanding of the experience with which a black child arrives on the first day of kindergarten, and patience/ persistance from all. High expectations coupled with real support. Do you really want to help these people? Or is it that you just don't want to give anything away? We know there is a debt to be paid after all.
Racism exits on both ends of the political spectrum - looking very different from one another. One motivated to destroy blacks, the other motivated to absolve white guilt and/or elevate the liberal perpatrators' social standing/ power.
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