…I must address myself to the underlying fundamental developmental deficits that impede the ability of African Americans to compete. If, instead of doing so, I use preferential selection criteria to cover for the consequences of the historical failure to develop African American performance fully, then I will have fake equality.

And I admire him more than I even like him. When you learn of the arc of his political journey, and the humility by which he's come to this point personally and intellectually…

Well, even though he's my age, he's like one of today's woke kids returned from the future, ready to speak the truth to generations which believed they'd never need be bothered with it.

"As much as that of," not "as much as those of"

Precisely 50% through the morning tea over here... Gimme a break. Coulda happened to anyone.

I'd read the article, he makes so much sense. I don't understand why there is such sustained support for the cruelty of over-promoting minorities at the END of the credentialing process when it's blindingly obvious that we need to focus 98% of our efforts on improving lives and education at the beginning and middle stages of the pipeline. Don't admit an under-qualified person of a given race to a demanding STEM program---how about instead the universities focus on getting into schools and neighborhoods full of disadvantaged kids and work like hell to improve their education and circumstances when it will actually make a difference?

I'm white but I can agree to a degree of attention/affirmative action on the grounds of giving a bit of a boost. Here's what I think that should look like: my kid applies to a selective school or program; one that gets many more qualified applicants than they can admit. The institution looks at all the QUALIFIED applicants and if needed, puts a thumb on the scale for the disadvantaged. The stats I have seen show that there are still just not that many "qualified" applicants from certain groups for demanding programs. In my example, all of the accomplished minorities with outstanding SATs and 4.3 GPAs will be admitted to the Ivy league. That will still leave a lot of room for other applicants, and society will be able to evaluate a Yale grad as probably possessing extraordinary excellence regardless of their race.

I don't understand why there is such sustained support for the cruelty of over-promoting minorities at the END of the credentialing process when it's blindingly obvious that we need to focus 98% of our efforts on improving lives and education at the beginning and middle stages of the pipeline. ~ RigelDog at December 22, 2020 8:41 AM

Because, according to Shelby Steele, who also makes a bit of sense on the subject, Affirmative Action allows whites to admit racism and maintain their moral superiority by graciously opening slots for non-whites in formerly segregated areas.

Fixing the problem at the beginning of the pipeline means saying non-whites are part of the problem and must improve their own condition; must work to ready themselves for a competitive world. That's a little too much like whites standing over non-whites and saying "this is partly your fault."

Freud also had a few things to say about it - he called it the "narcissism of small differences" in Civilization and Its Discontents. We live in a safe world now, so the main threats to our own safety and prosperity - i.e., our competitors for resources, political and cultural supremacy, etc. - are, in reality, each other. To prove our own superiority, we must denigrate the culture and beliefs underlying our competitors' motivations and philosophy. We begin to tear down our own civilization in an attempt to prove we are superior to it; to rebel against our parents and the civilization they built and believe in.

As a liberal, you must denigrate a conservative's belief system to prove the superiority of your own - and vice versa. Thus, a conservative who holds that a meritocracy is best must be taken down a peg or two for the liberal's own system to prevail - the quota system at the end of the pipeline.

Rigel, did you see the conversation the other day?

The general consensus was that it's easier said than done.

Apparently parenting classes don't work, Head Start's benefits wear off after a couple years in school, etc. etc.

So yeah, start at the beginning... but how?

Rigel, did you see the conversation the other day?

The general consensus was that it's easier said than done.

Apparently parenting classes don't work, Head Start's benefits wear off after a couple years in school, etc. etc.

So yeah, start at the beginning... but how?

NicoleK at December 22, 2020 9:50 AM

Stop bean counting by ethnicity, culture and skin color. And stop rewarding educational programs that do so. Blind admissions.

Right now we have a system that blatantly discriminates against boys of all races, while rewarding mediocrities who sit down, shut up and do what they are told.

People have forgotten why earlier rounds of AA were eventually discontinued. It was, in large part, because the individuals promoted by those means experienced significant difficulty succeeding, and by extension they damaged the reputations of Black professionals at large.

Also why are we repeating the exact same mistakes? If institutions want to see a greater proportion of successful Black students and professionals, why don't they given them the training they need to succeed as peers? Most of the people who are promoted by AA programs are good students a/o people with professional potential. But they're not performing at the standard of the other candidates. Isn't it likely that a year or two of additional education a/o training could help bridge that gap? But that solution is never even proposed by AA advocates.

Affirmative action in college does not do minorities any favors. It has long been known that if you admit blacks who are not qualified to top colleges, they are far more likely to flunk out than if they had gone to a state school (which is where I went). So it is a cruel tease: admit them but flunk them. In programs with some kind of test at the end (law school, med school) this is even worse. Such schools do not want you to see their student stats.

In response to this, the Woke want to eliminate all standards. Somehow they imagine their surgeon will still be topnotch down the road and that their dentist won't ruin their teeth. You cannot have jobs that require expertise and the elimination of standards at the same time.

It is exactly true that any "solution" that involves blacks particularly changing their behaviors will be labeled "racist". But time spent by high school students doing homework is asians>white>black. Many black students reject the entire idea of school. If you come from a home with no father, with no books in the house, where studying is "acting white" (especially for the boys), and where no one sits down to do homework with you, it is failure waiting to happen. Go to parent night in a black school district: no one shows up. Of course, at a charter school or catholic school in a black neighborhood lots of parents show up--and their kids do great. How exactly is that white people's fault? I've seen the claim made that poor people can't afford books: absurd. That is what libraries are for. Furthermore, at many libraries they are giving children's books away every week and if not try a garage sale. We always had stacks of books for our kids that we did not buy.

The low expectations can result in some minorities actively doing nothing at all at work and expecting this to be ok. I've seen it. In two cases when the shirkers were moved to work alongside the boss (instead of being allowed to hide in the warehouse), they stopped coming in (didn't even bother to quit).

I don't have to denigrate a liberal's belief system. I merely have to point at the bitter fruit that results from their beliefs.

But that's phobix and istix.

Has it been so long since that story about that unfortunate soul who got into UC-Berkeley only to have his self-confidence shattered on the rocks of reality? I understand that he recovered and moves on with his life and has found success, but that was a rough couple of semesters that would have been better spent at a less demanding institution.

But at least UCB was able to tick off a box.

Isn't it likely that a year or two of additional education a/o training could help bridge that gap?

Perhaps a properly motivated person can make up in one or two years the deficits incurred over the last 18 years. I have my doubts.

Here is the story I alluded to. It's heart wrenching. Steel yourself if you read it.

Kashawn Campbell overcame many obstacles to become a straight-A student. But his freshman year at Berkeley shook him to the core.

https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c1-cal-freshmen-20130816-dto-htmlstory.html

Another thing: high school GPAs aren't worth the paper they're printed. Straight As here might get you solid Cs over there. Here's an example of "grade inflation", but these people are...just terribull people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/tm-landry-college-prep-black-students.html

"Rigel, did you see the conversation the other day?

The general consensus was that it's easier said than done.

Apparently parenting classes don't work, Head Start's benefits wear off after a couple years in school, etc. etc.

So yeah, start at the beginning... but how?"

Oh, there are no easy nor obvious solutions. But if any money and effort should be directed to REALLY helping minorities get on an equal playing field, it shouldn't be concentrated at the end of the process in universities. All of those administrators, professors, and students who are going through a jabillion dollars and man-hours (yes, I said it) a year for endless diversity efforts could get their little heinies into the elementary schools and neighborhood programs; they could start and staff quality charter schools, etc. It might only budge the needle a bit, but it would still be 100% more effective than any amount of affirmative action on the college level.

There's another aspect to this;
Private entities serve clients or customers who can take their business elsewhere.
With government, you only have one source. To the extent that the local government hires other than the best candidates, the services to the citizens are reduced in efficiency.

NicoleK, you are missing a few parts to that conversation. The general consensus was the federal government isn't any good at it. That you needed local solutions to local problems. Head start is a failure. But many charter schools have shown great success.

You specifically asked for a grand nationwide project that government could do to fix things. People pointed out we've already done that and it didn't work. If you want to improve things you need to look outside of the federal government.

Oops. Forgot
See Ogbu on Shaker Heights.

And Sowell. "Cultures vary and differences have consequences"

RigelDog: "The institution looks at all the QUALIFIED applicants and if needed, puts a thumb on the scale for the disadvantaged."

That's part of the problem right there. Define "disadvantaged," define "needed," and who decides just how much of that "thumb on the scale" should be applied.

I will say, cc, having worked in an urban (Catholic ) school, you can't assume kids have access to the public library. School library, sure. But don't assume they have any way to get anywhere else.

When I was young I made a mistake based on assumptions... I asked my kids to track a stock. I assumed if they didn't have a newspaper or internet they could get to the library, or a free paper from the boxes at the subway. Turns out these girls weren't allowed out of the house on their own, it was too dangerous, and their parents didn't have time to take them anywhere either.

So there is an issue of lack of knowledge resources that is very real.

And also, a lot of parents can't come to school events and meetings due to working three jobs.

The thing is Ben if it's just left to the most local, there's no way to make it "just happen". All the localities aren't going to simultaneously start working on these issues. I just don't see that happening.

"track a stock"

What does that mean?

Why does it have to be simultaneous? Why can't each area make incremental improvements as and where they can manage? Don't let perfection be the enemy of better.

As the US has centralized education we've also seen a fall in the quality of that education.
Getting your neighbors to give a damn is hard enough. Getting someone who lives 1000+ miles away who you will never meet and will never see your kids to give a damn is pretty much impossible.

That said it isn't like there is no room for the federal government. Government in general is pretty bad at efficiently managing employees or providing service. But to have comparable data between areas you need standardized tests. Recording and enforcing standard measures is a great use of the federal government.

track a stock - to record the price history of a stock

https://www.wikihow.com/Track-Stocks

So there is an issue of lack of knowledge resources that is very real. ~ NicoleK at December 23, 2020 2:51 AM

Interesting. I had always been under the assumption that the library could serve as a readily-accessible knowledge resource reachable by all. It makes sense, though. If you live in a bad neighborhood, you limit your children's exposure to danger.

“When I was young I made a mistake based on assumptions... I asked my kids to track a stock.”

Why? What was the lesson objective here?
Why not just show them the Wall Street Journal? Or a web site if we are taking about more recent times?

While nice, this shouldn’t be a primary education goal, A big part of the problem with schools, not just public, is that they have lost sight of their mission. The best schools drum in basic literacy and math for the first six years gradually adding in subjects that reinforce these two basic things and establishing a platform for more advanced skills.

My major irritation with schooling in the 90’s was the amount of work given that had to largely be done by the parents, like complicated *science* projects. (Most of these were actually demonstrations and not experiments at all) but they almost always required a bunch of hoop jumping by adults, and not inconsiderable expense to comply with a graded requirement that was beyond the ability of a fifth grader to do on their own.

Then the teachers wonder why kids with busy parents, broken homes, or ones like me who refused to go back to the 5th grade on behalf of my children, did it half assed or not at all.

Isab wrote: "My major irritation with schooling in the 90’s was the amount of work given that had to largely be done by the parents, like complicated *science* projects. (Most of these were actually demonstrations and not experiments at all) but they almost always required a bunch of hoop jumping by adults, and not inconsiderable expense to comply with a graded requirement that was beyond the ability of a fifth grader to do on their own.

Then the teachers wonder why kids with busy parents, broken homes, or ones like me who refused to go back to the 5th grade on behalf of my children, did it half assed or not at all."

I could have written this exact thing! Our kids were born in the early 90s and it went up my butt sideways that they had various projects that the parents needed to basically do 90%. I was so pissed--after 12 years of schooling plus college plus law school I am freakin' DONE with homework!

I went to public schools and had a single working mother---every bit of my homework was able to be accomplished without my mother's input. Plus she didn't have the time. Plus we didn't have a car to drive to stores that sell the supplies for projects. Plus we didn't have any extra money at all for such things. At least I had a stable competent loving mother; how many disadvantaged kids even have that?

Conan, even if you live in a safe neighborhood if you only have one parent in the home a lot of things aren't really possible.

Isab, I don't see what the big deal about tracking a stock is. It is good pseudo-random data that can be used for a variety of math lessons. The issue here was Nicole assumed everyone had access to that data. They didn't. I assume she found out and changed to a data set everyone could get ahold of.

I have bigger issues with teachers giving out bags of M&Ms and having the kids mark down the frequency of colors. The math lesson is good but kids get too much sugar in school these days.

“Isab, I don't see what the big deal about tracking a stock is. It is good pseudo-random data that can be used for a variety of math lessons. The issue here was Nicole assumed everyone had access to that data. They didn't. I assume she found out and changed to a data set everyone could get ahold of.”

It isn’t a big deal.just tell me what you are trying to teach and I can demonstrate a dozen good ways to do it, without the kids ever having to leave your classroom.

Here is what I would do. Make it active learning. Give the kids a lesson on what the prices per share indicate. Then photo copy three different days of market prices spaced as widely apart as you can where you track the price of one stock, maybe something that the majority of kids will relate to, like Disney or a popular clothing company.

Then make them fill out a worksheet which asks questions, and requires them to calculate the difference, the rise, and fall, and what the total amount of gain or loss would be if you have three different numbers of shares in the company. If they are older, introduce the concept of * brokerage fees* or set them up for a high school history class, where they might be able to actually understand what happened in 1929, or 2008, as opposed to the dreck which passes for history in public schools, and most private ones.

This is what I mean, by “teach concepts that are building blocks for more advanced learning”.

Bingo. You have a math, and applied research lesson where they understand what the fucking point is, as opposed to a two hour trip to the library that is mostly busy work, and wasted time.

This is what education used to look like before the teachers unions decided that they could shove most of the actual work onto the parents while they marched the kids around the block half a day in support of doing *something* about climate change.

“When I was young I made a mistake based on assumptions... I asked my kids to track a stock.”

"Why? What was the lesson objective here?"

Just guessing but teaching more than basic economics. Investing, researching, and adding in personal rivalry. Each student picks and tracks a stock for a term fake invests 1000 and see how much you made. Allow one trade. Teaches value in investing and saving and the risks, sorely lacking in todays schools.

Why have projects that require parental help?
To get parents involved. Sure not all parents can or will, but for those who do there are benefits for the kid. As we see with schools teaching Critical Race theory, blindly trusting what they are teaching doesn't work.

A side benefit to the local way of doing things, experiment to find out what works best. 20 school districts, try 10 different things, see what actually works.

Isab and Rigeldog, here's a long 2010 thread of Amy's that is very relevant to what you said:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/09/leave-our-kids.html

Excerpts:

"Dear Teacher: With all due respect, I don't do my child's homework. I will not even always help her with it even if she asks for help. Sometimes, I will simply tell her that she is smart enough to figure it out on her own...Micromanagers do not bring out the best in people. They bring out the worst...One does not become a great pitcher if Mom is standing on the mound too, and one does not become a great student if Mom helps with homework every night, or even nearly so. But here's my counteroffer. If my child does not do her homework or does not do the work she is capable of, let me know, and she will wish she had. Oh, fear not. I won't beat her or starve her, but I will surely teach her that misbehavior results in undesirable consequences. By the way, if her story concerning what happened is different from yours, I will believe you, even if I don't think you saw the big picture..."

Jenny Had a Chance: "...you can't even get away with (that) approach to homework if you want to anymore. Kids come home the second week of kindergarten, before they learn to read, with homework that the parents must read the instructions for and supervise the 5-year-old in..."

Kristen: "Jenny had a chance, you made me laugh because now that my kids are older, I had forgotten about the early homework. Parents had to sign logs every night stating we read a certain amount of time with our child. If it wasn't signed, the kid got penalized in school. Projects were numerous and nearly impossible. I often felt like the first few years, I had gone back to school with my kids. There was no way I could have said to my kids, 'go to your room and do it on your own.' They never would have made it out of first grade!!"
________________________________

Clearly, what Jenny and Kristen described was horribly unfair to those parents who didn't speak English well, couldn't read well...or had to work multiple jobs!

I wish I knew exactly why teachers started doing that. I suppose it's a combination of pretending that mothers, on average, don't really have much work to do (ha! even in the 1950s, suburban housewives still often exhausted themselves, due to the relative shortage of household amenities), plus the belief that kids can't be expected to do their best unless parents are involved. One trouble, of course, is that modern adults have terrible handwriting, so it's too easy for kids to forge parental signatures. ("The Simpsons" had a scene like that, more than 20 years ago.)

“Why have projects that require parental help?
To get parents involved. Sure not all parents can or will, but for those who do there are benefits for the kid. As we see with schools teaching Critical Race theory, blindly trusting what they are teaching doesn't work.”

And yet you are going to be grading them on this, or demanding no objective grading at all while we all just pretend that all kids are equal.

And we are perpetuating the social inequality between kids who have a dedicated non working full time parent, and those that do not.

My biggest objection to school projects, is that they are monumental time wasters. It can eat up days for each kid to complete their project especially if it requires multiple trips to the library or the craft store and massive parental help for a truly minuscule amount of actual educational content.

This is by design.

I was fortunate to have maybe four really good teachers in my first twelve years of schooling. Every single one ran an objective driven classroom, where they knew what they wanted to teach and how they were going to get there,

It isnt easy and the best teachers have been at it for years, refining their curriculum, and building on what worked and what didn’t.

NicoleK, thanks a ton for pointing out that parents who APPEAR to be doing "the wrong thing" may well have very serious reasons to do so that are not at all evident to those living under much better circumstances - and that people shouldn't jump to conclusions.

It also sort of underlined what I said in this thread:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2020/11/some-of-us-dont.html

In a nutshell, you don't blame people who refuse to have kids because they can't afford to raise kids in a safe neighborhood - or work only 40 hours a week. You also can't assume that achieving the crime-free, 40-hour, middle-class lifestyle beforehand is easy for any particular adult. BUT...you can't assume that people who desperately need something positive in their lives are going to forgo having children just because most people would tell them not to.

While it may be true, as Newsweek said almost 30 years ago in the special feature "A World Without Fathers," that even rich black women are much more likely to be unwed mothers than rich white women, that doesn't change the fact that poverty is still a big predictor for out-of-wedlock children. It's those people who have a reasonable chance to live well in the near future who postpone parenthood - and even get married first.

I meant, of course, "just because most people would tell them not to have children."

The lesson was indeed to track data and also introduce real world economic ideas and I did end up doing another project, that's not really what the post was about.

The post was about how you can't assume kids have access to the same resources, even resources that are free for everybody.

The post was about how you can't assume kids have access to the same resources, even resources that are free for everybody.

NicoleK at December 23, 2020 11:53 AM

And my point is, the absolutely best way to do this, is to keep the classroom work self contained. Don’t send the kids or the parents on a time eating scavenger hunt. We do enough of that in real life for real reasons.

People seemed to miss my point about libraries: I was pointing out that for small children the parents can get books for them from the library. Not talking about the children going on their own. Once the kids are in school the school lib has tons of books. I am saying there is no excuse for an absence of books in the home because of the existence of libraries (and garage sales). When our kids were little we brought home a stack of books every sunday. Anyone can do this. This isn't about race either: Thomas Sowell pointed out that redneck culture in the south also had no books in the home.

Isab,

I think your lawyer instincts to argue are acting up here. You've come full circle and are now arguing NicoleK's point. If you have access to basic internet in your home looking up stock price data is not a big deal. But not all of her students had that access. So to be fair to all her students she has to keep the classroom self contained and only use data she provides. That limits some of the things she can do, but that is life.

Agreed CC. You can provide the opportunity to learn but if people don't want to learn you can't really force them.

“I think your lawyer instincts to argue are acting up here. You've come full circle and are now arguing NicoleK's point. If you have access to basic internet in your home looking up stock price data is not a big deal. But not all of her students had that access. So to be fair to all her students she has to keep the classroom self contained and only use data she provides. That limits some of the things she can do, but that is life.”

You see I agree with Nikole. Just for all the wrong reasons. I am challenging her fundamental belief that going to the library and looking at the Wall Street journal or a free stock lookup on the internet is somehow superior to handing the kids the info and teaching them what it means.

I find the mindset of the teacher as facilitator (traffic cop) directing students and their parents to go out and find minute pieces of data, which could easily be provided on a photocopy in the classroom to be the real issue.

The fact that teachers now are encouraged by the Ed schools to bury small nuggets of learning under three or four hours of outside the classroom busy work or travel time is a systemic problem.

Most schools are totally off track about what should be happening in the classroom. And what should be left for outside of it.

I've got bigger issues than looking up publicly available information. I'm more annoyed with all the clothing stuff my local elementary is doing. Funny sock day, pajama day, yellow shirt day, the list goes on and on. All of it not related to education. So I applaud NicoleK for trying. And I applaud her for recognizing this wasn't working and why and then moving on to something more functional.

I've got bigger issues than looking up publicly available information. I'm more annoyed with all the clothing stuff my local elementary is doing. Funny sock day, pajama day, yellow shirt day, the list goes on and on. All of it not related to education. So I applaud NicoleK for trying. And I applaud her for recognizing this wasn't working and why and then moving on to something more functional.

Ben at December 23, 2020 7:36 PM

Ben, It is all part and parcel of the same thing. Wasting most of the time available for dedicated instruction at school, and then trying to make the parents run in circles during the off hours to meet ridiculous uneducational demands such as yellow shirt day, a climate change protest sign, or to scrounge up three days of the Wall Street Journal.

Death by a thousand cuts.

Do not dress up your kid or buy special clothing to meet these ridiculous demands. Do not send them to DARE. Do not do elaborate science projects for them, and do not sign permission slips for protest marches or political rallies. In short, don’t play those games. If the teachers or administrators try and pressure you into it, tell them it’s against your religion.

Ultimately Isab, that's what I did.

I wasn't making a point about the joys of libraries, I was responding to a post above saying kids should just go to the library, and how it wasn't always possible for kids to do so.

Ugh, I’ve got a story about this. In the 7th grade my daughter had to make a 3 dimensional plant cell. It could be out of anything. We scrounged around the pantry found dried beans, some old Playdoh, pasta, etc.... The only things I bought were a small brownie pan and a styrofoam sphere. Handed it to the kid and told her, get busy. She asked for a little help cutting the sphere and that’s it. Turned it in, got 90. Why? Bc some other kid came in with a dog made out styrofoam with an animal cell carved into the stomach area. The fricking thing even had a dog collar and tag! Teacher told my kid, “Yeah, everything about yours is correct, but it looks like it didn’t take too long to do, so I deducted 10 points.” Life lessons: teachers can be jerks and life is rarely, if ever, fair.

Don't miss that modern "Diversity" is largely a lie.