The other day I wrote a post called Nebraska Considers Coerced Integration. People with children, white people with children, in a Nebraska school district are taking their kids out of schools flooded with poor, non-English speaking, and most likely, illegal aliens, and enrolling them in smaller (better) schools farther away.
Unlike liberal elites who send their kids to majority-white private schools while preaching “diversity” to the rest of us, ordinary, hard-working Americans probably can’t afford private schools, at least not for all of their kids.
In response to parents making rational decisions about their children’s education, the Nebraska state legislature is considering closing some of the outlying schools so that parents will have little choice but to bring their kids back to the low-performing schools flooded with illegal immigrants. Forced integration. But this is what happens when you’re dealing with the government. This is social engineering at its worst. If parents can’t afford private schools or homeschooling, they essentially have to deal with it. Or fight it.
That’s why I was pleased to learn that a liberal do-gooder in California has tucked tail and run with the rest of the white parents. Her mission was trying to convince reasonably intelligent people that keeping their kids enrolled in an elementary school with a 73 percent “Latino” population and 6 percent white was good for them.
That was all fine and dandy as long as her little Johnny was in kindergarten, but when he was about to enter first grade, she suddenly saw the light and transferred him to a more affluent school:
I’m gone,” said Mrs. Brace, who on Tuesday requested and was granted a transfer for her first-grade son out of Harding and into the more affluent Hope School, within the nearby Hope Elementary District. “I’ve just got to the point where, ‘Sorry guys, I need what’s best for my kids and there’s a school that’s two miles away that offers all those things I want.’ ” (Source)
I guess the light came on in Brace’s head after she realized the battle was too great and the harm to her children not worth a utopian experiment doomed to fail anyway. She complained that the Hispanic parents didn’t sign their kids up for after-school enrichment programs. And she discovered, to her utter dismay, that the Spanish-speaking parents had no interest in being her friend. But one Hispanic parent says she wants Brace and the other white parents to stay:
Harding parent Cristina Hernandez said she’s seen the school’s racial mix change, but that Mrs. Brace shouldn’t give up.“I’ve been here 14 years now, and all of a sudden we turned around and all the white parents had gone,” she said, speaking in Spanish. “They don’t want their children side by side with our children. (Mrs. Brace) shouldn’t leave. She should stay and keep fighting.” (Emphasis added)
If the speaking-in-Spanish part doesn’t give Hernandez a hint why Americans are fleeing that school, perhaps she should take some after-school enrichment classes herself.
Read the whole story. It’s a hoot. Brace is a hypocrite for snatching her kids out of the school after getting in everybody else’s face, but I support her decision 100 percent. Liberal politicians in D.C. send their precious offspring to private (safe) schools, not the District of Columbia school system. I applaud their rational decisions.
Now if they’d only leave the rest of us alone, tone down the preaching and stop castigating parents for doing what’s best for their own kids, we’d all get along.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 41 comments }
And I wonder how many of the Latino parents are legal.
La Shawn:
Loosen up.
Liberalism is a mental disorder, as Michael Savage says.
Mrs Brace has been cured.
Ha! He said “extreme” liberalism, or something like that.
When I was in school (a very long time ago), there was some talk about instituting forced integration to get kids from our mostly white neighborhood into the school where mostly hispanic and the majority of black kids in our town attended.
The family that lived across the street from us was a black family. The father went to town hall meetings to complain, and he _also_ enrolled his kids in a private Catholic school early on, just in case. I still remember him telling my parents, “Look, I worked hard to move my family *out* of that neighborhood for the benefit of my kids, and the city is not going to punish our success and send them back there.”
In the end, the bus scheme failed, but as I recall, he left his kids in the private school because that’s how much he cared about his kids’ education.
I have to wonder if Cristina Hernandez, the woman who (speaking in Spanish) said that Mrs. Brace should stay and fight, actually did anything to make Mrs. Brace feel welcome, or took advantage of the after school activities Mrs. Brace worked to make available. Or maybe we don’t need to wonder at all.
Gee….it took them this long to see that?
The liberal elites need to stop cowtowing to minorities (and don’t START cowtowing to the white populace) and do what’s right for the COUNTRY. STOP Illegal immigration. Enforce laws.
Punish wrongdoers (evildoers works!)
Dan
How enlightening. When forced to acknowledge the result of liberalism run amock, the govt. solution is still the LIBERAL one. Eliminate the competition!
The correct solution is a 21st century re-do of all things called “public schools”
Here’s an idea. If we are really interested in FAIRNESS, we would stop forcing non parents to fund these spending factories. If the cable company can tell what shows to charge me for, I’m sure the tax collector can.
Next idea. Deport all illegals! Without this step there is no “rule of law”. If it sounds mean, take your head out of your bu##! The economy of Nebraska has been hit hard. Believing that It’s salvation lies in criminals is in itself a crime.
Actually, I was bussed across town from a mixed area to a majority black school because they wanted to balance it out. I had no idea I was part of an integration plan until several years later, when my parents told me. The only negative was that if I missed the bus, someone would have to drive me across town. A lot of teachers were black and the principals were black, too. It was a good experience.
Nice that it worked for you. But other people may not like it. Don’t FORCE someone to do something they don’t like.
I guess the way I look at it is: at least she TRIED to work within the system for change as opposed to just turning tail and running.
Of course there are two sides to every story where she says the Hispanic parents were not receptive to her. Perhaps there was resentment of a white woman trying to come in and run everything in a minority school, perhaps they felt patronized, perhaps they truly didn’t care (which I doubt), maybe they couldn’t afford to participate more (in terms of time/money).
In the end she had to do what she had to do for her kids and I certainly don’t fault her for that, but I wouldn’t consider her a hypocrite at all. Sometimes the battle can be won and sometimes it can’t..but to consider her a hypocrite. I just can’t buy that.
Oh Phil. Please come out and bash Mrs. Brace for her actions. We want to hear it today….
What is scary is that if this woman had been a government bureaucrat, she could have forced everyone else to keep their kids in that school and STILL sent her child to a better school. Sort of like our Congresspeople and government workers choosing not to be part of Social Security.
La Shawn:
I am from Santa Barbara and my kids go to the Hope School District. We live in the district and spent a ton of money to buy a home in an area with good schools, just so we wouldn’t have to do what many of our friends do – pay for private schooling. The issue is not complex. It is not race – it is language. You just cannot expect the same performance from kids who are learning a language as well as the subject matter as you can from someone who already knows the language. I can say that from personal experience since I went to school in France. The plain and simple facts are that the slow guy is setting the pace in these schools. The kids are getting screwed for life because the educators won’t track the kids in separate language skill based classes. It hurts the majority population, because those kids need english to succeed in our country. It hurts the white kids because their development is slowed. Political correctness be damned.
RKV
I would add that another factor which makes the Hope District schools work well is that there is significant parental involvement in the school. I sometimes take time off from work to help out at school. My wife is there regularly and raises funds for the PTA, too. That is typical, expected and true of a huge fraction of other parents. From personal knowledge that is not the case at Harding. I won’t speculate on why, but I will say this. I strongly support educational vouchers. Vote with your $$$.
Busing was never meant to help the minorities, it was to punish the whites. When they closed the predominantly black high school in East Palo Alto and spread the children out among 4 other schools, they flushed a generation down the drain.
RKV – I have a similar experience. And I agree, it’s about choosing what’s best for your kids. I had an actual conversation with a teacher that tried to tell me that I would be doing the community a service by keeping my kid in the lousy LA school system instead of moving to a community with better schools. In fact, she tried to imply I was hurting other kids by not allowing my child to ‘make a difference’. Right, like my kid is there to shape social policy and perpetuate the failings of liberal law makers. It’s not about race. It’s about my kid getting the best schooling I can get for her. That’s what parents do.
When my ancestors arrived here, there was no liberal hand-wringing establishment to “help” them by condoning the speaking of a foreign tongue. They learned English on their own, without all the modern-day angst, and they learned pretty doggoned quickly, too. It’s not hard. It really isn’t. And despite the crying from knuckleheads on the left, it’s not too much to ask, or demand, of all immigrants.
But then, my ancestors came here legally, and for the purpose of becoming Americans, not to set up some balkanized sub-state of foreign nationals with no desire to assimilate.
“Unlike liberal elites who send their kids to majority-white private schools while preaching “diversity” to the rest of us, ordinary, hard-working Americans probably can’t afford private schools, at least not for all of their kids.”
Uh, its liberals who are sending kids to majority white privat schools? what?
Take it easy with the “H word.” She realized that she was wrong, or at least, that her plan hadn’t worked out as she had hoped. And she admits that. That doesn’t make her a hypocrite.
Actually, “Do as I say and not as I do,” is the definition of a hypocrite.
LB,
You’re clouding the definition. She was “practice what she was preaching” from what I read of your source article, at least for a time period. So how is that hypocritical??
Hypocritical is when her kids would have already been attending the other school and she was telling other folk (meaning the white parents) to stay at Harding.
At least that’s how I see it.
La Shawn, thanks for an excellent post! Good luck with your TV appearance this PM. I won’t be able to see it, as I have no cable or attena – by choice – but hope you get to be able to say a few substantive words in the short time that you have!! Go for it!
We have had our kids in a small private Christian school for many years…since 1989. We had them go up until 8th grade. Then, we decided to put them into a public high school setting. Two have graduated from there, and one is attending now. Next year another will go to that high school. And two will stay at the Christian school until 8th grade. What am I trying to say,(and yes, it is 6 children)? It all depends where your priorites are. For us, we have driven used cars, not new, we have rented our home, not bought. It was a sacrifice. But well worth it. Our children have a good foundation under them, as they enter high school. They don’t live in a ‘bubble’ socially. They have their minds filled with good teaching, history and morals and values. They not only get it from the private school, but from home and church as well. If you are depending on the schools to raise your kids, you have very misguided priorities.
God is the One who has provided for us, for our needs. At some point, in the future, we know we will be able to buy the home someday. The two kids who have graduated, are in college. And they are paying their own way. It has been well worth the sacrifice for them.
Its nice to hear that a Liberal finally got bit in the butt by a problem of their own creation.
Will that make a difference probably not. The public schools are geared to the average student with below average teachers, and once achieving tenure, they are harder to dis-lodge that a tree stump.
The NEA has the entire system tied up in knots, they have dumbed down the curriculum to the point that the kids are not learning.
What amazes me is the television ads for places like ‘The Sylvan Learning Institute’ it is a high priced place to get your kids the education they do not receive in public school. Because if they did there would be no need for alternative education.
If kids were getting an education from the horrific public schools, there would be no need for a voucher system to private schools. They have created this problem back in the 1960s and it continues today at an accelerated pace and now with all the illegals coming into the border states this is just another warning sign that the public school system is in sorry shape and will only get worse before it can get any better.
Mark
There’s another aspect to this that I haven’t seen commented on: school consolidation. I’m seeing it happen a lot in the South, particularly in the rural areas. Build a large “regional” high school, close all of the other high schools within a 20-30 mile radius, and create a “superschool” with 1,000 or more students.
There are several factors driving this. Everyone thinks that one large school costs less to run than several smaller schools, although I think that’s debatable. Some districts, quite frankly, want to create a superschool so their area can be more competitive in athletics. However, I see a more insidious and pervasive motive, and I think it applies in this Nebraska case: elimination of choice. Legislators can pass all of the open-district and school-choice laws they want, but if the school district only operates one school, there is no choice. The public-school establishment finds another way to defeat the will of the parents, and creates uncotrollable behemoths of schools in the process.
“The plain and simple facts are that the slow guy is setting the pace in these schools. The kids are getting screwed for life because the educators won’t track the kids in separate language skill based classes.”
Very true. Because actually setting up a separate track for these kids and getting them prepared would *gasp* take some effort. My sister works on the administrative staff in the Montgomery County, MD school system and has told me more than a few stories about how lazy the school system is in doing their basic job, never mind handling cases that require extra attention.
You know Bucky, it is not always laziness. There are many legal and political challenges to doing the right thing for the kids. Thats why I like vouchers. They would do 2 of the 3 critical things necessary to improve the system. One, it would absolutely break the teachers unions. Two, it would reward those institutions which do what parents want and punish those who do not. The third thing is cultural, and involves parents and what their expectations and involvement in their children’s education is like. Parents are going to have to do that for themselves.
>“I’ve been here 14 years now, and all of a sudden we turned around and all the white parents had gone,†she said, speaking in Spanish.
Fourteen years in the U.S. with her kids going to that school and she can’t speak English in response to a question. I guess that says it all… Sad, sad, sad.
It isn’t just white parents pulling their kids out of certain school districts in favor of others, but mid-class black parents and asians. We want what is best for our children, and a public school beseiged by non-english speaking illegal immigrants is not it. Sorry, it isn’t.
Sylvan Learning Center is a tutoring place.I used to go their when I was in High school.although I’m only 33 I wasn’t allowed to go to a private school because I was black.Imagine the damage is done to a six years old.I believe if you can send your kids to a better school go fo it.I wish my parents had that luxury when I was a kid.
It’s not laziness, but the law. Administrators are forced to mainstream these students into regular education classrooms for the benefit of their self-esteem, so that they do not feel like they are less of a person…outcast, dumb, “special” et al. I have several students who are in my classroom that cannot handle the content. It is my responsibility (by law) to make the changes in their assignments so that they can learn in the same classroom.
I think that mainstreaming has some benefits, but as far as learning is concerned, students would learn much more in smaller communities where they can get the help they need and those that are on pace can continue to thrive.
Dennis Prager has a book out about this stuff. Isn’t it titled something like Hard America vs. Soft America??? I really can’t remember.
And my step-daughter will go to the best school I can get her in to, regardless of the cost. Even though I teach in public schools, the best education is what matters the most. If that means I go down the road to a Catholic or Christian school, then that’s where my money will go.
This tells me two things: That the non-English speaking population is no longer a big-city problem, and that both the educational beauraucracy and the courts are irredeemable.
Chris: I have a friend who is a public High School teacher, and semnds his son elsewhere. Seems to be a lot of that going around.
Mark: Yeah, this is the age in inhuman educational behemoths, even in rural America. Personally, I thing the whole gov’t school system ought to be scrapped in favor of a market-based system.
Chris sez: “It’s not laziness, but the law. Administrators are forced to mainstream these students into regular education classrooms for the benefit of their self-esteem, so that they do not feel like they are less of a person�outcast, dumb, �special� et al.”
Chris…is this a California state law…or something else? I am not aware of it. In fact during the wave of immigrants from Vietnam in the ’70’s those students (at least in PA) were put in english immersion classes to get them up to speed with basic english before they were put in math, science or other classes. In Massachusetts (2003), a law was passed requiring one-year of english immersion classes for immigrants who are not adequately fluent in english.
As an educator, I’m sure you work hard at what you do, but that is not entirely the case with some of your compatriots. In Montgomery, there have been teachers who were asked to help setup additional learning curriculums and tracks. They refused, not because of the law, but because they simply didn’t want the burden of doing it. I happen to call that laziness. Admittedly the unions play a role in this too, but those union officials are elected by those same teachers.
Bucky – While that law for the wave of Vietnam immigrants may have made it easier to set up special immersion English classes in the school system, it probably wasn’t necessary.
Our church sponsered Vietnamese family and they were all speaking adequate English within a few months and within a year had an excellent grasp of the language. It was because they wanted to be part of the American Dream and didn’t want language to hold them back.
The current influx of llegal Spanish-speaking immigrants don’t seem to have the same motivation, even when they stay a long time. For that woman, after fifteen years, to be answering the question in Spanish, instead of English is unconscionable, but clearly illustrates the problem in the schools of both parents and children who are ill-equipped to handle the scholastic setting, yet at the same time apparently ill-motivated to what should be done to deal with the situation.
It makes you feel like this isn’t immigration, but rather an invasion.
William sez: “The current influx of llegal Spanish-speaking immigrants don’t seem to have the same motivation, even when they stay a long time. For that woman, after fifteen years, to be answering the question in Spanish, instead of English is unconscionable, but clearly illustrates the problem in the schools of both parents and children who are ill-equipped to handle the scholastic setting, yet at the same time apparently ill-motivated to what should be done to deal with the situation.”
Let me be the “Devil’s advocate” here for a moment. You could say this is a problem of our own making, in that we continually make accomodations for non-english speakers. Why should they bother to take the time to learn english when schools will teach their kids in their native language, TV stations/radio stations/newspapers are available, heck even product containers now have directions in English, Spanish and French!
Dan: I am not for forced integration. It’s a weird concept. But it worked for me (unless I missed the bus).
I am 35 years old. I was bussed to an urban majority-black school in Omaha for 2nd grade and again for 6th grade.
The first experience was fine, I have to say. The academics were on par with my suburban school, and I made a lot of friends from all over the city, including several black kids.
I learned a lesson about people that looked different from me and my neighbors that I wouldn’t have learned from watching “Sanford and Son” or “Fat Albert”.
The second experience was not fine. For 6th grade I was bussed to an urban “Magnet School” for gifted students. The school was actually a normal inner city school with a gifted program. I reconnected with exactly one of my old friends, a black girl who shared some of my classes. The other friends that I made in 2nd grade, all black boys, made a fine show of ignoring me, especially on the playground.
I learned another lesson.
Despite the program I was bussed for being designated “gifted”, my studies were now behind the grade level that I was taught at in the suburbs. I lost a year of math and science instruction and never really caught back up. The only real extra was a superficial introduction to computers (Apple II-E’s). Somehow the talismanic presence of a computer was supposed to make up for the extra 40-minute commute and the lack of challenging instruction in the real world. I think of this whenever I hear new and expensive computer or internet initiatives for failing school systems.
Bussing at 2nd grade seemed to be fine as long as the curriculum and teachers were of decent quality. We were young enough, all of us, to be relatively untouched by preconceived notions of race. By 6th grade, though, the bloom was definitely off of the rose! The race lines were really beginning to be firmly drawn and the learning curve was only getting steeper. At that point bussing was more about satisfying federal quotas in order to qualify for school funding (or to meet court orders) than benefiting school children by way of social engineering.
Which is really what this is all about.
Bucky-
I’ll have to take the time to look all of it up, but between the education acts passed in the 1970’s, NCLB, et al, administrators mainstream as many students as possible. ADA legislation also has contributed to this factor. This is a federal mandate. Mainstream classrooms are supplemented by “content mastery labs” and special education services. In theory it does work, however in many schools, the results prove otherwise. I work in Texas, which is a right to work state, so educators are without a union, which is great for some things, bad for our paychecks!!!
Hey i got a sister who livein nebraska and a nephew who gose to one of those pis poor schools dose that mean he is getting a poor education or has my sister hopfuly removed him? what we dont need is the NEA in anymore schools
This article exposes a core of rotteness that has been spreading throughout America for a long time.
The great debate on public education can be traced back to the early 20th century when the advent of social-ism and communist in the far corners of the world engaged the liberal mindset in America and changed the political thinking of the liberal party forever.
Here surely was the answer to everything unfair and stupid about America. At last a shining path had opened to free the worker slaves from their capitalist masters and provide true equality in our time.
Sounded great I’m sure. The Democratic Party sure did go for it (hook, line, sinker and boat). This political “earthquake” in the world not only led to terrible wars and suffering for millions, it also led to long-term suffering for Americans that is being carried on to this day even though we now know these economic constructions don’t and can’t work as long as 1 dang person believes that someone who sits on their duff should have the same economic opportunity as someone who works like a dog and creates jobs.
The reality today is that we have found that it is (from a practical standpoint) impossible to “layer” a federally mandated quasi-command/social-istic economic structure on top of an economy that operates within the context of a free market system because the federally mandated structure is deprived of the “good” benefits of competition that can only be found in the free market economic context.
I humbly offer proof of my claims as follows:
a) Ask yourself this question: If you polled 100 reasonable Americans and asked them whether a public school education was a better quality educational experience than a private school educational experience, I’d imagine nearly all of them would pick the private school.
That must mean that private schools cost more, huh?
Sorry, you’d be wrong.
According to the US Department of Education, in 2003 the per pupil per annum spending worked out as follows:
i) Public schools: $6,600 average cost.
ii) Non-parochial private schools: $3,200 average cost.
iii) Parochial private schools: $1,500 average cost.
Now ask yourself the question, when was the last time you thought our kids and education workers in the public school systems were getting enough money?
Never, right?
The reason is that there is no competition for capital investment or revenues under the federally-mandated public education system we have today.
Here’s what you get as a result of that approach:
a) Education workers have no direct economic incentive to work harder – so most don’t.
b) Schools know they will be funded whether the school does the job or not, so most don’t.
c) The relative quality of our kids educational experience keeps declining (compared to other industrialized nations) because they aren’t engaged by the schools, so they don’t show or bother with the work – they’ll get passed thru anyway so why bother?
If you love irony, then you’ll love this.
If we ALLOWED our government to completely privatize education and sell off the government controlled assets, the federal government’s resulting one-time gain could be reinvested back into the newly privatized industry in the form of bankruptcy proof investment constructions that earn 12 to 18 times what the current Social Secutiy Trust Fund investments earn without the risk exposure that accompanies those current investment practices, then we could pay off the current $11 trillion Social Security Fund shortfall within 10 years – in its entirety.
If you have a thinking cap maybe you should put it on and look beyond the busing and fussing.
I find the comments here concerning the woman’s responding in spanish as “sad” or indicative of some unwillingness to learn disheartening. It’s ideas like this that really turn off the hispanic population to the Right.
My response as a hispanic and very republican conservative is don’t judge people on their language of choice. As someone very interested in languages and linguistics, I can tell you that most people lose the ability to learn a new language early in life (try it yourself, and try to get the accent right, too). But it doesn’t make them any less intelligent (which I hope none of yall were implying)–perhaps the woman felt more comfortable expressing herself in the language she knew best. I’m bilingual myself, english effectively having taken over as “native language”, so I find it harder to express myself in spanish. But because I can’t as easily express in spanish what I am expressing here in english does not denote any lack of intelligence, drive, etc.
English will continue to evolve just like it had when it was Old English. Our brand of the language would be unrecognizable to the Old English. I don’t see this influx of immigrants as a bad thing some people try to make it out to be. It’s the natural course of the world, the way God wanted it. I wonder if the Native Americans should reform their nations to kick us all out for immigrating into their land “illegally”, especially since us naturalized offspring don’t want to leave. No, they shouldn’t. Let’s live together as a loving people and show the rest of the world we live under God’s principles, not man’s ideas of “my land! go away unless you wanna get shot”
As a son of immigrants, I know that we are indeed motivated to succeed as any of you are. That’s why we came here in the first place, and why we take jobs other people just won’t take (like factories, pest control, sanitation–are these the jobs being taken away from “americans”? If so, you can have them back, b/c they’re not fun, let me tell you!), because we have a hard work ethic put into us by our culture, in spite of the lazy mexican stereotype. Once here, we’re trying to learn a new language on the fly because we haven’t the time nor money for classes which can be spent working to feed a family and pay bills. It’s a luxury natives of this country have in not having to worry about language much at all, but uproot yourself to a brand new country with only 50 dollars in your pocket and see how many night classes you can attend.
Should immigrants in the US be forced to learn english? I find that the english spoken by many hispanics is just fine, but native speakers are snobbish and insist on not being able to understand it. This is what causes an unwillingness for people to speak it (you would too if, say, a frenchman patronized your speech everytime you spoke). Besides, language is living and evolving; how do you suppose the Romance languages evolved out of Latin? They started out as non-standard Latin dialects mutated by the speakers of a region.
But should immigrants be forced to learn english? Nah. You can live in Miami all your life and not have to deal with english, actually. I think immigrants should be helped and given the resources (it’s not “socialism”, it’s called being kind to your neighbor) to learn if needed. Perhaps if we cut out things like income tax, it wouldn’t be such a big deal to provide these programs. The whole “legal” vs. “illegal” thing is inconsequential–they’re here, so deal with it like the Christians we are and show them love, not throw them back to the place they’re trying to escape.
I speak spanish everyday. I was in the gifted program, and then I went through the whole bussing thing for a magnet high school in downtown Baton Rouge, LA. I’m now a senior at LSU studying biology. Did english make me smart? Nope, God did. and some work, too. But because my hard-working immigrant parents came out of a communist nation looking for a place where the people are supposed to be kind to each other because they were mostly Christian.
I still believe this country can be that, but the Right needs to stop marginalizing a hefty portion of the country that has most of their same moral ideals on abortion, faith, same-sex unions, etc. And this group is the immigrants. Wake up before the Left takes them all it (and they’re doing a good job of that, too!)
Comments on this entry are closed.