They are KIDS Eric!!!!!! Dear God, most 25 year old males are not men.

I know, you have been so sensitized that you can’t call them “boys.” However, you had better get a grip on reality or both you and these two innocent vessels are going to have one hellova ride.

I have an interesting article today on my blog about a developer seeking to restore one of the last two remaining one-room schoolhouse structures in Mecklenberg County in North Carolina that was built by African Americans just after the Civil War.

The link is: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Tami/91164/

La Shawn- Don’t back down!

Kids are not dumb… I’m sure they realize the difference between a “supportive adult’s” opinion vs. what they see and hear from other “unbiased” observers…

I would completely stand with your original statement— “You get it(self-esteem) by performing. That requires effort“.

Everything else is just “flattery”…

The esteemed La Shawn Barber laments the controversy surrounding a white man who was hired to head the predominantly black Prince George’s Country school district. The Washington  Post reports: “Let me tell you, this was an agonizing d…

Jakes said: “Until your attitude is corrected, you can’t be corrected….You cannot expect the whole human race to move over because you had a bad childhood.” (Woman, thou art loosed!, page 137)

…but at least I got to be a crossing guard and flag bearer. …until I started my lifelong protest against homework.

One year my highschool gifted teacher was so focused on liberal arts and depressed playwrights that after Eugene O’Neill’s “Fog” I started coming to school drunk. My performance in school took a nose-dive even though it had all been downhill even since my third grade principal paddled me black and blue for trying to prevent a fight; after that, there was no such thing as an authority figure, morally or intellectually. During my second 9th Grade Standard English reading of The Crucible, my teacher asked if anyone knew what succubus meant and I was almost tempted to give an extensive amalgamated profile of the succubus/incubus phenomenon from historical manifestations, but I feared it would get me sent to the counselors office. My World History teacher could almost keep my attention long enough to stop me from astrally projecting during WWII videos, almost, so I gave him my copy of the Necronomicon to see if that would liven up the chapter on ancient Sumeria. Some time during the 10th/11th grade (there was some debate about which grade I was in) I simply stopped going to school except when I wanted to see friends, so I would just read my own books and take their tests for fun; I walked into a new American History class on the day of a mid-year exam and got something like an 86, of course I knew I deserved about a 10, so I had to give the credit to the ancient Sumerican god of intelligence whose runes I was scribing on the desk. Forget teachers, I didn’t need teachers, I needed an exorcist! I was a *nasty* little liberal. :-/

Jesus saves!
Can I get an Amen?

I read today on both LaShawn Barber and Dr. Helen’s blogs that there is an effort in Montgomery County Md. to attract more minority representation in gifted and talented elementary school programs by “dumbing” down the entrance requirements into the…

“The soft bigotry of lowered expectations” is alive and well in Howard County, MD. I have a friend who is Hispanic, married to a black man, with a couple of lovely boys in elementary school. Both parents are bright and ambitious.

She found out that the teachers had decided that her boys weren’t all that smart, so they would not challenge them, to avoid hurting their “self esteem.” Because she watches over them when they do their homework, she noticed when they were switched in their classes and the work got repetitive, and new concepts were introduced more slowly. She went to the school, and told them what she expected of the school. We talked about it ahead of time, and I said “Go get ‘em!” The boys’ classes became more rigorous, and their grades (B’s, mostly) stayed the same. Obviously, the children were perfectly capable of handling the work. She did, successfully, what I had failed to do, to my long-standing regret.

These schools have a huge demand for the gifted and talented program, which is mostly reserved for the children of teachers and other people who know how to game the system. I lost out on this when my oldest son was transferred into this system, and went six months without doing his homework, without any contact to me at all. He told me he was doing his homework at school, I believed him, and his grades were fine. I had no way to know his attitude was being trashed.

I think what’s really going on is that teachers are looking for ways to dump kids OUT of the GT program and into something that strongly resembles babysitting, and anybody who proves vulnerable, that is, who has parents who art not alert enough to know whether their child is getting screwed over, will find their child treated as a lesser being.

The way to stop this nonsense is to demand a more rigorous curriculum for your child.

Go for it.