1,170 words

Part 2 (Read Part 1 here)

I refused to be intimidated as a middle aged white teacher. On one occasion between classes, because it was simply more convenient, I used a student restroom. Upon exiting, a fellow teacher told me, “Man, don’t ever do that again! You lookin’ to die?”

It wasn’t uncommon for black girls to preen with makeup, paint nails, and even use a curling iron in the back of the room. I would call them on this every time, but it didn’t stop them from trying every day. A class didn’t go by that boys didn’t enter the room with a coiled stance ready for possible confrontation or the girls screaming at each other at decibel levels far exceeding what was even remotely civilized. I’d ask them, “Why do you have to scream at each other when you’re standing right next to each other?” The answer was, word for word at 100 decibels, “We black!”

There were kids with kids. There were kids who couldn’t read cursive writing. Seldom did they even bother to be on the right page in their books when they brought them. Of course, it was silly to hand out books if you ever expected to see them again. As a result, we eventually resorted to classroom sets which meant they never went home. The hallways between classes were rivers of bad behavior every class change. Typical were students’ aggressive interactions, “eyeballing” to intimidate, and hustling and pawing at the girls (a pretty white girl had zero chance of being left alone ever without the relentless, sexually aggressive come-ons by the black boys). Writhing make-out and dry-humping episodes next to soft drink machines were not uncommon either. The pep rallies, the one a year they dared to have, were like refugee camp displays of teenage mothers and babies, nobody paying attention, and everyone carrying on with their respective groups. By contrast, I once taught in an affluent independent school in the midwest with a number of students of color. They were, without exception, well mannered, intelligent, respectful and few. I look back on them very fondly.

I finished my career in a small rural school in the mid South. Just over 11 years ago, I heard of an opening at a small, country school and pounced on it. It was and still is a community made up of polite, mostly white country people, multi-generations of clean, kind, and decent locals with some pockets of white poverty. The contrast in black inner city and white Southern cultures couldn’t have been more polar opposite. I enjoyed a blessed ten-plus years in Green Acres K-12, and I am delighted to have just retired. Far from perfect, we have our own speed bumps in the form of liberal mission creep from the Federal Department of Education to the State Department of Education to the local school board (though the gender nonsense has not yet reached our building). Over time, however, we have given way to ocean-floor falling standards, a national trend. In my district they’ve lowered a D to 60 percent. Grade inflation is a given.

We do have black students here, and because our culture is overwhelmingly white, rural, traditional, and Southern, their very small minority mostly enjoys an element of kindness and friendliness that they find easy to navigate. You find a few redneck bigots, but they are not many. Most of the white kids make an effort to be friendly and even enjoy the novelty of having a black friend. The one fight I broke up last school year was between a brick-headed white boy who said black student that we inherited from a nearby city school had stolen from him. I ended up going head-first into a coke machine but did manage to pry the two combatants apart. (This is not advisable for a man my age). The black student later apologized for my takedown in the pileup, and I appreciated that.

It isn’t misty watercolor perfect here, but in eleven years I was never robbed, never had to hide my belongings; when I loaned money or a phone charger to a kid I got it back every time. Most of the kids were kind and thoughtful if not entirely invested in learning. Like everywhere, we have the issue of skyrocketing number of kids with IEPs (learning/social/psychological accommodations).

To discount nature and genetics over nurture is absurd. This applies no less to a good many of the white kids whose families are downward trending in desirable social and cognitive traits. Many people here, however, overcome this with a culture that values hard work.

The death knell for public education in America is upon us because, in large part, we refuse to give students what they really need according to their different temperaments, abilities, and aptitudes. (This would have racial implications that are “verboten” in 2024 America). I recommend that at least we segregate students into four groups: those who can and will, those who might with the right environment or nudge, those who can’t and need help, and those who won’t.

About those who won’t: Some have home cultures that don’t value self-betterment via educational attainment that also involves delayed gratification, personal responsibility and/or the need for impulse control. Some of these kids also have hellish home lives and survival is higher on the list than learning. This is the population where you find revolving door baby daddies, drug use, common domestic violence, unemployment and government subsidy as a generational lifestyle. Few will speak the obvious: that those in this “at risk” group are lopsidedly (as a percentage of their populations), though not exclusively, students of color. Regardless of race, when these students are present in any number in a classroom they will become the “pace cars” for what can be accomplished.

There are many such impediments to learning in the traditional classroom. Group belief is a powerful motivator/de-motivator in performance. Many conscientious students believe that their efforts don’t reward them because they conclude that the undeserving are rewarded only slightly less for doing nothing. The takeaway: hard work doesn’t pay off.

In a category beyond “at risk” are some students so cluster B personality disorder (antisocial, borderline, histrionic and narcissistic personality disorders) that they need vigilant managing (therapy?) due to their lack of empathy and unpredictable, often violent behaviors, the kind that end up on YouTube and X. To quote author F. Roger Devlin: “School pupils have always been disciplined at different rates by race because they misbehave at different rates. In order to hide this, the Obama administration pushed for race-norming school discipline; laxer punishment for blacks and Hispanics.”

This “look the other way” if they’re minorities has been going on in order to stack the equity deck. Triaging kids to where they belong and giving them what they truly need would bring about a political crap storm from reality-deniers and leftist, outcome-based zealots. When this happens nobody gets what they need, and they aren’t now. Forcing together all races and temperaments in America’s public schools has been a pedagogical Krakatoa.