Jordan gets it right (The Long): On a remarkably regular basis, the New York Times produces the worst education reporting found on the face of the earth.
According to the paper's well-bred reporters, the nation's giant achievement gaps are all the result of test prep! And not only that:
If we could only "desegregate" Gotham's schools, the children would all be well above average! Just like in Lake Wobegon!
Such heinous work is built around the need for performative virtue. After such fantastical demonstrations, it's off to the Hamptons for a weekend of play among the finer set!
So it goes, year after year, in the New York Times. Imagine, then, our surprise when we read Miriam Jordan's superlative profile of the Lake Worth, Florida public schools on the front page of yesterday's National section.
Jordan is a "national immigration reporter" for the Times. She came to the paper in May 2017 after years of experience covering immigration issues for the Wall Street Journal.
Yesterday, Jordan's report described the "challenges" public school systems may face when confronted with waves of immigrant kids. The report was deeply human and deeply humane, and intelligent to boot.
Jordan began as shown below. We include the hard-copy headlines:
JORDAN (7/10/19): Engulfed by Migrant Children, and Straining to Teach Them/Dayvin Mungia is seven years old. A photograph of the beautiful child provides the famous thousand words. He sits with Sakellarios, his second-grade teacher, as she gently prods him.
School districts across the country take on language barriers, illiteracy and traumas to educate newcomers.
LAKE WORTH, Fla.—Dayvin Mungia, 7, arrived from El Salvador at South Grade Elementary in South Florida last year with, it seemed, no schooling at all. “He didn’t even recognize the first letter of his name,” said Nicol Sakellarios, his second-grade teacher, as the smiling boy gamely stumbled through his ABC’s in summer school not long ago. “Good job, my love,” she said, prodding him on as he faltered again and again.
Jordan focuses on Lake Worth, a long-time haven for immigrants from Guatemala. According to Jordan, "spiraling violence and an unforgiving drought that has driven subsistence farmers off their land back home has caused a surge in departures [from Guatemala] in the last two years."
That recent surge in new arrivals has produced challenges within the Lake Worth schools. For starters, consider this:
JORDAN: Last year, the Palm Beach County school district enrolled 4,555 Guatemalan students in K through 12, nearly 50 percent more than two years earlier. Many of the students come from the country’s remote highlands and speak neither Spanish nor English. The number of elementary school students in K through 5 more than doubled to 2,119 in that same period.Dayvin Mungia, age 7, is one of the students in question. That said, the challenges facing Lake Worth's public schools extend beyond issues of language.
[...]
Critics say immigrant students could do better if the district provided more support, including hiring more interpreters. But district officials say it has been tough to hire speakers of Mayan languages, such as Q’anjob’al and Mam, whose educational qualifications fulfill state requirements. Currently, only four interpreters make the rounds of the entire district.
Trauma poses challenges too. In this passage, Jordan describes a situation at Munger Mountain Elementary, way off in the mountain west:
JORDAN: Nearly half of the books at the library in the Munger Mountain Elementary school in Jackson, Wyo., are in Spanish, where the immigrant population has ballooned in recent years. The school has recently begun offering all instruction in both English and SpanishHe feared his grandmother would be killed! Traumatizations of that type offer challenges too. Later, Jordan returned to Lake Worth to describe a similar situation:
Scott Eastman, the principal, said that students do not just arrive with learning deficiencies. One child had been separated from his family, and was so traumatized he didn’t speak for weeks. “He constantly cried, worrying that his grandmother was going to be killed back in El Salvador and that he would never see his parents again,” Mr. Eastman said.
JORDAN: “The constant state of anxiety creates toxic stress for every member of the family,” said Amanda Escobar, who leads the team of early-learning specialists from the Guatemalan-Maya Center. “The kids don’t feel safe and secure.”Jakelin Raquek is only 4! Before she saw her father arrested, she'd been making steady progress.
Jakelin Raquek, 4, was making steady progress in her pre-K class until her father was arrested by immigration agents in front of her, and later deported. “She was getting sassy in English,” said her teacher, Magda Arguelles. After the episode, she said, the little girl fell apart. “We were never able to get her back into learning mode.”
These are among the realities which exist in American schools. Back to Lake Worth, more specifically to South Grade Elementary:
According to Jordan's report, a quarter of the children enrolled at the school in third grade last year "were newcomers. Only 11 percent of kindergartners were assessed as 'kindergarten ready' when they started school.
"Dayvin Mungia, the second grader who had never attended school, was one of several students who were taught numbers and letters on the side by his teacher when the rest of the class was engaged in other activities," Jordan wrote.
Technically, those are educational issues. According to Jordan's report, South Grade Elementary is working with emotional issues too:
"Some fourth and fifth graders have been suicidal and depressed, school officials say." These are among the important realities found in our public schools.
We were startled to encounter the real world of actual public schools in yesterday's New York Times. Much more often, the paper constructs a phantasmagoric twilight zone when it lets its overprivileged "education reporters" wax about the imagined state of their imagined public school worlds.
New York Times public school reporting is routinely fantasy-based. Jordan's piece was not. It was intelligent and deeply humane.
Jordan described the types of challenges which exist in the nation's public schools, even in New York City. The specific challenges she was describing involve the lives of immigrant kids, but other challenges involve the native born.
And no, it isn't all test prep, the lunatic claim the toffs at the Times keep handing to their gullible readers. Based upon data from all across the nation, it's barely test prep at all.
One last point about Jordan's superb report. Her humanity extends to native-born citizens of Lake Worth, some of whom may leave the school district when their own kids come of age.
Below, you see the way Jordan's report ends. All the people quoted here are offering reasonable assessments, though one respondent may be working a bit too hard at being "incorrect:"
JORDAN: Many Lake Worth residents have welcomed the diversity brought by the city’s now numerous immigrants, but some also worry that they could be dragging down educational standards for other students.Is it possible? Is it possible that the challenges described in Jordan's report are "dragging down educational standards for other students" in some way?
“You have to be experiencing real hardship to carry your toddler through the desert to seek a better life,” said Dan Brown, a mail carrier, who said the new immigrants are “perfectly fine neighbors,” but who also said he was considering moving to a place with less-impacted schools when his 2-year-old son is ready for kindergarten.
Some other residents wondered whether they were subsidizing the newly arriving families.
“They’re poor and can’t make it here,” said Jonathan Harris, a real-estate investor who favors stronger controls on immigration. “I am pretty confident that we have enough people already here illegally to do all the jobs that Americans don’t want to get their hands dirty doing,” he said.
But Kim Lingle, a paralegal who has lived for years in Lake Worth, said the new families have been an asset. “The immigrants are loving, caring, hard-working families,” she said. “They contribute to the fabric of our kitschy little campy town.”
Well yes, of course it is!
In some sense or other, are long-time residents of Lake Worth "subsidizing the newly arriving families?"
Well yes, almost surely they are!
Will Brown be proving that he's a racist, or a xenophobe, possibly even a deplorable, if he moves "to a place with less-impacted schools?"
The toffs of the Times like to tell us such tales! They prepped at Dalton, then went to Columbia, and are happy to call out The Very Bad People who animate their novelized presentations.
Jordan's report was full of real life. Real life is rarely allowed to intrude on reports about public schools in the New York Times.
At the Times, the kids are all above average. That said, the Asian kids are stealing everyone else's seats through their reliance on test prep, for which they paid thousands of dollars.
We were amazed by Jordan's humane dispatch from the real world. Tomorrow, still in the public school realm, The Atlantic just can't seem to quit a certain gloomy claim.
Tomorrow: The Short
" when confronted with waves of immigrant kids"
ReplyDeleteAre those immigrants or people who crossed the border illegally?
If it's the former, then the feds (and/or their sponsors) should be taking care of the interpreters, expenses, and so on. Shouldn't be too bad: most children, in a adequate environment, will catch up fast.
And if it's the later, then they need to be deported.
Start with all those people named Mao Cheng Ji.
DeleteSame old tired ignorant remarks by a Trumpbot.
DeleteSomerby compares apples and oranges and doesn't even notice the difference. The Times talked about test prep as the reason why Asian students were gaining most of the seats in its special high schools. Jordan writes about elementary school kids from Central America and their impact on schools in FL and WY. Two different problems with different causes and different solutions -- and Somerby doesn't seem to notice. Instead he berates the NY Times for not discussing high school problems in the same terms as Jordan discusses elementary school problems. And he mocks test prep as if that were a ridiculous suggestion when it is not.
ReplyDeleteSomerby seems to empathize with the parents who do not want their kids to go to school with immigrants. Like them, he thinks parents are "subsidizing" the immigrants and pulling down the schools. He never considers that a child who attends school with immigrant kids might learn more than other kids, especially about Central American life, but also about how to understand and get along with people who are different. He apparently doesn't appreciate the hard work and family values of these "newcomers." Do any privileged white kids ever worry about their grandparents?
Somerby buys into the zero sum model of learning -- that any time a teacher spends with other kids detracts from every other child's learning. But it doesn't work that way. Kids learn from and teach each other and they are learning as much about social skills as about language and math. Kids learn from doing their assigned work, not from having the sole attention of a teacher. The teacher's job is to motivate, encourage and respond to questions, but kids learn from the repetition of doing problem sets and exercises and projects, which they do themselves without the teacher's constant attention. Often, the more the teacher helps, the less the child learns. But there is a great deal to be learned from kids who have cross half a continent and experienced two or more cultures, who live with extended family that includes grandparents and aunts and cousins, where everyone works including the kids.
But Somerby thinks these kids are being "subsidized" and are dragging down the classroom, agreeing with the parent who is thinking of moving away from newcomers (maybe to Idaho where everyone is white and no one has an accent).
Phooey on Somerby, who clearly has no experience with Hispanic kids. He likes stories about real children and doesn't want to hear about the test prep that Asian parents, due to their different cultural values, have forced their kids to take in order to get into elite schools in New York. Those real kids with their immigrant solutions to succeeding in New York are the fictional invention of elite journalists, according to Somerby. What an ass he is these days.
@11:05A,
DeleteIs your literal mindedness an isolated psychological problem or is it a symptom of a broader neurological pathology? I worry that it might be the latter, and I urge you to seek medical help to find out.
Indeed, TDH berates the NYT for its coverage of education. His charge is that they generally assign novices to this beat who tend to write ungrounded nonsense. His surprise in this case is that a writer with experience in immigration has reported factually about schools in Florida and Wyoming. That’s the contrast. How could you have missed that?
And it is ridiculous to claim test prep as the sole reason for the percentage of Asians in NYC’s elite high schools. Do you have evidence otherwise? The NAEP gaps that TDH harps about would seem to exclude a large number of students from taking advantage of test prep.
Somerby seems to empathize with the parents who do not want their kids to go to school with immigrants.
Not quite. He asks whether we’re willing to refrain from labeling such parents as “Very Bad People” for having this concern.
Like them, he thinks parents are "subsidizing" the immigrants and pulling down the schools.
People with more money subsidize public projects (like education) for people with less money. This is the very social contract that Republicans demonize, but it’s supposed to be an unexceptional part of our democracy. “Pulling down the schools”? What does that mean?
He apparently doesn't appreciate the hard work and family values of these "newcomers.”
Apparently? Where does TDH state this. Outside your fever dreams, I mean.
Do any privileged white kids ever worry about their grandparents?
No, not about their grandparents being killed by government or narcogang thugs.
[TDH] likes stories about real children and doesn't want to hear about the test prep that Asian parents, due to their different cultural values, have forced their kids to take in order to get into elite schools in New York.
Forced their kids to take? How much experience do you have with Asian kids? And those kids who get into elite schools didn’t get in because they prepped for tests. They got in because they aced those tests. And that takes more than a few weeks of test prep.
Those real kids with their immigrant solutions to succeeding in New York are the fictional invention of elite journalists, according to Somerby.
You somehow manage to get this exactly backwards. TDH notes that at least half of these real kids won’t get into the elite high schools if the mayor of NYC gets his way.
Somerby has never expressed a coherent idea about how the NYC schools should select students for its elite high schools. He only criticizes.
DeleteAsian kids are forced to engage in educational practices that they might otherwise wish to avoid. They are punished severely for bad grades. That has been the subject of child abuse investigations in school districts with large Asian populations. There is debate about whether such parenting practices are abusive or merely cultural differences. Some kids do the extra work willingly and others are definitely forced to do it.
Those Asian kids ace those tests because they do consistent extra work outside school in order to prepare, beginning in the early grades and continuing to high school, culminating in test prep specifically aimed at the entrance exam.
You (and Somerby) continue to believe that the mean characterizes all performance within a group. There are some black kids who are at the high end of their distribution and who have worked hard and can benefit from elite high schools. They may be left out because, despite working hard and being smart, they did not take any test prep classes to help them ace the entrance exam. They may not know such classes even exist. Those kids are being displaced unfairly. And, yes, they do exist no matter what the mean score is for black children in NYC. That's because the mean says nothing whatsoever about the tails of a distribution. You need to look at statistics for variability (e.g., standard deviations) in order to discuss whether there are as many high achieving kids or how high their achievement might be in the tail of the distribution of achievement scores. Somerby never does that. He pretends that the mean is all you need to know, even when selecting unusual kids from a group.
Somerby never reads his comments so he keeps making this same mistake over and over. You don't have that excuse.
Somerby has never expressed a coherent idea about how the NYC schools should select students for its elite high schools. He only criticizes.
DeleteThis isn’t a blog about how to fix NYC’s admission policies. In any case, perhaps TDH doesn’t have any good ideas on the topic. So what?
Do you have any data to back up your indictment of Asian parenting techniques? For instance, how many Asian children did the Administration for Children’s Services find were subject to physical or emotional abuse for failing to live up to their family’s academic standards? When you’ve got the figures, report back and then explain why this is germane. Are you going to support an admission policy that denies entrance to children who were pressured by their parents?
Those Asian kids ace those tests because they do consistent extra work outside school in order to prepare, beginning in the early grades and continuing to high school,….
So it’s not just test prep in the sense that the NYT means, i.e., taking classes that include practice tests. Are you supporting an admission policy that denies entrance to students who do extra work?
You (and Somerby) continue to believe that the mean characterizes all performance within a group… That's because the mean says nothing whatsoever about the tails of a distribution. You need to look at statistics for variability (e.g., standard deviations) … or how high … achievement might be in the tail of the distribution of achievement scores. Somerby never does that. He pretends that the mean is all you need to know, even when selecting unusual kids from a group.
Please, please stop telling me what I believe, and please, please stop pretending that TDH is failing to do a proper job on this topic. Because you’re simply wrong on both counts. Here’s TDH from April 27th of this year:
<quote>
Average scores, Grade 8 math
New York City Public Schools, 2017 Naep
White students: 290.71
Black students: 255.63
Hispanic students: 263.56
Asian-American students: 306.03
90th percentile scores, Grade 8 math
New York City Public Schools, 2017 Naep
White students: 337.79
Black students: 299.75
Hispanic students: 309.51
Asian-American students: 355.63
</quote>
(Emphasis mine.)
In 2017, Asian kids about to enter high school scored north of 50 points better than black kids on average (i.e, at the median, the 50th percentile). Out on the tail, at the 90th percentile, Asian kids outscored their high-performing black fellow students by 55 points. OK, so you failed to read or remember that. What’s your excuse?
There are some black kids who are at the high end of their distribution and who have worked hard and can benefit from elite high schools.
This is not in doubt. But working hard and potentially benefiting from elite high schools are not entrance criteria. They’re not even reliably measurable. The number of these black kids is simply swamped by the number of Asian kids who have presumably worked harder and have higher scores. You claim that the black students in their cohort’s 90th percentile didn’t take test prep or even know about test prep. Do you have any evidence for that? I find this hard to believe. A trip to the google finds that SHSAT test prep is practically a cottage industry in NYC. Are you saying it doesn’t occur to high-performing black students that practice might help them on test day? I find that hard to believe as well.
Although I can’t know for sure, I agree with you that it’s likely that Somerby never reads his comments. But with commenters like you, can you blame him?
The difference in achievement levels within a classroom has been studied by education experts. Teachers learn methods for dealing with a wide range of abilities and achievement within a single classroom. As long as we group children by age and not achievement, this has been a reality. It doesn't matter whether the cause is immigration or deprivation in the home or physical disability. Teachers have always struggled to help both those at the bottom and those at the top and the many kids in the middle, since schools were created.
ReplyDeleteWe have always had immigrants and public school has always been part of their socialization and the means of including kids and their parents into our society. The adults learn literacy in English at adult schools, usually at local high schools at night. The kids learn by immersion and catch up after learning English and new subject matter while becoming more Americanized with each passing year. Such kids have always been with us.
First there were the waves of immigration driven by events in other countries around the world. Then there have been the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the places where the US has fought its recent wars, including Vietname, Korea, and the Middle East. Now immigrants are coming from Central America. It does't matter where they come from -- the schools have been the means of transforming strangers into citizens and most of us have attended schools with immigrant children. There is nothing new about this. It is what our schools were founded for, what they are designed to do.
I rubbed shoulders in the 1950s with Eastern European immigrants, including one boy who literally climbed under barbed wire to flee Hungary ahead of Russian tanks with his family. He is now a professor at MIT researching use of AI in medicine. Some immigrant kids succeed dramatically and some do not, just as some native born American kids succeed and some do not.
The insult of claiming that our schools are "subsidizing" immigrants is offensive. Somerby doesn't seem to recognize the slight, as he agrees with those fearful nativist parents. Those parents would be better off saving for prep classes than worrying about the kids in the next seat over and whether they will "contaminate" their own children with Mayan cooties.
The underlying fear is that kids who fraternize will grow up and marry (or have kids with) non-white classmates because of the proximity provided by schools. The irony is that a son or daughter who senses this fear in parents may thumb their nose at daddy or mommy by marrying exactly the person he fears they will marry. As Tevye says: "A fish and a bird may fall in love but where will they build their home?" But no one talks about this -- they talk instead about "subsidizing" immigrants and pulling down the school's academic standing.
Delete@2:06P, is that a nice case of projection you're presenting? Just askin'.
DeleteThe insult of claiming that our schools are "subsidizing" immigrants is offensive.
DeleteNo, it isn’t. That’s the way things are supposed to work. Poor immigrants can’t initially pay enough in taxes to cover their children’s public education. Those who’ve made it can and do. Why is that offensive? Other than to Republicans I mean.
Somerby doesn't seem to recognize the slight, as he agrees with those fearful nativist parents.
Not quite. TDH asks if we’re willing to refrain from calling these “fearful nativist parents” Very Bad People.
Here is what Somerby said:
Delete"Is it possible that the challenges described in Jordan's report are "dragging down educational standards for other students" in some way?
Well yes, of course it is!
In some sense or other, are long-time residents of Lake Worth "subsidizing the newly arriving families?"
Well yes, almost surely they are!
Will Brown be proving that he's a racist, or a xenophobe, possibly even a deplorable, if he moves "to a place with less-impacted schools?""
In this excerpt, Somerby agrees that the schools are being dragged down by immigrant children, that immigrants are being "subsidized" (whatever that means) and that it is OK to move away to avoid that.
Somerby is agreeing with those nativist parents. He doesn't say anything about not calling them bad people. He agrees with their complaints. He joins the chorus of those who feel that immigration is bad for communities, even though every study and measure shows that this is not true.
Somerby is parroting nativist complaints and then he says don't call such folks deplorable! These views are deplorable. They are xenophobic and wrong.
Your argument about immigrants not paying enough in taxes is stupid. That isn't how taxation works. I will never pay enough in taxes to afford to drive on a highway even one mile, shall I not own a car because my car is a drag on our highway system? No one should expect any individual to pay enough to cover their own kids public education, because that isn't how public works and common good operate. There are many native born citizens who do not pay their own kids education costs in taxes, so why insist that immigrants must? They will be paying taxes and covering other people's kids' education costs long after their own kids have left school, because that is how taxation works.
But you go on blathering, deadrat.
How long have you had a problem with reading for comprehension?
DeleteYou say,
In this excerpt, Somerby agrees that the schools are being dragged down by immigrant children,….
No, TDH says that it’s possible that educational standards are lowered by immigrant children because these children need extra resources that the schools must struggle to provide. This seems a completely unremarkable conclusion.
[Somerby agrees] that immigrants are being "subsidized" (whatever that means)….
It means what it says, that poor people pay less in property taxes (directly through home ownership or indirectly through rent) than richer people. Again, this is a completely unremarkable observation. That’s the way taxation is supposed to work.
[Somerby agrees] …. that is OK to move away to avoid that.
I notice that you didn’t quote TDH to support your contention. Let me fix that for you:
Will Brown be proving that he's a racist, or a xenophobe, possibly even a deplorable, if he moves "to a place with less-impacted schools?"
The toffs of the Times like to tell us such tales! They prepped at Dalton, then went to Columbia, and are happy to call out The Very Bad People who animate their novelized presentations.
Oh, look. The quote doesn’t support your contention. TDH merely asked you a question as he contemned the NYT.
Somerby is agreeing with those nativist parents. He doesn't say anything about not calling them bad people.
What nativist people say or do is either right or wrong independent of their nativism. And he did say something about calling them bad people. I quoted TDH above. See what I mean about your failure to read for comprehension?
Your argument about immigrants not paying enough in taxes is stupid.
I didn’t say poor immigrants don’t pay enough. I said they pay less than rich people. See what I mean about your failure to read for comprehension?
No one should expect any individual to pay enough to cover their own kids public education, because that isn't how public works and common good operate.
Really? I expect the very rich to pay more than it would cost to send their own kids to public schools. And that’s exactly how the common good should operate.
There are many native born citizens who do not pay their own kids education costs in taxes, so why insist that immigrants must?
I’m not insisting that poor immigrants cover their kids’ education. They can’t, and the argument from the common good says they shouldn’t have to. Those who can afford it should subsidize those who can’t. See what I mean about your failure to read for comprehension?
If you don’t mind — and even if you do — I won’t be lectured on blathering by someone who can’t get facts straight.
“Will Brown be proving that he's a racist, or a xenophobe, possibly even a deplorable, if he moves "to a place with less-impacted schools?"”
ReplyDeleteThat is a matter of speculation. What is not speculative is that, once Brown and others like him decide to move away, you will be magically left with de facto segregation.
...Which can at that point no longer be remedied, according to the sage analysts at TDH. And those low-performing schools just keep getting worse as those neighborhoods languish in greater racial and ethnic isolation, and those achievement gaps continue to punish the kids who are left there.
Does Somerby seriously think that a decision like Brown’s, (and many others like him), as understandable as it might be, doesn’t contribute to the problems of ghettoization and poor schools, or that the Browns of the world shouldn’t have to care about the impact they are having on the communities they are abandoning, or that society shouldn’t have some role to play in trying to prevent this from happening as it has consistently happened throughout the history of this country?
Somerby is so worried about owning the libs that he fails to see the problem that liberals are pointing out that actually affects educational outcomes.
Anyone who thinks there is a substantive difference between de facto and de jure segregation is misguided.
ReplyDeleteThere were specific policies, such as redlining, that deliberately prevented blacks from living in certain areas and enabled white flight. School district lines were often drawn to isolate inner city blacks from suburban schools. The only real difference between de jure and de facto is that de jure was *explicitly* racist, while de facto could always claim to be non-racist, at least superficially, as if it were some naturally occurring uncaused phenomenon. The effect is the same as de jure. It’s like the poll tax: it wasn’t *explicitly* racist, since it applied to everyone, but its intent was racist. Casuistry is often allowed to win out even when the underlying intent is clear to everyone.
Today, there is technically school choice. However, it is generally difficult if not impossible for inner city parents to get their kids into better schools in the suburbs, due to the distances involved, the expense, and depending on whether the state even allows interdistrict transfers. And nowadays, the issue isn’t strictly one of black-white segregation, or even Hispanic-non Hispanic. It is about good schools versus poor schools, regardless of the racial makeup of these schools. The problems disproportionately affect students of color nonetheless.
Schools are as good as their students, generally. Bad schools are bad because they're filled with low-IQ kids.
DeleteActually, studies show that schools are as good as their principals. Bad schools are bad because of bad leadership, which leads to bad hiring decisions, bad teaching practices and misuse of resources. Kids suffer in bad schools whether they are high or low IQ.
DeleteKids are born with a genetic endowment, but there is a wide range of expression of that endowment, ranging several standard deviations depending on whether the child lives in a supportive environment or an impoverished one. The goal of a good school is to help all kids maximize whatever their genetic endowment happens to be. You can see low IQ kids in a good school blossom and do as well as the high IQ kids from bad environments.
Then there is effort (motivation). Having a high genetic endowment means nothing if a child is not motivated to learn because that child will not put in the work necessary to develop his or her potential. Hard work accounts for much more when it comes to success than native IQ does. The ideal is hard work plus high potential, but a child with a lower genetic endowment can do better than a child with a higher one if the high IQ child doesn't apply himself or herself. So good schools encourage motivation and support hard work instead of emphasizing native endowment. $5 and a Mensa membership card will get you a cup of coffee. A good school clears away obstacles to hard work for all kids so that they can make progress academically. A good school would never have low expectations of a child without high genetic endowment because that would smother motivation to work hard, so emphasis is placed on doing the work, not being smart.
A well-managed school tends to transform bad students into good students, regardless of their IQs.
Bad schools are bad because they're filled with low-IQ kids.
DeleteC'mon @2:36P, don't kid a kidder. You mean filled with black and brown kids, don't you?
But Kim Lingle, a paralegal who has lived for years in Lake Worth, said the new families have been an asset. “The immigrants are loving, caring, hard-working families,” she said. “They contribute to the fabric of our kitschy little campy town.”
ReplyDeleteOh yes, I'm sure. What town wouldn't improve by being filled with 5 foot tall Aztecs who don't speak English or even Spanish? That's vibrancy, baby! Just once, I'd like for a reporter to challenge one of these assholes and explain, in specific terms, what the supposed benefits are.
As Lingle stated, they contribute by being loving, caring, hard-working families.
DeleteThat means that when your car breaks down, they come along and help you with it. It means they come clean your house and mow your lawn when you are seriously ill. It means they contribute to the PTA and go to the fund-raising car washes and their kids play nicely with yours, because they come from loving families where care is modeled instead of hostility. It means they are reliable and show up and do a full day's work (or more) for their pay, in local businesses that need good workers. It means they don't make trouble in the local bars and they attend church and support community initiatives. All those things that are encompassed by being good neighbors in a small town where people know each other and care about each other and do things to make each other's lives better.
If you think height has anything to do with being nice, you are fucked up.
In Mexico, there are hundreds of different indigenous languages spoken by people living in villages throughout the country. Yet people live in a cohesive society with a main language of Spanish and they get along and show respect for each other. The same is true of India, where English unites a people with hundreds of indigenous languages besides the few major ones such as Hindi and Tamil. The same is true in China as well, where there are many local dialects. There is nothing wrong with a diverse society.
I have found that one benefit of living among Hispanic immigrants is their sense of humor. Another is their less rigid sense of time, their different attitude toward stresses that plague many Americans, and their different values placed on friendship and family ties. Believe it or not, you can have a family gathering that is entirely positive, with gentle humor and no fighting or tensions among an extended family. These kinds of gatherings are fun and far from the tense Thanksgiving holidays that are an American cliche. We can learn a lot by modeling that, for one thing. Another is their work ethic. Hispanic immigrants are some of the hardest-working people I've known, also the most ingenious when it comes to fixing things and making do with scarce resources. They do not throw things out -- they reuse them and fix them, because that was necessary. This is an attitude that can help us save our planet and one that should be adopted by all of us in our throwaway culture.
"...and explain, in specific terms, what the supposed benefits are"
DeleteFor a liberal? Not a big mystery: cheap labor. Cheap house-cleaners, babysitters, and gardeners, infinitely grateful and selflessly devoted to their virtuous liberal masters.
That must make Trump one of the biggest liberals on the planet.
DeletePoor dembot zombie Mao, can't give up his love for the dembot zombie God Trump.
DeleteI gotta admit, it's fun to watch Mao contort himself to excuse Trump being everything he pretends he hates.
You deserve a raise for making a daily ass out of yourself on the internet, just so the Elites get a tax break, Mao.
LOL. When your car breaks down they fix it? These people literally don't know how to count.
ReplyDeleteAs for either Mexico or India being cohesive countries, fucking LOL. They're both disastrous shitholes that are the perpetual victim of constant infighting.
China is wisely brutally suppressing out-groups with a forceful regimen of Han supremacy.
Lastly, these people are not Hispanic.
Hispanic -- "The U.S. Census Bureau defines the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race" and states that Hispanics or Latinos can be of any race, any ancestry, any ethnicity."
DeleteWhen your car breaks down, (1) they stop to see if they can help, (2) they call a garage or take you to a gas station if you are out of fuel, or help you fix a tire, (3) they offer you a ride somewhere, (4) they offer jumper cables, (5) they can often diagnose a problem because they generally fix their own cars or know someone who can do it.
They may not know how to count in English but that doesn't make them stupid or inexperienced or unskilled or unable to count in their own language, whether that is Spanish or another indigenous dialect in Central or Latin America (or elsewhere).
Calling other countries shitholes makes you sound like a major jerk. If that is what you think, no one is going to ever fix your car when you're stopped on the side of the road. Or loan you money, or a couch when your wife kicks you out, or help you find a job, or do anything to help you in your ugly life. Because you have no respect for other people.
5:42 = standard-issue Reagan Republican.
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