Titan_Atlas
Deus Vult
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In the end we are a tribe. You will always form your own circles of trust and love. There are also hierarchies within these tribes. Nothing is equal. I do not believe in equality.
I do not believe in equality
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Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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This is actually pretty close to the crux of the issue. Either students come prepared to learn, or they don't. It's just that simple. And that goes directly back to their parents and their home-life. It goes back to whether the parents did well scholastically themselves and raised their children along similar lines, or whether they had no point of reference regarding education and essentially raised another generation of burger flippers and ditch diggers.
I get students from good districts and bad districts. But the 'bad' districts aren't 'bad' because they have a lower tax base or because their facilities are dilapidated. They're 'bad' districts because they're brimming with students who come from families who have never succeeded at school and the students expect the same outcome for themselves that their parent(s) had: failure. And the reason the teachers in those districts tend to have flagging performance is because of those students.
If you think that the teachers cause the failure of the students, you're wrong. So many teachers either give up because they can't fight against the tide of students who refuse to learn (and their parents who blame the teachers), or they pick up and move to 'better' districts because it's infinitely easier and more enjoyable to teach children who at least pretend to want to be there, if not actually enjoy learning. I know a number of K-12 teachers who agonize every year over having poor students and being unable to make a difference. It's like watching their souls being crushed in tiny increments every week.
There are so many morons out there who think that you can just sit bad students in a classroom with a good teacher, and they'll just magically start learning. The fact of the matter is that a student who was never prepared for school by their parents can, and will, sit through all their classes and fail like their parents did 99% of the time. That's why teachers in bad districts fucking hate their lives - they start out naive thinking that they can really make a difference, but eventually they realize that they get all of the blame from the parents and media when it's mostly the parents fault.
Imagine getting students who somehow made it through High School without even being able to write their name legibly. I get that so often it's just ridiculous. But dollars to donuts those kids never gave a fuck, their parents never gave a fuck, they blew off the classes where that was taught even though the teacher tried and then they had 10+ years of other teachers fucking /facepalming all the way to their graduation because you can't MAKE the kids learn and once you hit the next grade, there isn't any time to pull those students aside for remedial shit.
If school was a job and you did what employers did: just fired students left and right...the entire system would shut the fuck down. That's why so many get passed on. The administrators hope and pray and that maybe they'll be able to catch up, but they rarely do. The reality is that they can't MAKE the students learn. They literally can't. And the lazy fucking parents who set their own kids up for failure then point the finger at the schools/teachers and let out screams like they're a Donald Sutherland pod person.
Very true and overlooked here. Your environment growing up and the early childhood education has a very very large impact on your success in life.
Being born black and in a city already puts you behind.
From a macro point of view.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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chaos
Buzzfeed Editor
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I don't know. I don't do anything special for my kids, and even the crazy one does super well in school. In fact, with my wife's issues and the amount of stress and shit I'm under, I view myself as more or less a failure when it comes to educating them and getting them ready for school. But in spite of my mediocrity, they achieve. And I was a horrible student, everyone told me how fucking smart I was at a young age so I fucked off work, I never did homework, ever. I skated through school. They're not getting it from me. And that isn't some kind of humblebrag, it's embarrassing and literally set me back years in life.
I realize I have plenty of time for that to change. I'm just saying, I don't think there is some activity I could do that could improve them X% predictably. I have no idea why they are doing as well as they are.
Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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I think part of it is just being good parents and supporting your kids. Setting good examples. The kind of stuff that is really difficult to quantify. But if you neither give your kids a good lifeORactively try to prepare them...I honestly think they're just fucked.
That's just my 2 cents though.
AladainAF
Best Rabbit
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I honestly think you should be permanently banned for this post. An absolute bottom of the barrel shitpost.
Everyone has equal opportunity. It's just the reality of it. Not everyone takes advantage of it of course and for a myriad of reasons. You can call it bootstrapping or you can call it just giving a shit about where you end up in life I don't care, but there is a point where you have to decide that you are going to make something of yourself. If you don't it's not because you didn't have the opportunity, it's not because your parents didn't give a shit, it's because of you ignoring your opportunities.
If one person with a similar upbringing has made it in life despite all the same odds stacked against you it completely invalidates the "lack of opportunity" excuse.
If one person with a similar upbringing has made it in life despite all the same odds stacked against you it completely invalidates the "lack of opportunity" excuse.
Titan_Atlas
Deus Vult
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radditsu
Silver Knight of the Realm
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Gankak
Vyemm Raider
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I agree with this. Neither of my parents pushed us super hard in school or prepared us really at all. However the fact that they were both there and we had what most might call a 'normal' home life was good enough to get my lazy ass a reasonable place in the world.
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Your mere existence in their lives is already a drastic improvement over the shit sandwich a lot of kids are dealt. A stable home life with parents that actually exist is enough for a good portion of kids to succeed on their own.
Titan_Atlas
Deus Vult
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Also honestly I take offense at you saying my children are born "behind". Fuck you, degrading their position in life because of the color of their skin.
Honestly being black seems to helps then socially, trust me all your white kids want to be friends with my black kids. Also people go out of their way to kinda kiss their asses and be overly nice because they don't want to be perceived as racist. It's kinda funny how well they get treated. Not fair, but well treated in a positive way.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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I think a lot of "normal" parents think that if they aren't 24/7 tiger mom helicopter parents, they aren't putting in work. Where in reality, if they aren't beating, emotionally abusing, and deliberately shitting on their kids in order to pass along the misery that is their life (See: Mist) they are probably doing the best they can do which is get the fuck out of the way of the kid and let him/her learn/advance.
The bad parents are bad because they are either completely absent, or present and obstruct the child due to culture/emotional instability. The good parents give the kid a stable home, nurture and encourage, and sure you can help with homework and monitor behavior and all that good stuff, but just by not being a totally fucking crazy shitbag you are already ahead of the game.
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Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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This. People discount what stress does to children, having two stable parents that are available for resources andreassurancereduces stress a great deal (Studies on child hood stress are really fascinating, the effects it has on into adult hood are profound, and a huge source of stress is instability). When children have stability, and some peace of mind can focus more on school work, and things they need.
In addition, it's a world of difference for a teacher to be able to say "I'm going to talk to your parents"--and that warning be actually real, because the teacher or principle will actually get a hold of a parent, rather than a teacher not even bothering because the only parent at home is either over worked, and exhausted and does not give a fuck (And maybe even resents the kid) or is out being worse than the kid they are supposed to be caring for.
Just being decent human beings that pay attention to big issues that other people alert you to? Is huge--people have no idea how many children do NOT have that. That's part of why this situation is so bad, and terrible. We're not talking super active parents that will push a bright kid (Through engagement, not abuse) from a decent state school to being eligible for Harvard. We're talking parents who simply exist enough so their kid doesn't implode and the teacher can work with something to get them halfway decent for the world--the bar here isn't high, and many children are way under it.
Dandain
Trakanon Raider
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I think peoples perspective on this problem is largely determined by where they actually grew up. For example. There is only ~15 million of 330 million Americans in the Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana) and yet this is a massive geographic area. The 1% in these places (outside of a few exception like Gates/Nike Execs) are like at the bottom of the actual 1% compared to the country at large. Far far away from the .01% who have Billions and Billions of Assets.
List of U.S. states by Gini coefficient - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Every single state in the Northwest comes in below the National Average, Oregon (22) .449 is the last state on the list above. Utah leads the list at .419. The national average is .469. And if you look at the states that bring up the rear of the list, they do tend to have large populations, and some of the largest economies. Difference is observably there. New York comes in last for states at .499. Remember this is a state calculated metric, a brief extra google regarding New York City suggests a coefficient in NYC of .55. This is basically a different planet for poor people in NYC and poor people in Utah.
Also, there is way less competition for actual physical space and resources. Poor people in NYC and Poor people in the Northwest both live on sub 15-20k/y (or less, I don't want to make this post hyperbole). I do not know the conversion, of what 20k in NYC is like in Northwest terms, but I can imagine that living on 20k in NYC is way fucking worse than 20k In the Northwest.
There is 1.5 million people in Idaho, its roughly the size of Great Britain. GB has 56 Million people. Germany and Japan are close to the size of Montana (population 1 million), and they have 65~ and 120 million people respectively. Making a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage is suicide for business in most of the Northwest. Poor people in a place like NYC - who are desired to be cleaning personal at hotels, store clerks, and other untrained labor have no way out on salaries less than 15$ an hour and have no mobility to go anywhere else. This is real for the poor in NYC but not near as real for poor people in many rural areas of America. NYC is 8 million people in 304 SQ/MI. A population density of 27,000.
Pulling yourself up by your boot straps isn't completely dead everywhere, but it is dying and has been long dead in other places. I think this is one of the largest misunderstandings of the most rural places in America vs the most urban (generalized). It also explains partially why perhaps people in NYC are tolerate of more government/desire it and people in rural areas want it to go away. They see less immediate need. I'd have to drive for 20 hours to find a real legit super ghetto from where I live.
A few disclaimers to my charts. Even though Hawaii shows up on this list, it has a stupid high cost of living. Being poor in Hawaii is probably way more shit than the chart implies below a certain income. But I think it shows what I mean in regards to NYC vs The Northwest.
List of U.S. states by Gini coefficient - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Every single state in the Northwest comes in below the National Average, Oregon (22) .449 is the last state on the list above. Utah leads the list at .419. The national average is .469. And if you look at the states that bring up the rear of the list, they do tend to have large populations, and some of the largest economies. Difference is observably there. New York comes in last for states at .499. Remember this is a state calculated metric, a brief extra google regarding New York City suggests a coefficient in NYC of .55. This is basically a different planet for poor people in NYC and poor people in Utah.
Also, there is way less competition for actual physical space and resources. Poor people in NYC and Poor people in the Northwest both live on sub 15-20k/y (or less, I don't want to make this post hyperbole). I do not know the conversion, of what 20k in NYC is like in Northwest terms, but I can imagine that living on 20k in NYC is way fucking worse than 20k In the Northwest.
There is 1.5 million people in Idaho, its roughly the size of Great Britain. GB has 56 Million people. Germany and Japan are close to the size of Montana (population 1 million), and they have 65~ and 120 million people respectively. Making a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage is suicide for business in most of the Northwest. Poor people in a place like NYC - who are desired to be cleaning personal at hotels, store clerks, and other untrained labor have no way out on salaries less than 15$ an hour and have no mobility to go anywhere else. This is real for the poor in NYC but not near as real for poor people in many rural areas of America. NYC is 8 million people in 304 SQ/MI. A population density of 27,000.
Pulling yourself up by your boot straps isn't completely dead everywhere, but it is dying and has been long dead in other places. I think this is one of the largest misunderstandings of the most rural places in America vs the most urban (generalized). It also explains partially why perhaps people in NYC are tolerate of more government/desire it and people in rural areas want it to go away. They see less immediate need. I'd have to drive for 20 hours to find a real legit super ghetto from where I live.
A few disclaimers to my charts. Even though Hawaii shows up on this list, it has a stupid high cost of living. Being poor in Hawaii is probably way more shit than the chart implies below a certain income. But I think it shows what I mean in regards to NYC vs The Northwest.
Lleauaric
Sparkletot Monger
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I can attest to the Bridgeport vs Surrounding towns one.
One thing that happens thats pretty common and destructive in the Bridgeport school system is that while the average pay check for a Bridgeport Teacher is pretty low, the next towns over pay incredibly well. So what you get in the Bridgeport school system is constant turnover. Young teachers or administrators (especially administrators) come in to that system for the experience, then leave as soon as they find a better job in the Westport or somewhere else in Fairfield county. A teacher in Bridgeport makes about 43,000 starting, but can leave do the same job without dealing with all the bullshit the next town over for 65,000+.
How you going to have any kind of successful system when your staff is constantly turing over or looking to better deal. Its one of the huge problems in all city schools.
One thing that happens thats pretty common and destructive in the Bridgeport school system is that while the average pay check for a Bridgeport Teacher is pretty low, the next towns over pay incredibly well. So what you get in the Bridgeport school system is constant turnover. Young teachers or administrators (especially administrators) come in to that system for the experience, then leave as soon as they find a better job in the Westport or somewhere else in Fairfield county. A teacher in Bridgeport makes about 43,000 starting, but can leave do the same job without dealing with all the bullshit the next town over for 65,000+.
How you going to have any kind of successful system when your staff is constantly turing over or looking to better deal. Its one of the huge problems in all city schools.