Even The Bus Driver
Katherine Kersten on “social justice” education and its pernicious, all-pervasive racial dogmatism:
Like students, the district’s faculty and staff must submit to racial equity re-education. One such mandatory session for school bus drivers is illustrative… The training session was entitled “Edina School District Equity and Racial Justice Training: Moving from a Diversity to a Social Justice Lens.” In it, trainers instructed bus drivers that “dismantling white privilege” is “the core of our work as white folks,” and that working for the Edina schools requires “a major paradigm shift in the thinking of white people.” Drivers were exhorted to confess their racial guilt, and embrace the district’s “equity” ideology.
The result of all of this? Four years into the Edina schools’ equity crusade, black students’ test scores continue to disappoint… Math scores for black students in 11th grade at Edina Senior High dropped from 31 percent proficiency in 2014 to 14.6 percent in 2017. In reading, scores for black students in 10th grade at Edina Senior High dropped from 51.7 percent proficiency in 2014 to 40 percent in 2017.
And what parents want, obviously, is for their children to be taught how to become racially fixated leftwing activists, albeit illiterate ones who struggle with basic arithmetic, but who’ve learned the important things, such as how to confess or denounce “white privilege,” and “how to embrace ancestry, genetic code and melanin.” At some point, perhaps quite soon, the words foolish and dogmatic will seem an inadequate response, and the description that comes to mind may be something like evil.
At some point, perhaps quite soon, the words foolish and dogmatic will seem an inadequate response
I think that bridge was crossed years ago.
What’s remarkable is that, despite how often – and predictably – these supposedly “progressive” policies end in disaster, not least for their supposed beneficiaries, the people responsible never seem to question their own assumptions.
I’m searching my maps of China and the USSR from the 1960s and 1970s. I can’t seem to find this place you refer to as “Edina”. Perhaps you spelled it wrong? Closer attention to detail would be greatly appreciated.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
I live about six miles from Edina. I also lived here back in my High School days, when my school and Edina battled it out for years in sports and academics. They were the rich kids in the Minneapolis suburbs – they’ve been known as the Cake-eaters forever – and they sent a high percentage of kids to really good schools for decades.
Now they’re filled with a slightly different group of parents. Still rich – if you’re a doc or a dentist or a rich college prof, you move there or maybe to one other place – but now you must also be a dyed-in-the-wool progressive if you wish to fit in.
Granted, there are conservative parents in Edina who want something better for their kids, but they should probably give up and move out. Edina worships at the Obama altar, and the fact that its kids’ educations are now going to suffer for it is only proper.
We’re watching a revolutionary time right now. Used to be, the rich people’s kids got the best education and so their lives only improved on their parents’ lives. The new model has the rich progressive kids getting shafted in high school and college by a useless conformist agenda, and so we’ll get to see them eventually tumble down the social spectrum as the non-progressives’ kids get real educations and actually achieve something in life.
Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, used to say that sending your kids to a government school (public in the U.S.) may constitute parental malpractice. That was in 2015, he’s moved on, after more recent horror stories, to suggest that it may in fact be close to child abuse.
I think he’s being slightly hyperbolic for effect but he’s not far off the mark, unfortunately.
This fits Thomas Sowell’s point that the problem with talking about the 1% is that members of the 1% are constantly changing. Thanks to their unconscious self-hate a large portion of the current 1% is ensuring their children will fall out of the bracket for no other reason than allowing their parents to feel good about themselves.
As our host says, you might consider it evil.
“Social Justice” is never about elevating any specific individual or group. It is about punishing those who are members of the wrong group du jour. Thus, for the “woke” administrators of the Edina school district, failing to raise the achievement levels of minority students is acceptable provided the “oppressor” class fails, as well.
for the “woke” administrators of the Edina school district, failing to raise the achievement levels of minority students is acceptable provided the “oppressor” class fails, as well.
That’s generally the easier option. And for some, the more gratifying.
It’s telling that, despite educators and bureaucrats using the term “equity” so often, a clear definition is hard to find in their own literature. But like “social justice,” it seems to entail treating people not as individuals but as categories, as tribes, and then applying various contradictory standards, whether scolding or indulgence, depending on that notional group identity and whatever baggage can be attached to it, regardless of the particulars of the actual person or how they’ve chosen to behave. Parents may assume that “equity” implies fairness and is therefore unobjectionable; but when used by activists, the word seems to mean something like “equality of outcome regardless of inputs.” And that isn’t fair at all.
I’m searching my maps of China and the USSR from the 1960s and 1970s. I can’t seem to find this place you refer to as “Edina”.
Heh. A well-deserved jab. It appears,from a quick look at some maps, that Edina is largely in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, the one that elected radical Muslim and radical leftist Keith Ellison to Congress. Yes, a lot of white liberals are in some ways jaw-droppingly stupid.
BTW, this explains why the Progressive Left loathes and wishes to destroy private schooling and home schooling. Parents–of any demographic–who want their children to receive a high quality education will begin to vote with their feet and send their children to schools where a)they will be encouraged to succeed and b)won’t be judged on the basis of their melanin levels and c) won’t have to deal with miscreants who are coddled and allowed to run amok because they are members of the favored group.
Private and home schooling demonstrate conclusively how bereft the social justice public education project truly is. It’s not about education; it’s about creating an army of compliant SJWs to serve the all powerful state.
They are not doing it to help minorities, they are doing it to signal their virtue…
It appears,from a quick look at some maps, that Edina is largely in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, the one that elected radical Muslim and radical leftist Keith Ellison to Congress.
Sigh…So again, always in the last place you look. Funny how that is. Thanks!
If I were in Edina, I’d consider sending my kids to Catholic schools. However, in my similar city, the Catholic schools are even more Progressive, just with fewer poor kids, and fewer minorities.
I can’t believe that humiliating and persecuting bus drivers for being white did nothing to arrest the educational record of black students. There must be something else going on here, some wreckers or vast conspiracy.
working for the Edina schools requires “a major paradigm shift in the thinking of white people.”
Remind me again who the racists are…
Remind me again who the racists are…
You almost have to admire the audacity of these clowns. Though perhaps a better term is dumb malevolence.
“However, in my similar city, the Catholic schools are even more Progressive, just with fewer poor kids, and fewer minorities.”
My local Catholic girls’ school is stuffed full of muslims, because it’s now the only single-sex girls’ school in the city. ‘Course, in Scotland – majority Protestant – Catholic schools are run by the government. Because reasons.
Though perhaps a better term is dumb malevolence
At the risk of offending our gracious host (even though my tab is pretty low), I’d say the better descriptor is “punitive malevolent sociopathy.”
I’d say the better descriptor is “punitive malevolent sociopathy.”
Okay, we’ll go with that. It conveys the general idea that these creatures are best kept at some distance from any children you care about.
It conveys the general idea that these creatures are best kept at some distance from any children
you care about.I don’t hate any child enough to subject them to a punitive malevolent sociopath.
Somebody needs a paradigm shift, all right, and it ain’t the high-achieving white/asian kids.
But, seriously, I find it so interesting is that for decades, the liberal fascists have lived dual lives. In public they espouse this radical forced fauxgalitarian “equity” and “diversity” jargon, but in private they live by exceedingly conventional bourgeois values. Of course, there were always outliers who practiced what they preached, but they were dead-enders: destined to crash-land in single-motherhood, social-worker type jobs in permanent rental status.
But now, the contagion seems to have spread so that even these highbrow, born-with-a-silver-spoon types are increasingly sacrificing their own offspring to this culture-and-life-destroying disease. Has it reached a tipping point where the need to virtue-signal is a stronger bio-cultural imperative than the need to marry well and attain/remain upper middle class status?
“…these creatures are best kept at some distance from any children you care about.”
And from water, food, and shelter.
It’s an often unpleasant job, school bus driver. At least, as I recall how I behaved on the school bus as a child, I’d not want to be the only adult in a vehicle with twenty to forty children who behaved similarly. It’s also a necessary part of the system, and it carries a responsibility that is no less grave for being routine. It’s honest work, and I don’t mean to sound dismissive or condescending towards those who carry it out when I say that for the owners of the million dollar homes of Edina to locate white privilege within their $18/hour bus drivers is an especially grotesque form of punitive malevolent sociopathy.
I have called the Twin Cities home for many years, and can vouch for what bobby b says. Given how well-heeled the residents of Edina tend to be, I don’t think we should lose any sleep over the poor parents forced to send their kids to these nightmarish meat-grinders straight out of The Wall. The parents who care about their kids have already put them in private school, leaving just those who care more about what the girls in book club say over a glass of Riesling.
One thing I’m curious to see is what happens when the deficiencies in the Edina School District become more widely known. School district quality is one of the primary drivers of home values, and watching test scores fall even quicker than disciplinary cases rise, I think we may actually get a look at what happens when virtue-signalling from the self-loathing white-guilt NPR tote-bag crowd gets an actual price tag attached.
It’s one thing to slap a Coexist bumper sticker on your Lexus; it’s quite another to watch your home value drop by tens of thousands of dollars.
‘Social Justice’ Down Under means you call for the destruction of ‘White Australia’ whilst holding your hand out for taxpayer funded grants to subsist. Meet Tarneen Onus-Williams.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/rita-panahi/rita-panahi-why-are-taxpayers-funding-divisive-invasion-day-modest-fashion-nonsense/news-story/666927be1862714821b4e0a3ab65eb47
for the owners of the million dollar homes of Edina to locate white privilege within their $18/hour bus drivers is an especially grotesque form of punitive malevolent sociopathy.
As we’ve seen more times than I can list, grotesquery alone is unlikely to stop them. For some, it may be part of the appeal.
Regarding the academic outcomes, these are obviously being looked at through the lens of whiteness. Perhaps the coloured students are now concentrating on things other than numeracy and literacy that will better prepare them for the lives they wish to lead. Who are we to tell them what they should be doing? (I am being sarcastic)
I feel sorry for the bus drivers though. The tragedy is they probably need that job so can’t tell the administrators where to stick their guilt course.
We’re sending our kids to catholic schools because we’re hoping it is a medium between the public schools who have to take whatever is shoved at them, student-wise, and the unaffordable local private school.
My views on private schools are changing slowly based upon how public schools are beholden to whatever lunacy the govt education department comes up with and the realisation that private schools take the pressure off the public system which doesn’t have enough schools or teachers to handle all the kids. There is also the problem that the public system can’t just sack underperforming teachers.
Having said all that I’m still suspicious of expensive private schools which are nothing more than rugby clubs for rich people’s kids to socialize at before they join daddy’s business and buy a yacht.
I’m not real happy sending them to a catholic school either because the catholic church down here is a pit of iniquity that needs a thorough airing out with abusive priests just being moved around rather than prosecuted, all the wrong (IMO) conservative policies being adhered too, and a bunch of progressive stuff being mixed in. A weird place. My son said they’re doing ‘gender studies’ this year and I expect there will be some white guilting mixed in somewhere. I’m still trying to figure out what the school’s viewpoint on gays and gay marriage is, given the church is against it but the school wouldn’t be allowed to express that. My son is uninterested so can’t tell me.
My heart and wallet would rather they go to a public school but I think at least one of them would find it a struggle.
Schooling has been a growing problem down here for progressives. Like me they want to send their kids to public schools for the virtue points but also realise that might not be the best idea. So they write comment pieces in the papers about the internal struggle of sending their kids to private schools. Hey, at least I didn’t get paid for this one!
It’s honest work, and I don’t mean to sound dismissive or condescending towards those who carry it out when I say that for the owners of the million dollar homes of Edina to locate white privilege within their $18/hour bus drivers is an especially grotesque form of punitive malevolent sociopathy.
I don’t know how much you can blame the home owners, and how much on the local or state government as I don’t know the system.
But your point is spot on – these drivers are performing a public service, have to be responsible for the kids, etc. For them to be diminished like that is very offensive.
One of the few comments my eldest made when he went to high school was that he’d miss the bus driver who’d driven him to school for 6 years because now he was catching a different bus.
I think our drivers sometimes give out sweets at christmas, and we give them a card and some chocolates.
‘Social Justice’ Down Under means you call for the destruction of ‘White Australia’ whilst holding your hand out for taxpayer funded grants to subsist. Meet Tarneen Onus-Williams.
Yeah, she didn’t do herself any favours on Australia Day. What aborigines want seems to be an intractable problem.
My workmate used to live behind ‘the block’ in Redfern and said it was heartbreaking walking past the nearby community center seeing all the adults sitting around wasted and doing nothing, knowing they had kids who were disadvantaged from birth just by having these people as parents. The professional panhandlers on the corners were annoying too – you’d see them begging in shifts that changed over between morning and afternoon.
Having said all that I’m still suspicious of expensive private schools…
It’s a different experience here. The private–albeit Protestant–schools my children have attended have a mix of students from all races and socio-economic backgrounds. Parents sacrifice to send their kids there because a) the education is top notch and b) the administration is conservative. That is, politics is left outside the classroom no one is demeaned for opinions.
What I’ve noticed over the past two decades of sending my kids to such schools is that the people who are quick with the snide remarks about being “rich” and cloistering my kids among the snooty upper-crust are the same ones who are quick to object and complain about the latest SJW fad which takes the place of fundamental English or Math.
@David (Taylor)
Our wallets are all too often the final arbiter of a decision, given that they are hardwired to reality, but if your “heart” tells you to send your kids to government school I suggest you let the organ capable of reason be the tie-breaker.
The tragedy is they probably need that job so can’t tell the administrators where to stick their guilt course.
Yup. How many of them must have been dying to say: “White privilege ain’t a thing and my very presence proves otherwise.”
Quick, hide your degenerate art before the social justice vice squads come for it! And by “degenerate,” we mean “exposed boobies,” of course.
exposed boobies:
“It’s a different experience here. The private–albeit Protestant–schools my children have attended have a mix of students from all races and socio-economic backgrounds.”
Indeed. I’ve often pointed out in conversation that the “diversity” at the local government school when I was young amounted to a few Indian and Pakistani kids. But in the private school I attended, I had black, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, French, and American classmates, along with children from all over not just the city, but the entire UK. And, thanks to the Assisted Places Scheme (now abolished), they were rich and poor alike.
And, on that note, the main reason “private” schools have taken the high end is that they’ve been crowded out of the mass market by governments (rather like “private” healthcare in the UK). Anyone who chooses to escape the state system effectively has to pay twice.
“Quick, hide your degenerate art before the social justice vice squads come for it!”
Christ. It’ll be skirts round piano legs next.
I liked that painting with the nymphs on it.
Sam Duncan: “Christ. It’ll be skirts round piano legs next.”
I’d say they are learning from history, but, well….
Double Ace-‘O-Lanche! Sound “Stand To!”
Boy, is Owen Jones an obnoxious twit…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8lcP_iE6-M
“Christ. It’ll be skirts round piano legs next.”
Shamelessly stolen…
Great commentariat here. Ace says “hi”.
“”Social Justice” is never about elevating any specific individual or group. It is about punishing those who are members of the wrong group du jour. Thus, for the “woke” administrators of the Edina school district, failing to raise the achievement levels of minority students is acceptable provided the “oppressor” class fails, as well.”
“Equality” to the Left is not what most think, including most on the left. “Equality” in Leftism is that among the vast underclass the Leftists are and have been creating and saving in America. Their Gramscian ‘long march’ has won them enough of America’s institutions, especially those of education, media and government-bureaucracy to destroy America from within like some insidious disease would a human host.
How many average leftists question their movement’s basic ideas? What are the Left’s basic ideas? What is the track record of authoritarian-collective ideas in the world? Not so good, right?
Hence their masterful use of propaganda that attacks, nourishes and captures the weak egos of persons craving ‘self-esteem’. Leftism allows you to feel good without fear of having to justify or even really understand the real environment you live in. To be PC is to be allowed to feel superior to the propagandist-designated “other”. White people, males, Trump, Republicans and especially apostates to Leftism, those women, minorities, LGBTs that are owned and ostensibly served by leftism who choose not to submit.
“Ace says “hi”.”
Hi, Ace.
Seriously though, great comment. I’ve said it often, mainly about the unthinkingly Leftist drones who run Britain these days, but it applies to their American counterparts just as well: they’re the new Establishment. They’re the Ruling Class now. They’re the people their antecedents set out to overthrow.
The stereotype of the British civil servant used to be the bloke in the pinstripe suit and bowler hat going to work on the train with a copy of the Times (which had a tiny circulation, but vast influence over the government) under his arm. Now it’s a woman with an ID lanyard and a copy of the Guardian (which has a tiny readership, but vast influence over public policy) in her Prius. Yet they still act as if they’re the underdogs.
Boy, is Owen Jones an obnoxious twit…
I suppose you have to see it from Owen’s position. Which is that, unless he’s allowed to control the debate, unilaterally, to select who may or may not take part, because they’re not gay enough, or not the right kind of gay person, or because some other person’s thinking is much clearer than his own, and then to control what language may be used, and not used, by everyone, and which aspects of an issue may be discussed, or not discussed… If he can’t control all of that, he tends to come across as a nasty, dogmatic pinhead.
Which of course he is.
unless he’s allowed to control the debate, unilaterally, to select who may or may not take part, because they’re not gay enough, or not the right kind of gay person, or because some other person’s thinking is much clearer than his own, and then to control what language may be used, and not used, by everyone, and which aspects of an issue may be discussed, or not discussed… If he can’t control all of that, he tends to come across as a nasty, dogmatic pinhead.
Change the “gay” bits to woman references and that’s a pretty good description of a good number of marriage counselers.
I take it nothing in The Sunday Sport should be taken seriously, but aside from the name of the protagonist, these days this is too believable.
Evidently, Black People aren’t good swimmers because white people stole their water:
http://twitter.com/IamGMJohnson/status/959807783448334336
Evidently, Black People aren’t good swimmers because white people stole their wate
Well we kinda did. Or at least 50-60 years ago. Depending on where one lived/grew up. And if mom & (hopefully) dad don’t know how to swim, they’re not taking their kids to the pool, ocean, whatevs. And neither, especially, are gramma & granoa. A lot of black people whom I have known or met have a comical (to themselves, even) fear of the water. That said, I think it is important that people, black people especially, are aware of the problem and thus DO something about it. Not sit around and whine (whinge?) about why it is. The basic problem has been corrected. Take some personal responsibility.
Granoa => granpa. Preview is my friend…preview is my friend..
The basic problem has been corrected. Take some personal responsibility.
See, that there is why you’ll never have a long and lucrative career in race hustling.
See, that there is why you’ll never have a long and lucrative career in race hustling.
And yet at the same time, a friend of over 20 years stopped speaking to me because he’s decided that I’m a “white supremacist”. You just can’t win.
Well we kinda did.
Really? How did this happen?
Really? How did this happen?
Many beaches and swimming pools and such were “whites only” in much of the US south, and as I understand it other areas as well, up through the 1960s. I think you know this.
I think you know this.
I’m not American, so I’m not 100% familiar with American history. I know there was segregation i.e cafes and schools, but I wasn’t aware that Black people were forbidden from have their own pools/ beaches.
Heh. Good gotcha here…
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/02/03/students-hate-quotes-from-trumps-state-of-the-union-until-realizing-they-are-obamas/
Many beaches and swimming pools and such were “whites only” in much of the US south, and as I understand it other areas as well, up through the 1960s.
There were lots of black kids at the local public swimming pool in the mid-sixties. As a matter of fact, their presence was a bit of a problem: shaking down white kids for money, thievery, violence, and threats of violence. Very different from the public pools in the nearby neighborhoods that were nearly all white.
Drivers were exhorted to confess their racial guilt,
They should’ve told this guy instead.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/video-muslim-driver-attempts-hit-run-jewish-father-son-belgium/
I’m not American, so I’m not 100% familiar with American history.
Understand.
I know there was segregation i.e cafes and schools, but I wasn’t aware that Black people were forbidden from have their own pools/ beaches.
They were excluded from many public pools and even beaches.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/key-biscayne/article29945307.html
There were lots of black kids at the local public swimming pool in the mid-sixties.
Where you lived, I suppose. Maybe even where most people lived, I don’t know nor have the time nor inclination to do the depth of research necessary. But certainly in many places.
Where you lived, I suppose.
I was not denying that there was racial segregation in parts of America in the mid sixties. The only purpose of my comment was to note that where I lived, near the divide between white and black neighborhoods, there was no segregation and there were significant problems.
David, you’re just saying Owen Jones is an obnoxious twit because you’re not gay enough. Try to improve next semester. 😊
Computer game report: Snoopy Pop: So far, level 30-something, I have shot down the Red Baron 3 times and rescued innumerable little yellow birds. And I do wish to give Snoopy Pop a shout out because, so far as I can tell, you do not HAVE to sell yourself to Facebook to play. A lot of these games seem to have an unholy alliance with Facebook.
I can’t decide whether computers are good or bad overall (except for this site, of course, which is the shrine of St. David of Typepad), but they have been an inestimable boon to that portion of mankind burdened with a long commute.
Natural justice denied by some evil Brit. Please note the platform he used for this outburst.
Speaking to his fellow camp mates on last night’s episode of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, Noll said he blamed Simon Cowell – the music industry bigwig responsible for the Idol franchise, as well as The X Factor, and Britain’s Got Talent – for his lack of success overseas.
“F*** Simon Cowell,” the singer began while getting ready for bed alongside his fellow jungle-bound celebs.
http://www.msn.com/en-au/entertainment/tv/f-simon-cowell-shannon-noll-unleashes-on-music-industry-bigwig-on-im-a-celeb/ar-BBIGAF5?li=AAavLaF&ocid=ientp
Remember the scene in Forrest Gump at the peace rally where Jenny’s boyfriend slaps her then goes on to blame “Nixon and the Vietnam war” for his bad attitude?
Well now
Darleen why doesn’t the author of the piece just knit, or collect stamps? And if this article is the norm of the Tampa Bay publication, who is on the board that hands out the Pulitzers?
This Black History Month, meet an Australian Aboriginal about to make history at the Winter Olympics.
Remember the scene in Forrest Gump at the peace rally where Jenny’s boyfriend slaps her then goes on to blame “Nixon and the Vietnam war” for his bad attitude?
Well now.
Thanks, Darleen. I think that one deserves a post of its own.
This Black History Month, meet an Australian Aboriginal about to make history at the Winter Olympics.
He’s as Aboriginal as Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee.