They Feed On The Young
From the San Francisco Chronicle, one for the Everything It Touches pile:
Now, now. We must resist the urge to pre-judge.
Though they ain’t making it easy.
Take that, barriers to learning.
Achieved, one assumes, by not bothering to suspend pupils who are seriously disruptive or habitually violent, a policy embraced by other progressive fiefdoms. And a new, improved rate of chronic absenteeism – 44% – isn’t entirely heartening.
Clearly, these are the people we should put in charge.
Apparently, San Francisco’s elementary-school children are expected to have, or at least regurgitate, strong opinions on the Israeli military.
Many young children are of course accustomed to being given a “word of the day,” though I would guess that such highlighted words don’t usually include “strike,” “ceasefire,” and “protest.” Nor, I suspect, would third-graders often be tasked with “disrupting whiteness,” which seems somewhat ambitious and just a tad question-begging, or with imagining “a world without police, money, or landlords.” Yet here we are.
A shocking twist, I know,
Ms Gross, who claims to re-shape “big concepts for little people,” is pretty much the kind of creature you’d imagine, and her views on, for instance, Israel and the United States are similarly unsurprising. Specifically,
And,
Ms Gross goes on to declare her “unwavering love and care and compassion for children.” Which would doubtless explain her indifference to whether those children can read or have mastered basic arithmetic. Instead, our loving and compassionate educator propagates racial animosity, by invoking the evils of “whiteness,” and rails against a small country in the Middle East, whose influence on the illiteracy of schoolchildren half a world away is, shall we say, somewhat unclear.
Referring to her critics, with a self-satisfied smirk, she adds:
By undermining the life chances of other people’s children.
Update:
If you draw attention to our degeneracy, you will be suspended.
I paraphrase, of course. But not, I think, unfairly.
Everyone involved in this needs to be fired.
Well, it’s, shall we say, unclear how the illiteracy and innumeracy of Bay Area elementary-school pupils will be solved by denouncing “whiteness” and a small country in the Middle East.
“Teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley”
Ahem. Going out on a limb here, but are there just a few itsy tiny little issues at this school beyond “woke kindergarten”?
Well, yes. The words bomb from space came to mind.
But it’s worth noting that Mr Craven-Neeley is, by the standards of Ms Gross and her Woke Kindergarten, a flimsy liberal. Hence him being scolded for daring to air reservations about the course content, and ultimately being “banned from future training sessions.”
Because, it turns out, you’re not allowed to ask what “disrupting whiteness” means in a third-grade classroom.
Test scores: in my town, school open house is packed, with almost every parent attending. Next town over, 80% minority (but not that poor), open house is 80% empty. Parents don’t make sure kids did homework. No books in the home. Parents don’t help with homework or make sure they study for tests. Sure, it is racism.
Destroy the US: I have noted before that if you want to see what “no government” looks like, visit Somalia. Warlords fighting constantly for control. Power lines sold for the copper. Charming.
How about “the Left has no right to exist”?
I believe the United States has no right to exist.
See also, paraphrasing, “anyone who has committed genocide has no right to exist”.
Neither the Hutus nor Tutsis were available for comment, but I guess all the pre-honkey African, Native American, or other POC internecine genocides (real or imagined) don’t count.
That or the Yte Devils put them up to it by telepathy or something.
open house is packed, with almost every parent attending. Next town over, 80% minority (but not that poor), open house is 80% empty.
The most important factor in student success is parental involvement. It overwhelms race, socioeconomic status, language – everything.
Which is why this problem is largely intractable. The problem isn’t in the schools, it’s at home; but any black celebrity that tries to go the Dagger John route gets cancelled in short order.
This sounds like the “homeowner” fallacy from the 90s. Yes, homeowners are better for the economy and the country but you can’t cargo cult your way to success by giving out homes to everyone. Similarly, you can’t improve outcomes by dragging parents into open house. Some kinds of people are inclined to be concerned about their children’s education while others are not. The former are often willing to pay quite a bit of money to keep their kids away from children of the later, thus “good schools” as an effective proxy or euphemism.
Note, also, that the “Palestinians” were committing genocide all the way back to the initial Arab Muslim conquest. Vast numbers murdered, and the rest enslaved or subjected to virtual slavery. That “Palestinian” utopia of 1900 and before was actually a Muslim version of Jim Crow, with discriminatory laws and customs, routine sadism, and occasional pogroms.
And the only country in the Middle East deserving of admiration and emulation.
Daniel Ream:
No, genetics is the single most important factor.
The Grift in —
Act I
Act II
Ayn Rand discussed this as “Sanction of the Victim”.
If the parents can’t bring themselves to do even the basics – say, by setting aside their selfishness and raising the child together, in the same household, with at least some minimal attentiveness – then there’s little that anyone else can do to compensate for this catastrophic negligence. Despite the vast sums of taxpayers’ earnings spent on the attempt, you can’t fix degeneracy.
And you can’t redistribute IQ.
Though one might argue that Ms Gross and her peers, and much of the district’s educational establishment – the establishment that approved of Woke Kindergarten and subsequently defended it – are doing their damnedest to destroy everyone’s chances in life.
Which is a fairness of a sort, I suppose.
Sounds a bit like my “native” ‘murrican ancestors. With a bit more massacre. All without wheels, no less…
Note, also, that the “Palestinians” were committing genocide all the way back to the initial Arab Muslim conquest.
Seeing as the Al Asqa mosque (7-800 AD) was built on top of the 2nd Temple (500 BC), looks like they are the colonizers…
…imagining “a world without police, money, or landlords.” Well that’s an easy one. The kids could just submit a synopsis of the Mad Max movies.
Well, it depends on how you look at it:
Both of these are simultaneously true:
If the mean black IQ is 85 or 90, far fewer blacks than whites and asians will be able to succeed in professions requiring a high IQ–the sciences, engineering, scholarly research of any sort, and so on. But they can still be productive in all sorts of other areas.If parents and teachers fail in their duties to teach children, those children will end up being virtually unemployable in any capacity, and will be a burden on the welfare system and a menace to society. Remember that 80 years ago blacks were gainfully, productively employed What has changed since then has been cultural and institutional corruption.
This is the ‘equity’ they aim for.
I would refer you to Thomas Sowell’s discussion of the re-norming of IQ in Social Justice Fallacies.
Could you please save me the time of re-reading that, and give me a very brief restatement?
Yeah. The IQ thing again. IQ alone, and again qualms about how that is determined*, enables people to be successful only if the numerous other environmental factors play out well. A high-IQ kid with parents who do not GAF will be unlikely to be a success in life. Presuming the “in life” thing is what we mean by “successful”. I had a college roommate, high-IQ ethnically Chinese (via Jamaica) kid who started college at 14 years old. Definitely high-IQ. Nice kid too. Had a promising career in robotics. Something got to him though. Boredom was one guess but that seemed unlikely from what I knew of him. Either way, last I heard he got into playing high-stakes poker and was spiraling down out in Texas somewhere. I suspect that at some point his personal discipline gave way to the adrenaline rush from gambling. Meanwhile, quite a few people whom I have known who were not especially high-IQ people went on to become millionaires in construction or businesses that did well.
*I continue to be fascinated by people gambling in casinos, applying for benefits at welfare offices, pool hall hustlers, those who are obviously not very bright in many aspects of life, can figure out how to work those systems to bend them to their advantage. These are generally below average to average-IQ people but if the proper number of dollars are waved in front of them in a game they understand, suddenly they ain’t so dumb after all.
“[…] IQ test results were repeatedly renormed, in order to maintain the average number of questions answered correctly at its definitional level of 100.”
Social Justice Fallacies, Chapter 2, Racial Fallacies, p. 42.
A longer excerpt, to make the meaning crystal clear:
See the Flynn Effect.
However, I’ll offer two caveats:
First, if the relative IQ gap remains then blacks will remain relatively uncompetitive in the high IQ job market.
Second, how much have the un-renormed IQ scores increased? The continuing relative dearth of blacks in the STEM fields leads me to wonder.
French Farmers: “Jeremy Clarkson Was Right”
The continuing relative dearth of blacks in the STEM fields leads me to wonder.
That is just systemic racism, educate yourself, do better, be an ally….
Meanwhile in the UAE, there was a competition.
If you laugh you are a misogynist and a horrible person.
I’d rather be an Ally Oop.
They’re performing better than I would, just as I would be a laughably incompetent soccer player.
They’re performing better than I would…
You have an excuse, they are a real SWAT team, though…
French Farmers: “Jeremy Clarkson Was Right”
Not sure why that would be a surprise, sometimes he is amazed by his own genius, as are we all.
Well, my Clarkson-hating friends seem to assume that because he is sometimes an asshole then he cannot be right about his criticisms of government.
I, on the other hand, assume that because my Clarkson-hating friends are liberals they will usually be wrong about everything. So far they confirm my assumption.
[ Sudden twinge of nervousness. ]
Will David permit such naughty language? Or will I get the correction booth?
Gosh, I wonder why they keep closing. Who could be to blame?
An interesting license plate design.
For no particular reason:
A reminder:
First, if the relative IQ gap remains then blacks will remain relatively uncompetitive in the high IQ job market.
I respectfully disagree.
First because there isn’t really such a thing as a high IQ job market anymore, what with grade inflation, dumbing down of standards, and the rot from the top that has set in over the last few decades.
If there is a genuine physical difference in “IQ”, however you measure it, it’s probably more like the difference between men and women – maybe the tails are longer at both ends. I don’t think that has all that much to do with it, though, as WTP’s anecdata suggests. High IQ may help, but it’s not the only thing, or the most important thing, in my opinion.
I think a much better marker of success is whether you have 2 parents, one of each sex, or just 1, the mother. Culturally, some groups have gone with 1 parent households, government as the daddy, and studying hard, applying oneself to learning and working, delayed gratification, showing up on time are all Othered, and Uncool, and worse, Not Black. Even if you have a super genius IQ, if you are born into that culture, to succeed in the normal world, first you have to escape the crab bucket and the crab bucket mentality, and that is not easy to do.
If you have mom and dad together, married, it is more likely they will GAF and you will learn some self-discipline, and can actually make something of yourself, regardless of the melanin content of your skin.
No matter how much corporate HR departments try to dumb down the standards in the name of “diversity” and “equity”, they’re still going to have to hire talented people to do the difficult jobs.
We just don’t know yet, thanks to generations of culture-rotting liberal policies. Until the culture gets fixed, we will remain uncertain how much of the gap is cultural and how much is biological. We can hope that at least some percentage of people will escape the ghetto every year and start undoing the damage, but that is a long slow process.
He’s right.
In a well-ordered world, any mother would know her son would lose his life if he tries to rob a store.
And the shopkeeper would receive a commendation.
Genetics might set an upper limit on IQ or other types of competence, but there are SO many factors that mess with one’s potential — from the uterine environment to family configuration to neighborhood — that the purely genetic signal is easily lost in the noise of chaotic nurture.
Pivot a bit: Give a standardized test (like the SAT) to the current members of the NBA. The scores are likely to be all over the place, but none of the scores will have a bearing on the fact that they’re all highly competent in their profession.
Same with successful musicians, or woodworking craftsmen, or expert mechanics. They may or may not score well on the SAT, but there’s no denying their competence in their area of concentration.
It’s not IQ that matters but competence, which involves intelligence but also requires that you have your inner life under control to a degree. If you have zero self-discipline, or if you’re an emotional wreck, or if you’re a complete and total jack-wagon, you’ll fail in life, regardless of your test scores.
The figure I saw quoted (in the last couple of days, because I was looking into it) was ‘a couple of IQ points per decade’ – that’s a standard deviation in maybe three generations. From my casual observation that seems closer to any measure of improvement.
Of course, we’ve done a Harrison Bergeron on this smarter young cohort, by teaching them things (DEI, [subject] studies) that are simply dead wrong, and have no relation to empirical reality. If they’re lucky, on a net basis they’ve only gone slightly backwards.
Again, as so often, it’s worth noting the parasitic dynamic. Despite the ostentatious claims of compassion and love, Ms Gross and her peers are propagating racial animosity – by denouncing an ectoplasmic “whiteness” that supposedly corrupts everything it touches. And on which almost anything can be blamed.
The children she supposedly cares about seem little more than a captive, uncritical audience, before which Ms Gross can enact her activist psychodrama. Bringing forth her demons and then waiting to be applauded. And by the time the consequences of her compassion become all too apparent, she will have been paid, handsomely, and will be merrily stupefying another batch of children, all at taxpayer expense.
And among the type – and Ms Gross is very much of a type – this is a standard dynamic.
If I may add that this is a perfect example of Freirian education strategy, where the twin aims are to *not* produce numeracy or literacy, but instead aim to produce *political literacy*.
If children grow up knowing how to read, do maths and generally function productively in society, then they’ve become part of “the system of oppression” because they *won’t* be revolutionary activists and *will* be making compromises to do things like take holidays, buy a car, get married, have a family and so on.
Political literacy means being politically educated and able to “reject and fight the system”.
Think of this like a primitive version of what has taken place in the universities, producing stupid, arrogant and disruptive employees who live and breath the new religion of pathos. Now it’s the small children who are being molded in this way.
PT Barnum said it one fine morn.
Every minute a sucker is born.
You know, I just can’t get hot anymore against people like this. Yep, Gross is a grifter and frankly not only am I tired of people like her getting the money for things like Woke Kindergarten but I am equally tired of the idiots giving her the money.
Maybe to sum it up I am tired of stupid people.
Still chuckled at the line “The charges of attempted murder and robbery have been dropped.” Ah, back when AbFab was funny.
Possibly from a cannon.
Congratulations to Trayvon Martin: 12 years without committing another crime.
Speaking of Elsewhere, I understand Litteau is just across the Channel in Normandy. If one of y’all could check this out and let me know I’m sure there would be a nice referral fee.
What could possibly go wrong, and why do they always look like that?
A little more relevant, or adjacent as the kids say, to the original topic, the other day we were discussing an Iranian paper discussing the myriad mental illnesses among the “trans”.
Another paper from the US&A in 2019 when the fad was getting into the big time and with huge sample and control sizes (as opposed to the Iranian 83). In every listed category the “trans” are way over represented (as expected). The one curiosity of the paper, though, is they did not specify Narcissistic PD.
Curious.
The phrasing does seem to imply France is a Muslim-majority country.
I wonder how many of them have criminal records–and how many are criminals who have not yet been caught.
The trans activist demographic does seem to specialise in contradictions and things one mustn’t think about. And so, for instance, we hear umbrage about referring to a mental health issue as a mental health issue, while, simultaneously, those taking umbrage often invoke suicidal leanings as a reason why the rest of us must indulge their unhappy fantasies.
A mental health issue, one might note, that we’re told can only be addressed by doctors, surgeons and society in general affirming the distressing thoughts and sense of alienation from one’s physical self. Unlike, say, anorexia. A mental health issue which, in a majority of cases, seems to be resolved by the experience of going through normal puberty. An experience that many activists vehemently oppose.
And then there’s the contradiction of insisting that one has some intangible ‘real’ sex that is utterly unrelated to one’s physical reality, but which can only be appeased or made whole, or made less deranging, by drugging and mutilating one’s physical reality.
Meanwhile in the Land of Hope and Glory, it appears one of the soccer leagues has secret police who are scanning fans socialist media for wrongthink about “trans” people.
Also a legitimate question for you lot over there as it has been revealed Charles has some form of cancer.
At some point, not necessarily a terminal event but effects of treatment, he is likely to become not able to do king stuff. At that point does William step in as sort of vice-king?
In the event William winds up king as I understand it his kids are next on the batting order. If something happens to William and the kids are all still minors, does Harry as next in line become regent or something? If William and family get whisked off to Tralfamadore, do you then wind up with King Harry and Queen Megan?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
I think you intended a different link.
I think you intended a different link.
Damned if I didn’t though no clue what that other one is about.
Soccer league Special Branch rozzers.
Like they’re play-acting? Probably because they are.
Better to have a law that prevents anyone with any conviction, even a low level misdemeanour, from legally changing their name.
Youthful offender at…24. He was just turning his life around, I’m sure. But that mean Gavin Newsome shows his tough-on-crime cajones by overruling the parole board. Odd that if you search for the murderer by name you get a lot of people with a similar name who are obviously not a guy born c. 1970 and in prison for the last 30 years. Odd that.
Tar and feathers.
Not seeing the ‘racism’ here.
Meet high school track star Pee-Pee Longstocking.
Noisome’s political feints concern me less than this titbit:
I’ve reached a point of indifference with people who continue to inhabit such regions. Or so I tell myself. Yes, the probability of being harmed by these scumbags is low but my empathy bucket for the victims is nearly empty. Granted this specific case is from…decades ago so they still deserve sympathy. But in another story I saw this morning of a 62 year old woman in the Bronx getting dragged down a sidewalk by a guy, part of a gang, on a moped trying to steal her cellphone…The video came with a warning about sensitive content. Well I don’t have a heart of stone but the Oscar Wilde in me nearly snorted.
Inquiring minds would like to know.
Traditionally it’s pure primogeniture – goes down the line of the firstborn son (now child), and brothers and uncles be damned. If everyone in the direct line of succession is dead, then you go “up and over” – oldest surviving sibling one generation back becomes the new line.
Historically when the Crown was passed to a child too young to execute the demands of the office an uncle or similar relative would be appointed as Regent – ruling in the child’s stead until the child was old enough to properly assume the throne (generally around age 13 or so). Often the Regent would arrange the death of the child and just take the throne himself. As one does.
None of which is terribly relevant today because the monarchy is de facto ceremonial and could probably get by just fine with an eight-year-old King, or something. And regardless of law and custom, the UK will never allow Harry and Megan anywhere near the throne.
[ duplicate ]
Funny how the survey results match my “prejudices”.
Gascon is another of George Soro’s puppet DAs he has seeded across the nation. He runs the LA country DA office like it’s just another Public Defender Office (indeed, has put hostile pubic defenders in charge of parts of the DA office). His mission is to keep as many criminals out of jail or prison as possible.
AND the Los Angeles County residents defeated his recall and kept him in office. They seem to feel they are one GOP rep away from SoCal turning into The Handmaid’s Tale. They are insane.
Aye, there’s the rub. In current context, which given western civilization’s contemporary disregard for the rule of law anyway, who would do the appointing? Parliament I presume, unless perhaps a monarch appoints a just-in-case guardian when they get promoted or when the child is born? In today’s context any such speculation is building castles in the air. Kinda. Sorta.
Meet high school track star Pee-Pee Longstocking.
Meanwhile, over in New York, RIT is quite proud of records shattered by their team.
they’re still going to have to hire talented people to do the difficult jobs.
Agree about the talent requirement, but talent ≠ IQ, and difficult job ≠ high IQ job. I am more aligned with Dicentra’s thinking, which bears repeating, I think:
So yes to the need for talented people, but I still don’t think high IQ necessarily translates to talent. Might help, but determination and self-discipline will take you further, and is definitely required to reach escape velocity from the ghetto gravity well.
Apparently, habitual car theft is a “victimless” crime. Says Nora the socialist.
Nora doesn’t think that a third conviction for car theft should result in incarceration. Because, and I quote, the victims “get new cars though.”
“I write books and I know things,” says her bio.
What a waste of pulp. Not to mention oxygen.
It’s time for Nora to lose everything she owns to scammers and armed robbers.
I did briefly ponder whether it would be ungentlemanly to wish ill on dear Nora, our super-caring socialist. The woman who wants us to know that she cares deeply for the criminal, but not for their numerous victims, or indeed their even more numerous future victims.
I then decided fuck being gentlemanly.
I wonder if dear Nora has ever paused to consider what stolen cars are very often used for, other than, say, joyriding and endangering other road users.
Courtesy and respect are for fellow human beings. She threw away her humanity and is now a mere beast.
Gad Saad reads the abstract of a “fat studies” scholarly paper
Lowering standards: noting the falling test scores due to wokeness, I would just like to point out that in our modern world lowering standards even a little can be catastrophic. Exhibit A is Boeing, which used to be an engineering company but has been ruined by MBA types who do not understand how insanely complicated their planes are. A couple of years ago they cut corners on training pilots on their revamped plane but it turned out the new software was….difficult. Two planes went down, killing all aboard, but since it happened overseas they escaped the worst of the lawsuits. Then they have had a door blow off, an engine fire, etc. Because they took their eye off the ball.
The US air traffic control system is busy hiring the disabled, including mentally disabled, to be air traffic controllers. Gee, what could go wrong?
The profit margin of any business can be destroyed by even a little incompetence.
IQ debate: it is hard to tell what the truth is. Sowell points out that geographically and socially isolated people (of any color) such as remote islands or mountains will have about 10 pt lower IQ. Broken families lower IQ and cause behavioral problems. Ghetto kids typically are not spoken to much at home and do not encounter books–parents do not read to them even when a library is nearby. These things surely lower IQ also.
What is clear is that Amy Wax is right: finish high school, get married and stay married, stay out of jail and your income will double.
car theft is a victimless crime: just tell that to all the people shot during a carjacking. It must be a lot of work maintaining the woke bubble around oneself.
Jack Sprat could eat no fat . . .
If memory serves, the airlines were asking for a software fix that would obviate the need for re-training pilots on the platform.
Mike Gill unavailable for comment.
If, back when I was in university, you had told me that some day academic papers would be published in which the abstracts dwelled on the sexual habits of the authors, I would have laughed and called you a lunatic.
Gad Saad reads the abstract of a “fat studies” scholarly paper
Muldoon reads the paper…
OK, clearly we collectively need to start a journal and rake in the big bucks, though scholarship of this depth will be hard to match.
From 2007: an insightful comment from our own Dicentra.
(Found via Asst. Village Idiot’s Tribes series of posts.)
Gents, unsure whether you should “transition” because you can’t turn your basso profundo voice into a soprano and your falsetto isn’t cutting it?
No worries! There is an app for that!
In today’s exciting episode of “The Tolerant Left!” Transharknado!
Oye gringo!
cajones = dresser drawerscojones = the boysThe ojo in the center of the word is a mnemonic.
Wotta relic! I have no memory of writing that or of even visiting the blog. Of course, I am hard-pressed to relate what I did the day previous during stand-up.
I like my reply best.
Did you see the fun that Jordan Peterson had when leftists compared him to the (Marvel comics) Red Skull villain?
This Red Skull meme is particularly pertinent, given how leftists habitually lie:
Yeah…funny spell-check didn’t fix that. It f’s up damn near every other non-standard term that I try to use. Also, shouldn’t that be an enye diacritic squiggly thing over the ‘n’ as well? But homie don’t play that. Oy vey. Or vay. Whatever.
Your Spanish Word of the Day.
Thank you. Furthermore though…it would of course be racist of me to say but it appears that some crossing our border have a problem keeping their cojones in their cajones. Not that that translates properly but..wtf…I’m just winging it here…
In the beginning, God created David and Eve.