Bullhorns and Baseball Bats II
Last Friday, a meeting at a local church focused on violence in the community, particularly recent incidents of racial violence at Jefferson High School.During that meeting our Mayor lamented the situation, the segregating between Blacks and Hispanics that was necessary and that when visiting the school he felt it was like a prison.
What is the answer from the Mayor and our local elected officials? More days of dialogue, meetings, talking, bullshit.
What we need is leadership - and someone to tell the truth.
The issue of youth violence and gangs is complex to be sure. But not all the treatment is complicated. Telling kids what not to wear and what to wear is not the answer. The answer lies in stopping coddling these kids with liberal bullshit.
Some time ago at a New Jersey High School, a veteran African American educator named Joe Clark took over Eastside High School in Patterson. Eastside was a rough place, maybe even rougher than Jefferson.
Clark implemented a program of tough discipline and high expectations for the students. In his first day, he expelled 300 students. He was known for locking the doors to the school with chains (to keep the kids in and the troublemakers out) and was seen patrolling the hallways with a bullhorn and baseball bat (instead of sitting in his office and participating in bullshit).
"If there is no discipline, there is anarchy. Good citizenship demands attention to responsibilities as well as rights."The program worked, the school was turned around and Clark received national recognition. His story was the focus of the movie Lean On Me starring Morgan Freeman who played Clark.
-Joe Clark
We now have School Board President Jose Huizar running for City Council to take the seat vacated by our Mayor. Jefferson and all this school violence has gotten worse on his watch. Mr. Huizar, what have you done to address this violence and what have you accomplished? Why do you deserve a promotion?
We have called on Jose Huizar as a sitting member of the Board of Education to take action and show up at the schools with a bullhorn and baseball bat (or whatever). But be tough, don't coddle the students and make them respect you. Until you do that, I do not see you as a leader deserving of taking on more responsibility.
And if not Huizar, there are six other members of the Board who can get off their liberal do-good asses and take charge. Or our Mayor - he wants to run the schools - so run them. Forget your dress codes, where to sit codes, racial segregation, etc. Get in there and be tough with those students and hold them accountable. That - they will respect.
I bet Joe Clark wouldn't even mind taking a phone call to give you advice.
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 8/16/2005 08:45:00 AM
26 Comments:
This violence initially erupted on Huizar's watch as President. I'd like to see him step up and take the lead on this issue to assuage the fears of many in CD 14 that he's an empty suit.
Until we start to teach our children in the community we respect each other individually, (Including them) then we will continue to have the same issues. Race may be an issue however, it goes much deeper than that. It is Human consideration we lack.
IN CASE anyone thought education in L.A. was in the worst shape it could possibly be, this just in:
Subject: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will be guest editor to the next collection
of 826LA Student Writings
826LA is pleased to announce that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will be the guest editor of our next collection of student writing. This fall, a group of students from Roosevelt High School, Villaraigosa's alma mater, will assemble to write, edit, and publish a volume of their own original writing. Over the course of the semester, this group will meet frequently with 826 volunteers, who will help
them edit and polish their original drafts. Mayor Villaraigosa will visit the students throughout the process to offer his guidance and support, and he will write an introduction
to the book. More news to come.
THAT'S RIGHT BOYS AND GIRLS, the man who failed the bar repeatedly and couldn't complete (or even start) ONE SINGLE PROJECT in his district during his tenure on City Council will now be "helping" young people exercise their literary skills and meet deadlines.
Might as well shut down the schools now. All they're going to be for the next 4-8 years is a venue for photo-ops, to make it look like ADV is actually doing something.
FIRST mayoring by press conference; now education by press event.
Reminds me of Cosby's radical and controversial comments that ran in the LA Times Magazine a couple weeks ago: Full Text http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/billcosbypoundcakespeech.htm
Not saying his thoughts are right or wrong but they certainly have provoked a lot of debate.
Excerpt: "Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We’ve got to take the neighborhood back. We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain’t where you is go, ra.” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with, “Why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not; they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.
Now, look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza?"
Worth reading the whole thing.
We no longer integrate but instead glorify the differences. Until the is real not photo op efforts for change diversity is just a buzzword not a true reality.
Mayor Sam you keep impressing me with your vision on this subject.
Chief Faker...want to see the Bloggers excited??
Release the results of your scam "phone" survey of the LAPD from months ago that "revealed" that Villaraigosa actually DID create 80 or more new neighborhood watches in CD14 in two years, (his only claim to an accomplishment that "justified" his being on council).
You said you would!
You promised, MANY times!
Were you lying? Of course you were. You always do.
SPEAKING OF EDUCATION. ..
Interesting Cable TV watch in the Northeast last night -- right about the time people CD14 debate was letting out. Local access channel says it has an interview with "Jose Huizar" -- sounds interesting. Have yet to hear him say anything substantive -- maybe UNDER THE LIGHTS he'll do better?
Sorry, CD14 voters, false alarm, it wasn't a new interview about what council candidate Huizar will do for the district he wants to preside over for 16 months, it was a not-very-old-at-ALL interview with SCHOOL BOARD candidate Huizar, who wanted to talk about how he was going to now fix LAUSD.
YIKES, someone at "Huizar-FU-LA" HQ better get ahold of Adelphia and tell them to STOP running that VERY recent cable show where perpetual candidate Sleazy Huizy was gushing about how EXCITED he was to be on the LAUSD board and was looking forward to the challenges "ahead" (It might sound WAY too much like the current propaganda about what he's NOW/NOT going to do for CD14).
Good points - except for the CD14 people.
Cosby is absolutely right.
One point I should have made in my original piece was to call on Nick Pacheco as well. If he wants to be a Councilman, he should address these issues too, though Weezy does have more accountability to step up to by virture of his current position.
You know another educator who demanded excellence and no bullshit was right out of LA, Jaime Escalante. Same era as Joe Clark and also had a movie about him. Whatever happened to him?
Wow that bill Cosby speech was excellent and so true. For all of us. What did happen to the unity of Parents? What happened to it take s a village to raise a child? I have been awakened to a new sense of duty to our children. "OUR" Future leaders and decision makers of L.A.
Mayor Sam,
Escalante was very succesful at getting low income Latino students to do well on the calculus AP test. But in order to be successful, he was somewhate of a tyrant. Parents at Garfield organized and made his job there unbearable. The Principal at the time, Maria Tostado - Cardenas' and Padillas' former candidate for City Council in the City of San Fernando - she lost to Cindy's sister - sided with the parents and Escalante went packing all the way to a high school in Sacramento. We haven't heard much out of Garfield High since then.
That is a problem, when a good thing happens for the kids and parents assume it is too harsh and fight it. How can the schools do better for kids if parents do not help, and only cause good instructors to leave!
JAIME ESCALANTE SAID,
"If you immigrate to this country, you are part of the system. You have to integrate yourself into the system. And the integration path is the language. English is needed in the place of work. Instruction comes in only one language, and you must master that language. Otherwise, you are a dead fish..."
Bilingual education is negative
to the students. It holds back the language. For example, people coming from Korea are successful in business. Why? They master the language. And they're the ones still working. That's the situation.
At Garfield High School, we eliminated bilingual, and that's why I had so many successes. We eliminated bilingual education, and all the scores started going up. The kids were monolingual. Otherwise, you have the right to be in that bilingual or ESL class forever.
A bilingual teacher should teach in two languages. For example, if I'm going to teach division, I should teach in one language, then repeat the same thing in another language. But here, when the bilingual teacher speaks two languages, he only teaches in one language. That's the weak point"
GT: Many of your former students have done very well in life. Is that because they got the concept?
Escalante: Yes, Manuel Campos, he's getting a Ph.D. in civil engineering, and he said, "I got a lot of concepts from you." He realized that after going to college more than eight years. And five of my former students are working at the JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.]
GT: I know that sometimes people accuse you of being too hard on your students, of not making allowances for cultural or language or learning problems. How do you respond to those people?
Escalante: I look for excellence in education. Let me define excellence. It's a stupid definition, but it works. Excellence means: Do the right thing the first time. You take the test the first time. Bang. You stand and deliver. It's not excellence when you say, "I'm going to give a make-up test," like teachers do.
Wow. We need Jaime now more than ever.
Lets fire that goofball Romer and bring in Jaime and Joe to run LAUSD. Can you imagine how better off those kids will be?
The dire need for an individual such as Escalante is apparent, we need his vision and skills to make a school district resuscitate from the dead.
Huizar cannot even take charge of his own home or his own office at LAUSD.
He has strong women that run his office and home. One of the should be running for office, this will allow Huizar to run for cover like he always does in tough situations.
"[I]n the 1980s many people thought that difficult school issues could be solved through superheroics of the type made famous by Joe Clark, the bull-horn and baseball bat-wielding New Jersey high school principal reputed to have cleansed his urban school of student violence and dope dealing, and to have improved test scores, by his individualistic and domineering approach. He even became the hero of a television docudrama, Lean on Me. But the facts are otherwise. During his tenure, student scores at his school remained below average and the dropout rate increased. Eventually, the local school board, no longer able to tolerate his abrasive methods, had to fire him."
We need this guy.
Sure we need Mr. Kotter, why not?
We already have this guy for Mayor
And this guy as our Police
Chief
And this one as our 15th
District Councilwoman
At the risk of imperilling my future in Los Angeles and starting a boring flame-war I want to say the following:
I went to school in LAUSD from 1984 to 1997 (yes, I am 26 years old) and I don't how the "getting tough" maxim will provide students a proper education.
I remember seeing my high school plant manager leave the school campus to work as a private contractor (while still on the clock at my high school) - the lawns never got mowed, leaks never got fixed, and (worst of all) the bathrooms were always filthy and most of them closed for maintenance that never occured.
I remember the cafeteria workers union striking to prevent a private organic food store from providing a healthy alternative to government bread-tangles of pizza.
The shop classes at my Junior High and High School were shut down and instead used as holding pens for kids caught in the hallways inbetween classes.
The only planning for the future we received was through a meager "college counseling" office. Honestly, how many people should go to college?
Besides common sense problems like "get tough" or "everybody needs to have high self esteem" there are some very complicated economic relationships between the school district, its various labor unions, and individual schools.
My mom taught at Locke High School, and while she was there the administrator was absent most of the school year on informational junkets around the country. Locke had a very high $ per student ratio, but with improper management, also had a high assault per student ratio and poorly maintained facilities. My mom got physically attacked (and suffered a concussion) in class because she complimented the wrong kid's art work. A math professor was beaten up in the parking lot for not giving a passing grade to a student.
It is easy to look at these physical assaults and say, "Punish those little punks."
If a teacher at some LAUSD schools sends too many kids to the dean's office, the teacher gets in trouble for "not maintaining order" in class. Ironic isn't it?
Children from severly broken homes, real learning disablilities, and psychological problems are dumped into classes with teachers that: don't have the training to deal with many of these problems; and often times have information about their student's learning disablities or psychological problems kept from them.
There are some schools in the district that don't need us to "get tough", but instead simply need to be managed well. In my opinion, the web of economic relationships between the various unions involved in teaching and maintaining schools in Los Angeles need some serious re-working. Often, a lack of competition in the labor market and the lack of power (from the district or from principals) to enforce policies is what causes many schools to simply turn in on themselves and end up as the next Lord of the Flies in LAUSD.
ubraj02
I see your point, however accountabiblity is a must. Lack of enforcement creates havoc and no future for these kids. If a kid can be convinced of a better future for them, they might work hard for that vision, otherwise lacking accountability in these schools creates small prison camps.
Joe Clark? I guess Mayor Sam (AKA Eric Hacopian) is getting really desperate.
Give it up, Jose is going to win.
Where was Sleazy Huizy just a few months ago with the racial tensions started at Jefferson? He never came out and took a stand as prez of LAUSD. Jose has yet to come out and talk about the LAUSD issues. Guess he thinks if he doesn't talk about them they don't exist.
There is no problem these kids have that a right hand upside their heads won't solve. Worked for me.
To Anonymous on August 16th at 3:32 p.m.,
Give me a break. Which kids do you slap on the head? The ones who tag in the bathroom? That seems like a no brainer.
What about the ones with dyslexia that get no assistance, become bored, and act up in class?
Or how about the ones that "talk back" to adults? Are they deserving of a slap too? Everyone just needs to shut up and stay in line. Just like the real world, huh?
Does a system of this type help teach anyone anything? Does it help kids with an unserved intellect, and a desire to do something important with their lives, achieve anything? I think not.
If anyone in a school district so much as lays a hand on a student, they are liable to be threatened with a lawsuit. It is a credible threat too. Not only is your suggestion idiotic (and suggestive of fascism), it is totally illegal.
Kids must not talk back to the teachers----slap, slap, slap
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