The Chinal Pearl Inn part 8

[chris2c4u]

Every school is challenging. Parents are crazy at all economic levels. LOL But I worked in urban schools. The last ten years were particularly difficult because children have become more verbally and physically violent in the classroom. And teachers' hands have become tied to the point where a few students can make everyone else in the room miserable. I feel terrible for those teachers still in the classroom. There is no support for difficult behaviors.

Yes I would never do the job. I was in education but it was voluntary, adult education, an area that has been almost squeezed out of existence over here. It was relatively easy peasy, even tho I did some work in pretty socially deprived areas.

 

[sharingfantasies]

Yes I would never do the job. I was in education but it was voluntary, adult education, an area that has been almost squeezed out of existence over here. It was relatively easy peasy, even tho I did some work in pretty socially deprived areas.

Back when I was younger and had a tiny bit more energy, I would teach elementary school during the day and adult classes at night. Teaching adults is a lot different. They actually want to be there and want to learn. It was fun. But the district decided that adult teachers had to work four nights a week and I was doing two. I just couldn't do four nights on top of five days. So they let me go.

 

[chris2c4u]

Back when I was younger and had a tiny bit more energy, I would teach elementary school during the day and adult classes at night. Teaching adults is a lot different. They actually want to be there and want to learn. It was fun. But the district decided that adult teachers had to work four nights a week and I was doing two. I just couldn't do four nights on top of five days. So they let me go.

That's a shame. Here Adult ed has become a lot more vocationally focused or in basic English, maths and the ubiquitous computer skills. Much less learning for learning's sake.

 

[sharingfantasies]

That's a shame. Here Adult ed has become a lot more vocationally focused or in basic English, maths and the ubiquitous computer skills. Much less learning for learning's sake.

I was teaching English to non-English speakers. It was a 98% Hispanic area so they had a LOT of classes for that, along with basic skills. But that was in the 90s. I don't even know if they still offer night classes any more. I know they made huge cuts to the program twenty years ago.

 

[chris2c4u]

Yep, pockets survive over here where they are still provided by institutions. I noticed a local university offering some adult courses recently; they even had some basic philosophy. Liberal education lives. Just. There have been huge cuts here tho in similar vein. The department I used to work in disappeared, for eg.

 

[sharingfantasies]

Yep, pockets survive over here where they are still provided by institutions. I noticed a local university offering some courses recently; they even had some basic philosophy. Liberal education lives. Just. There have been huge cuts here tho in similar vein. The department I used to work in disappeared, for eg.

I just looked it up. When I was doing it, the classes were held at the local junior high school. Almost every neighborhood held classes either at the junior high or high school. Now they have about nine schools that are on their own campuses, a few in the outer areas but most are downtown, and have cut down the availability to the people by about 80%. Shame.

 

[chris2c4u]

I just looked it up. When I was doing it, the classes were held at the local junior high school. Almost every neighborhood held classes either at the junior high or high school. Now they have about nine schools that are on their own campuses, a few in the outer areas but most are downtown, and have cut down the availability to the people by about 80%. Shame.

It'd be interesting to know how it worked elsewhere, in Europe for eg. I suspect a lot of the withdrawal of support for adult ed is a reaction against the liberal approach to education, basically, keep the plebs in their place. Conspiracy theorist? Me?

 

[sharingfantasies]

It'd be interesting to know how it worked elsewhere, in Europe for eg. I suspect a lot of the withdrawal of support for adult ed is a reaction against the liberal approach to education, basically, keep the plebs in their place. Conspiracy theorist? Me?

I have certainly held my own conspiracy theories, but I think that in this case it was all about the money. Easier to cut adult ed classes. They are not mandated by law. I think that when the cuts came for the arts, they took adult ed with them.

 

[chris2c4u]

I have certainly held my own conspiracy theories, but I think that in this case it was all about the money. Easier to cut adult ed classes. They are not mandated by law. I think that when the cuts came for the arts, they took adult ed with them.

Yes I'm sure you're right - it is convenient it supports some ideas for what a nice pliant population should be.

I need to make a tin foil hat now to stop all the waves they're beaming into my brain.

 

[sharingfantasies]

Yes I'm sure you're right - it is convenient it supports some ideas for what a nice pliant population should be.

I need to make a tin foil hat now to stop all the waves they're beaming into my brain.

In the late seventies, a guy named Lau sued the San Francisco school district because he felt that children that came from other countries should be taught the basic classes in their own language while learning English. So the state mandated this for all schools. Los Angeles, in their infinite wisdom, decided that they would go the state one better. Rather than offer this program to children that had some education in their native language, they would offer it to all children who had come from a family where someone spoke a native language other than English. It didn't matter if the kids spoke English or the native language, whether they had been born in the US or had never been to school, they were put into a "bilingual" program.

Now, the average English speaking child learns to read and write basic sentences by second grade. So the "plan" was that children would be taught their native language until second or third grade and then switched to English.

Yes, it worked out as well as you can expect.

For those children who came from a country where they had gone to school the program worked the way Lau wanted it to. We would translate the math, social studies, science etc into their language and teach English skills. I had a couple of these students that were able to come into fifth grade, learned English and were able to work at fifth grade levels in all subjects in a year to two years.

Those children that came from another country without any education or were coming into the schools in Kindergarten had to learn their native language for three years then switch to English. It resulted in thousands of kids, many US citizens, leaving elementary school with a second grade level education in their native language and a second grade education in English. Needless to say, this required the middle schools to dummy down their program to work with these children with second grade level skills. When the teachers and parents freaked out and complained to the district about this program, the answer was, "Well that is what the states wants." It left a generation of kids woefully undereducated, but we figured it was a plan by the government to keep the minority groups down.

Their next plan was to mess with the kids identities. Spanish speaking countries list both the mother and fathers' surnames on the birth certificate. So Juan Rodriguez y Hernandez was Rodriguez on his father's side and Hernandez on his mother's side. Instead of letting the kids take their father's name like all the other white kids, the state decided that the last name on the certificate was the child's surname. So Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez, now had a child named Juan Hernandez. But Juan's sister was born in the US, so Maria had Rodriguez as a last name.

Not only did it mess up kids' names and their identities it made them different than all the other kids. Kids that had already learned to write their name with their dad's last name now had to write it with their mom's last name. It is a logistical nightmare and makes record keeping a pain, so the kids have to keep the same name until they graduate from high school.

 

[chris2c4u]

In the late seventies, a guy named Lau sued the San Francisco school district because he felt that children that came from other countries should be taught the basic classes in their own language while learning English. So the state mandated this for all schools. Los Angeles, in their infinite wisdom, decided that they would go the state one better. Rather than offer this program to children that had some education in their native language, they would offer it to all children who had come from a family where someone spoke a native language other than English. It didn't matter if the kids spoke English or the native language, whether they had been born in the US or had never been to school, they were put into a "bilingual" program.

Now, the average English speaking child learns to read and write basic sentences by second grade. So the "plan" was that children would be taught their native language until second or third grade and then switched to English.

Yes, it worked out as well as you can expect.

For those children who came from a country where they had gone to school the program worked the way Lau wanted it to. We would translate the math, social studies, science etc into their language and teach English skills. I had a couple of these students that were able to come into fifth grade, learned English and were able to work at fifth grade levels in all subjects in a year to two years.

Those children that came from another country without any education or were coming into the schools in Kindergarten had to learn their native language for three years then switch to English. It resulted in thousands of kids, many US citizens, leaving elementary school with a second grade level education in their native language and a second grade education in English. Needless to say, this required the middle schools to dummy down their program to work with these children with second grade level skills. When the teachers and parents freaked out and complained to the district about this program, the answer was, "Well that is what the states wants." It left a generation of kids woefully undereducated, but we figured it was a plan by the government to keep the minority groups down.

Their next plan was to mess with the kids identities. Spanish speaking countries list both the mother and fathers' surnames on the birth certificate. So Juan Rodriguez y Hernandez was Rodriguez on his father's side and Hernandez on his mother's side. Instead of letting the kids take their father's name like all the other white kids, the state decided that the last name on the certificate was the child's surname. So Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez, now had a child named Juan Hernandez. But Juan's sister was born in the US, so Maria had Rodriguez as a last name.

Not only did it mess up kids' names and their identities it made them different than all the other kids. Kids that had already learned to write their name with their dad's last name now had to write it with their mom's last name. It is a logistical nightmare and makes record keeping a pain, so the kids have to keep the same name until they graduate from high school.

Oh lovely and the people who came up with such plans have all the benefits of higher education. Yes, I'm really optimistic about these things

 

[sharingfantasies]

Oh lovely and the people who came up with such plans have all the benefits of higher education. Yes, I'm really optimistic about these things

Yep. 'Tis truly wonderful.

Then the district offered more money to teachers that were bilingual. Those teachers taught classes in one language to the students. Teachers that were considered non-bilingual even though in many cases they spoke and wrote better than the native speaker taught the English classes. Of course there were more students that needed their native language than there were English only students, so some classes were a mix of English only and bilingual students. Those teachers did double work but didn't get the extra pay. This caused some ill feelings, of course. At the school I was at, there was a huge divide among the Hispanic teachers and every one else. The Hispanic teachers were given more pay but did less work, they were supposed to be teaching the basic classes in the native language along with English language skills. They didn't. They talked all day in the Spanish so the kids didn't learn English. They were unable to move into English classes in the three years they were supposed to need, because they didn't know English at all, except what they picked up on the playground. The reason the teachers did this? To guarantee that there would be jobs at the school for themselves and their friends. If they had taught English as they were supposed to then as time went by there would be less need for those teachers to teach in Spanish. There were plenty of jobs for them, but they might have to go to a different school, this way they guaranteed their jobs at the expense of their own students. So the kids were ripped off by people of their own culture. Lovely.

 

[chris2c4u]

Yep. 'Tis truly wonderful.

Then the district offered more money to teachers that were bilingual. Those teachers taught classes in one language to the students. Teachers that were considered non-bilingual even though in many cases they spoke and wrote better than the native speaker taught the English classes. Of course there were more students that needed their native language than there were English only students, so some classes were a mix of English only and bilingual students. Those teachers did double work but didn't get the extra pay. This caused some ill feelings, of course. At the school I was at, there was a huge divide among the Hispanic teachers and every one else. The Hispanic teachers were given more pay but did less work, they were supposed to be teaching the basic classes in the native language along with English language skills. They didn't. They talked all day in the Spanish so the kids didn't learn English. They were unable to move into English classes in the three years they were supposed to need, because they didn't know English at all, except what they picked up on the playground. The reason the teachers did this? To guarantee that there would be jobs at the school for themselves and their friends. If they had taught English as they were supposed to then as time went by there would be less need for those teachers to teach in Spanish. There were plenty of jobs for them, but they might have to go to a different school, this way they guaranteed their jobs at the expense of their own students. So the kids were ripped off by people of their own culture. Lovely.

It's the same the whole world over...as the folk song has it. It's hard to escape from the idea that selfishness is central to much human endeavour.

 

[sharingfantasies]

It's the same the whole world over...as the folk song has it. It's hard to escape from the idea that selfishness is central to much human endeavour.

Yeah, I particularly have problems when kids are on the receiving end. I missed the kids and families when I left, but I was totally thrilled to get away from those teachers. The new school had a wider variety of ethnicities which was fun. Some of the parents were less supportive, but it was a nice change.

 

[chris2c4u]

Yeah, I particularly have problems when kids are on the receiving end. I missed the kids and families when I left, but I was totally thrilled to get away from those teachers. The new school had a wider variety of ethnicities which was fun. Some of the parents were less supportive, but it was a nice change.

That's good, at least a bit more positive I was just thinking how cheerful we had been again, good to be a bit more hopeful

 

[sharingfantasies]

That's good, at least a bit more positive I was just thinking how cheerful we had been again, good to be a bit more hopeful

When I left it was time, but I really wanted to go at least one more year. My body wasn't as cooperative. LOL But since I retired, I am doing much better health wise. Amazing how much better a person feels once they drop a couple of tons of stress. LOL

 

[chris2c4u]

When I left it was time, but I really wanted to go at least one more year. My body wasn't as cooperative. LOL But since I retired, I am doing much better health wise. Amazing how much better a person feels once they drop a couple of tons of stress. LOL

Yep, good to hear I have been avoiding as much stress as possible for ages. It is A Good Thing (copyright, Sellar and Yeatman)

 

[sharingfantasies]

Yep, good to hear I have been avoiding as much stress as possible for ages. It is A Good Thing (copyright, Sellar and Yeatman)

Good for you. Of course, without a little stress, you could be dead and not realize it. LOL

 

[chris2c4u]

Good for you. Of course, without a little stress, you could be dead and not realize it. LOL

That explains it

 

[sharingfantasies]

That explains it

We will have to get Badger to chase you now and then so you can kick up the stress level enough to stay alive.

 

[chris2c4u]

We will have to get Badger to chase you now and then so you can kick up the stress level enough to stay alive.

LOL I'll just wave his teapot at him, he'll be after me like a shot. Right, I'd better go. G.night

 

[sharingfantasies]

Night. Have a good day.

 

[CFMB_fan]

.


Good morning All,

CG fingers crossed for your transport and a safe trip home

 

[BigBadBadger]

*searches out teapot from behind the bar and sets it brewing*

morning all

 

[cgraven]

Limps into the Inn's common room.

Morning Badger. S cupper once your brew is up?

CFMB transport came through and I am back in my wee cottage in my mountains and hobbling around a bit.