Over at Quora the question was asked, “Is California as bad as the right wing says it is?” This answer from a gentleman named Ted Kord says this in response:
A very liberal buddy texted me a link two days ago along with the words “Fuck this shit!” No my buddy isn’t your average liberal. He’s a heavily tattooed, militant athiest hipster.
Not this guy, but you get the idea.
So what got my inked bohemian comrade so incensed?
Like me, my hipster amigo works as a California public school teacher. And over the last 10 years, discipline in general, and the sense of the teacher as an authority figure in particular, has been gutted by a very progressive legislature and two consecutive progressive governors.
I teach at a large high school that was once one of the 1000 best high schools in the United States. Back then it was a pretty nice place to teach. Now it’s pretty dystopian, with roving bands wandering the campus any time of day. If you like to keep your door open to get some fresh air, your instruction will be frequently interrupted by loud music, laughing, shouts, and the all-to-frequent eruption of profanity. I’m not talking about a couple times a day; I’m talking about several times per period. If you keep your door closed students will peer through the glass window looking for friends or bang on the doors and run away. If you go out and tell one the wandering bands to be quiet or get back to class, you WILL be met with expressions of defiance and disrespect. And that’s just dealing with the kids fooling around in the hall.
Poke your head out of my classroom anytime of the day and it’s going to look a lot like this.
Again, this is during class time. Teachers have been told they CANNOT LIMIT bathroom passes. Misbehavior prone students demand passes, then use those passes to wander campus, meet with friends, play on their phones, use intoxicants and deal drugs.
When it comes to your own students, you don’t have much more authority. If one of my students misbehaves, the harshest consequence I can give out is a phone call home. Maybe (and that’s a BIG MAYBE) if I’ve finally called home several times over a behavior, an administrator might actually issue a detention.
It’s not that the assistant principal for safety doesn’t want to help. His hands were tied by the state legislature. AB1729 passed a few years back making suspension of defiant students an extremely cumbersome and very time consuming process. The sheer commitment in time required to actually suspend a defiant student overwhelmed the capacity of administration. The legislature followed up with AB420 and SB419, each of which made the process more unwieldy. Pretty soon, no students could be suspended for defiance. But the law was so poorly written that it seemed to include (or exclude) a lot of behaviors.
A few years ago a student I wouldn’t let break the cell phone rule in class went off on me in a manner similar to how this student abused his teacher.
Even though I had previously called the student’s parents about his inappropriate classroom discussions about gangs, guns and fighting (documenting each call) the parents claimed I was picking on him and the student received only a 2-day class suspension. So for 2 days he sat outside the AP’s office playing on his phone, instead of actually working.
A few years back, my mentor teacher was walking down the hallway when she noticed a boy hanging out in the hallway. She asked to see his pass and reached for it. This 6 foot plus male cocked his arm back like he was going to punch her and yelled “I’ll smash your face.” My mentor, a 5′3″ tall, 60 plus year old woman stepped back and reported it to the office. The whole incident was captured on CCTV security cameras. The boy could be clearly seen taking a threatening, fist raised posture. But because she reached for the bathroom pass, the principal didn’t think administration could legally suspend the student.
Worse yet, the student claimed that he felt threatened by the diminutive AARP member. My mentor spent an entire weekend worried that she would be disciplined for the incident, even though she acted appropriately. She spent the weekend worrying that she would face discipline. The next Monday she went to the district office and filed her retirement paperwork. This was a tremendous loss to education. My mentor was one of the state’s leading expert in her subject matter, having written curriculum for entire states.
So what has my hipster amigo so angry?
California is in the process of passing two new laws to further gut discipline.
- AB 599 will eliminate suspensions for students who come to school high or drunk, or use drugs on campus.
- SB 274 will completely ban all suspensions and expulsions for willful defiance.
This is too much even for a counter-culture spirit who isn’t exactly opposed to marijuana.
California educators currently face daily, sometimes hourly incidents of defiance, disruption and deliberate disrespect. Many teachers have to deal with daily and ongoing behavior that would constitute a hostile work environment if those behaviors occurred in the private sector. Many of my colleagues have stress related health problems from dealing with unruly students whose uncorrected behavior gets worse.
Even if these bills don’t pass, behavior in California schools is already heading in a negative direction. The small minority of habitually disruptive students make life miserable and education untenable in many California schools. The passage of either bill will simply accelerate the deterioration of the Golden State’s schools.
I have no sympathy. This is completely, wholly self-inflicted. But it’s just one more indicator of the complete destruction of public education due to the ideologies of the Left. I’m currently reading Thomas Sowell’s Inside American Education. He published it thirty years ago. I have to stop from time to time due to the RCOB it invokes. And I know it’s gotten far worse since then. For example: Chicago Democrat sounds alarm as 55 schools report no proficiency in math or reading: ‘Very serious’ Ya THINK?!? Chicago spends at minimum $10k per pupil, up to $15k. And these are the results.
Get out of California while you still can. Chicago as well. And get your kids out of public schools EVERYWHERE.
A glorious fundamental transformation, as was promised.
Si se puede!!
Well, you’re not teaching them anything of value anyway, so why do you keep doing it?
Go build houses or something.
(and homeschool)
I think this is great! The people who voted for the people who passed these laws deserve everything they get. (The ones who were opposed to it, I have more sympathy for.)
Where is the wave of quitting teachers? Have they all been replaced with danger-haired vanity-gendered groomers?
AB 599 courtesy of Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward and Assemblymember Alex Tinming Lee. They both live somewhere. If Californians really gave a shit about THEIR state, then they would pick a time to have a “one on one ” with both these communists.
SB 274 courtesy of Senator Nancy Skinner who also lives somewhere.. Pick your fights, but at least fucking fight……
They will suffer and complain then go and punch a straight [D] ticket in November.
The people of Cslifirnia will vote Democrat, consistently, forever, no matter what happens to them or their children.
Let them suffer. They earned it.
They got what they voted for… BOHICA!
Don’t come to Texas.
I’ll simply repeat what I’ve said for the past 20 years:
“If you are putting your children in a government school/brainwashing/indoctrination center, you are de facto guilty of child abuse.”
I don’t care where you live, how you live or how much/little money you make, if you cede the education of your children to the collectivist statist authoritarians the end results are entirely predictable and entirely the parent’s responsibility. Home school, private school, whatever you can afford. Get them out. Even if you live in a small town with reasonable people in control of your local schools, the only curricula available to them are those of the Marxists who have controlled the pedagogical and textbook systems since the late 1950’s, and include their Zinn-like interpretation of every topic. There is no escaping it in a government school.
Lots of parents will complain that they have neither the time nor money to do this. I call BS on that; it’s simply a matter of priorities. If living in a McMansion, having multiple near-new vehicles, having the latest phones and plans are more important than raising thinking, independent and responsible children, then you’ve made a choice. If living in a small home, driving old cars, cooking healthy inexpensive meals from scratch, and not buying the latest trend du jour will allow you to be a single-income family, with one parent at home and teaching, then you’ve made another choice. There are so many resources out there for sports, specialty teachers/tutors, and other things for home schooling that there is no longer even that as an excuse.
Once they’ve reached high school level they should be well enough inoculated against the collectivist mentality that they may be able to go to the brainwashing center without too much damage, if that’s what they want. They’ll have to learn to keep their heads down and their mouths mostly shut, and pick and choose their battles, but even that is further training for how to survive in the collectivist environment that will be their future.
It’s obvious which choice the majority of parents have made, and this is one of the results. Feral children roaming the halls and destroying the chance of education for the normal children. GET THEM OUT.
Liberal hipsters cause this mess. Stay in California where you belong.
I graduated from a CalState University in the early 90’s and was substitute teaching in an Orange County, Ca school district. During one of my stints I determined that 20% of the HS class I was teaching were illiterate. Not bad at reading, but unable to read. When I asked several students if they could read, I was met with a one finger salute. I made the mistake during lunch in the teachers lounge asking a person sitting next to me why they didn’t flunk these kids. It was like a scene in the old westerns where the stranger walks into the saloon and the piano quits playing and everybody goes silent. 50 teachers went silent and looked down at the floor or their laps. All except the female principal who stared me down for about 15 seconds. Finally she pointed at the guy I was talking to and said ‘You! Explain it to him.’ Everyone else returned to their conversations while this guy, looking totally embarrassed, gave me an answer I will never forget. He said ‘Here is the grading curve. A is Asian, B is white, C and D are Hispanics, F’s are the Blacks. We can flunk these kids and keep doing it, but you have kids who don’t care with parents who don’t care. Pretty soon you have 16 year old guys in class with 12 year old girls, and no one wants that.’ This was in ‘91. I realized it was a unionized babysitting grift and never went back. I could go on about corrupt union negotiations over teachers contracts, but why? It’s was worse than you could imagine even then. The destruction of California’s schools has been methodical and deliberate. I could no longer subject my family to that so I brought them back to my home state in the mountain redoubt. California will literally burn. Get out while you can.
I’d like to repost this on Facebook and Quora, if you’ll let me. You’re what we call a “Primary Source.” Someone who has direct, first-hand knowledge.
That picture of the kids running in the hall…is that *really* what the students in your friend’s school look like? I’d be surprised if his more disruptive students were all that pale.