Liberals believe they can
artificially wipe away serious behavior problems that are cultural in nature.
They do this by labeling reasonable standards of classroom discipline as racist
or discriminatory.
When urban schools with predominantly black and Hispanic students enacted protocols that create an environment where learning can take place, more suspensions and expulsions resulted, accompanied by a widening of the achievement gap between black students and their white counterparts.
The knee-jerk reaction from liberals
was to claim that school disciplinary policies that disproportionally affected
black and Hispanic kids were culturally insensitive, discriminatory and evidence of racism. The
liberals were confusing correlation and causation. School officials were even
discouraged from calling police even in cases of violent assaults - that could
also be considered racist.
Social engineers in colleges and
universities began drawing up untested experiments using black and Hispanic
kids as laboratory rats. They wanted to show that leaving disruptive kids in the classroom, instead
of removing them for serious behavior violations including assaults on teachers, would improve scholastic
performance.
Instead, disruptions and scholastic
performance both got worse. Leaving disruptive kids in a classroom is a danger
not only to the teacher but to other students as well. The university
professors are nowhere near the classrooms to see the disaster they created
with their inane idea, nor are they held accountable.
Not surprisingly, no amount of
cultural sensitivity training of school officials will negate the culturally
dysfunctional baggage brought to school every day by students.
Too many black kids today do not
come to school in a state of readiness to learn. They have not been read to by parents. They are not socially adjusted for a group environment
like a classroom, nor have they been reasonably disciplined for unwanted
behavior. This emotional baggage is then thrown into the lap of a teacher who
does not have the education or skills for handling these serious emotional and
behavioral problems.
Kids have an excuse because of their
age, immaturity and bad parenting. The parents of those disruptive kids have no
excuse. Long ago, parents were absolved of their responsibility to raise their
kids effectively. Liberal social dogma told them racism was at the root of
their inability to raise kids who were ready for the demands of a school
classroom.
Poverty was to blame too. Now
liberals had a reason for not just government but economic intervention as
well. This gave the left a two-for-one moment to enact expensive government-run
tax-supported programs. They could spend more money not just on unproven
education experiments but also on new anti-poverty programs.
K-4 programs have become K-3
programs. This further absolves mainly black and Hispanic parents from their
rightful responsibility of raising their kids.
We are on our way to kids being
taken immediately from the maternity ward to a government school. They are
already being fed three meals a day and provided for by taxpayer-funded
after-school programs. Why not just start them on the road to government
dependency, not to mention indoctrination and exposure to leftist dogma, as
early in life as possible?
GOP politicians in Congress have
been reluctant to challenge the efficacy of these expensive programs lest they
are accused of not caring about black and Hispanic children, or being outright
racist. Nothing makes a white Republican politician run like their hair is on
fire faster than being accused of not caring about black kids.
Education has always been the
traditional vehicle for upward mobility in America. It is even more important
in today’s knowledge-based economy.
Blacks who have embraced education
are less likely to have kids who drop out of school, commit crimes, join gangs
or make other flawed lifestyle choices like drug and alcohol abuse and having
children they are ill-equipped to raise.
One of the hallmarks of slavery was
criminalizing the education of black children thus keeping them ignorant. I
would argue that many of today’s public school policies achieve the same
results - they keep kids ignorant.
The goal of social activists is not
to fix education problems but to fix the statistics. They are focusing on the
wrong thing. Statistics can be exploited not only to make school problems (seem
to) disappear, but also to demonstrate the need for the continuation of
government programs. The kids who fail in school today are the population that
tomorrow will fill jails and prisons and be in need of government assistance.
Former President George W. Bush
called these low expectations “soft bigotry.” He was right. Now the left wants
to back up the soft bigotry with faulty statistics.
David Clarke (@SheriffClarke) is a Spokesman for America First Action and President of DAC
Enterprises (www.DACenterprises.org).
He served as the sheriff of Milwaukee County from 2002-17.
