The White Male Oppressor Speaks

After almost two weeks of thinking what to write about I the great White Male Oppressor has returned and I really feel as though I need to get back to what the point of all this is, fighting foolish lies and half truths that we are all fed on a daily basis as though it is fact. So let us take a look at the ineffective money pit that we call the Public School System.

The American education system is an absolute disaster with outdated and often incorrect text books, broken down and poorly maintained buildings and  woefully under trained teachers that have absolutely no incentive to ensure that students actually learn, we send our children off with the apparently unrealistic idea that they might be taught things like reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Yet the schools have brand new metal detectors, security guards and (or) police officers.

This disaster is in part due to an educational system that is based on an infective and antiquated tenure system with little to no checks and balances that ensure teachers even do their jobs, favoring seniority and touchy-feelgood-everyone-wins attitudes over effective teaching and actually educating our children. While some of you out there may be thinking that I am being unfair let’s take a look at some facts, not the crap that your non-representing school boards and uninterested teachers are spouting.

Let us start with the idea of tenure and why it is a massively destructive idea. Tenure was first enacted in 1910 in New Jersey granting so called “fair dismissal rights” to collage professors so they could conduct their research with out fear of losing their jobs. Then the next big push in the idea of tenure really came about in the 1920s during the suffrage movement when a female teacher could be fired for wearing pants.  Those same academic freedoms were then granted to elementary and high school teachers. Well that sounds fair doesn’t it? We should ensure that our teachers shouldn’t lose their jobs for stupid reasons, right? Well yeah in the 1920s. But as we all know give a union a little power and it quickly grows into an unstoppable power hungry monster.

Some of the modern problems with the terrible tenure system are as follows; while it takes in most cases a track record of published research and up to a ten year probation to achieve a tenured position at a university it can take as little as 2 years for a K-12 teacher to achieve (and I use that term lightly) a golden ticket tenure position and then they can just sit back and not have to worry about getting fired for neglecting to actually do their job or for being terribly unprofessional at work. The following is a prime example of how a well intentioned idea can go horribly wrong.

Tenure which started as a noble act that could protect jobs in a time of social upheaval has evolved into a practice that thanks to union contracts and state labor laws against dismissing tenure teachers has become a costly endeavor that can cost as much if not more than $100,000 dollars to get rid of a useless teacher. In order to avoid the lawsuits and ungodly expense of getting rid of ineffective or bad teachers some districts simply shuffle ineffective teachers from school to school in a move that in California, Governor Schwarzenegger called “The dance of the lemons.” Not only that but this system promotes mediocrity by rewarding failure and punishing excellence by doing things such as basing pay on seniority rather than performance and removing any sense of accountability for their actions by making it take a near act of congress to fire them.

Other than the tenure issue here is a disastrous example of foolish actions meant to make your children feel better about themselves and ensure that everyone is asked “if you want fries with that?” when they grow up. In Seattle, Washington, they are deciding whether or not to lower the bar almost as low as it can go by only requiring a 1.0 GPA to graduate from high school. Oh good now every one can be dumb so that the dumb don’t feel bad. Chief Academic Officer Susan Enfield had this to say “Clearly we want to increase incentives for students to excel, but I don’t know that a GPA requirement is going to do that.” Yeah and this woman is partially in charge of helping children get ready for the future? Or is it helping kids get ready to not have a future? When Ms. Enfield says they want to increase incentives for students to excel I guess that means let no one fail at any cost! But wait that’s not all. They are also looking into the idea of dropping the requirement for kids in sports to maintain a C average to continue to play for the team. Apparently these idiots I mean good school officials (and I use that term lightly) think that all kids in sports will have a career in that particular activity so there is no reason to actually teach them anything.

These are just a couple of examples of why our public school system are such a disaster. There is book after book written about different areas of the public school systems in the United States that talk about everything from pay to no child left behind. I could go on and on with facts and figures to prove these points but I will leave those issues for future posts. In the mean time if you do not believe that it really is that bad and you have children I suggest reviewing your children’s text books and district policies and you will learn for yourself inconvenient facts. But hey it is okay and even encouraged that you sit on your butt and do nothing. I mean its only our children’s future, nothing important.

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There seems to be a new push to have homosexual content taught in sex education classes in our public schools. So I would like to examine this.

If gay sex is going to be taught in schools then there should be a class that is only gay students. They separate boys and girls in sex ed so on that point your discrimination argument is invalid.  I don’t think that the vast majority of the student population who are straight, contrary to what these crappy homo-centric t.v. and radio programs want you to believe, want to see or learn about gay sex. Because, guess what gay people, not everyone wants to see it.

When it comes down to it I personally don’t think that there should be any sexually preferential learning systems in the public schools. Before you start complaining let me explain. While I think that sex education has a place in our public schools. And to me sex education should be a mixture of abstinence education along with safe sex practices but leave sexual preference out of it.

For example a gay man and a straight man put a condom on the same way and dental dams work the same for a straight man as they do a lesbian. I have personally never seen contraceptives designed for sexual preference. By putting sexually preference as a part of sex ed you waste money and resources. It  is really useless and does nothing but make the pinko leftist progressives feel important. It in no way helps teach our children responsible decision making or safety when it comes to sexual activity.

So in summation, sex ed should only be preventative non preferential education that teaches our young people how to be safe if they decide to have sex and also tell the benefits of waiting to have sex. This can be done in a preference neutral manner which I believe would save money and also make it unnecessary to further segregate students based on gender or sexual preference.

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Today I was looking at under-publicized social issues for today’s post and found a in my opinion a doozy. The question of single sex classrooms and schools. And of course “action groups” aka groups that have a predisposed idea about something, look at the shallow end of the subject and complain about it and see if they can sue someone over it. I am not an expert on male and female learning ability or social patterns, but I am looking at this from a perspective based on what I have read.

I found an article on the Feminist Majorities Foundation web site that is appears to be rather scathing about the whole idea of sexually separate education. Here are the 6 points that The FMF is trying to make in regards to segregated classrooms. Those are:

1. Sex segregation is more likely to increase sex discrimination and sexual stereotyping in education rather than reduce it.
2. Separate is not equal or fair to all. It is very difficult to provide even “substantial” equality in sex segregated schools, classes, resources, or activities.
3. There is more variation within groups of girls and boys than between them. (you need to clarify this- just a thought)
4. Many sex segregated classes and schools are based on inaccurate claims of innate student differences by sex and related myths that male and female students learn differently and should receive dissimilar instruction.
5. Research does not generally support the superiority of sex segregation in advancing student learning or in decreasing sex discrimination.
6. Sex segregated educational programs have been found to violate Title IX (even after the 2006 regulations were instituted), the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, the Equal Opportunities Act, and a number of state-level laws.

– UPDATED– I emailed the FMF and requested what research they had done or found that developed this action plan they are apparently trying to do. Well guess what – They did E-Mail me a response with a PDF file that had links. First,  a thank you to the media center of the Feminist Majority Foundation for sending me the links that they used to come up with their action plan to rescind any gender segregation of schools. I have reviewed the information that they sent me and while I was hoping that they might send me some links to hard research that they had done or research that others had done to back up their claim that segregation negatively effects gender relations among children. How ever this is not the case, I followed every link that was sent. In the main PDF document (main sections of an FMF fact sheet) that they were nice enough to supply me with had but three links: one to A PDF of the triumphs of title IX, one to the FMF Education Handbook and the other went to the National Coalition for Women And Girls In Education which had links to other feminist websites as well as the ACLU website. But unfortunately no actual research just op-ed (opinion editorial) pieces on the issue from these different groups. I ask; is that really the way to go about getting rid of something that could with the right setup help facilitate better learning among our young people? Using op-ed pieces rather than citing some of the numerous pieces of actual research that took me 10 minutes and “Google Scholar” to find. (much longer than ten minutes to read) Well from what I have been able to find, their argument holds no actual water when it comes to anything scientific and is based solely on a speculative self serving opinion.

I found many good articles about this subject such as this one from the New York Times that talks about several studies that show that once separated by gender in the classroom the students in question got better test scores and grades. That seems to be a major theme through out the research. I have yet to come across anything research based that mentions the FMF’s first point of  “Sex segregation is more likely to increase sex discrimination and sexual stereotyping in education rather than reduce it.” But if they would like to say what study or studies this comes from then I would be more than happy to read it or them. It seems as though the only people that have a problem with this are Womanist and Feminist groups (yes there is a difference between the two). The FMF also claims “Separate is not equal or fair to all. It is very difficult to provide even “substantial” equality in sex segregated schools, classes, resources, or activities.” This seems to me as though they are really reaching, just because the children are in separate classrooms does not mean segregated playgrounds, field trips, assembly’s, and other school activities.

The next point that they are trying to make is “There is more variation within groups of girls and boys than between them.” As you could see by the comment above in italics all I can say to this is “Wait, What?” This is a blaring example of lets pull a reason out of my butt that makes no sense with nothing else to back it up. However it is correct as a statement rather than a reason. When you mix boys and girls together there are variations. For example, boys and girls are different and due to the genetics between each individual naturally there would be variations.

Their next point is “Many sex segregated classes and schools are based on inaccurate claims of innate student differences by sex and related myths that male and female students learn differently and should receive dissimilar instruction.” I am not exactly sure how they call it myth that boys and girls learn differently, when it is a fact that boys and girls do think differently use different hues of colors when coloring and their brains do process information differently. Just Google Scholar it and you will see that I am correct.

Here is an interesting one that the FMF brought up as one of their points, “Research does not generally support the superiority of sex segregation in advancing student learning or in decreasing sex discrimination.” A lot of the papers that I read on the subject show that segregating the students by sex and using different stimuli in each gender’s classrooms does in fact facilitate higher grades and test scores. So once again show me the research papers that the FMF got these claims from. At this point I am guessing that it was from a womancentric research group that went into this with a gender bias from the beginning.

This is in my opinion their strongest provable point in the whole argument, “Sex segregated educational programs have been found to violate Title IX click for text (even after the 2006 regulations were instituted), the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, the Equal Opportunities Act, and a number of state-level laws.” Perhaps, but all of you parents out there -  do you not want the best education for your child? I now have a couple of questions for you to consider. First If your child had a better chance of achieving more in school wouldn’t you want to facilitate that? And Even though they may separate the learning portions of the day do you really think that they will make girls sit on one side of the lunchroom and boys on the other. If you actually believe that they would segregate during rest periods in the day I think you might be a little diluted.

I think that any potential improvements that could make our dismal public education system better as long as it doesn’t violate parental rights or family privacy should be considered, I will be getting into this issue of education at a later time.

Here is the one link that was in the aforementioned PDF that was not to an FMF paper so you can decide for yourself about the level of research that they had done; http://www.ncwge.org/singlesex.html

Here is the Feminist Majority Foundations Argument against segregated education. (Click Here)

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