I don’t know. Why should anyone I guess?
Ultimately, I suppose the question is are ghetto folk a product of their environment or is their environment a product of the people living there?
Welcome to the SDMB, Venus Hottentot.
Thank you Bosda. I just got home, and I see I have mad stuff to catch up on! I see locked threads, all kinds of action. I will go and read through it all now, but after skimming, I have something to say.
I had no clue Venus Hottentot was a racial slur! I mean, I knew there was some contraversy involved with the woman behind the name, but I honestly didn’t know it was a racial slur. My apologies to McDribble.
I am still stunned and confused at the implication that I chose a racial slur for a user name, so I shall read through some things carefully before responding again.
To me the answer seems to be quite obviously “both”. That’s why we have terms like 'poverty cycle". The environment is largely created by the adults living there, in fact the adults living there are the environment for most purposes in this discussion. The children OTOH are a product of the environment thay are raised in.
And that to me is where the real problem comes from. The people who create the environemnt are not the same people who are being shaped by the environment. Adult personalities are largely set, adult personalities aren’t readily changed by environment, yet it is the adults who create the environment. Children OTOH do have their personalities shaped by environment, and they have no control over their environment. As a result the children produced by the environment go on to produce exactly the same environment when they are adults.
This is where these discussion so often get bogged down, because people don’t accept that “ghetto blacks” aren’t a single monolithic group. They are people of all ages, sexes and personalities. As such it’s impossible to say that the environment is created by “ghetto blacks” because quite clearly a 6 year old child doesn’t create her environment. By the same token it’s impossible to say that “ghetto blacks” don’t create their environment. Quite cleraly the local gang members do play a major role in creating the environment.
What we need to keep in mind is that many ghetto blacks create their environment and that many are the product of that environment, that the two groups overlap almost 100% but there are still many people who don’t create and many who aren’t products.
And you either don’t know anything about education or you are being deliberately disingenuous. While it’s true that most urban districts have a lot of money, they also have lot of costs. As this site outlines, most of the public school funding increases that have occurred in recent decades have gone to things other than general education:
Unlike most suburbs, Washington DC has tons of disabled students, and students that are eligible for free school lunch and breakfasts. Or as this site states:
Simply put, expecting more from Washington DC than you do from Princeton, NJ, just because they spend more money (on paper) per student, is laughably illogical to anyone with an understanding of you public school funding works.
In addition to all the things mentioned by the sites above, you have to include all the “soft money” that suburban parents contribute to their children’s education. Test prep services make billions of dollars per year as a direct result of this. Suburban schools also ask parents to provide money for school trips, books, sports, etc. Most inner-city parents cannot afford all of those things. I’m not saying DC public schools are a shining example of efficiency, but you’ve based your conclusions on a comparison of apples to hand grenades. Either way, it is debatable to conclude that more money cannot help struggling schools.
I think that modern American inner cities are pretty soul-destroying places. …and mainly because of violent crime. Unlike the “ghettos” of the past (which were real communities, with butcher shops, shoe stores, hardware stores, etc.), the modern American ghetto is just housing…with no small busineses for young people to get their first jobes. Banks have largely abandoned these places-so you pay up to 9% to cash a paycheck. No services-and a trip to a grocery store involves an expensive cab ride.What businesses there are charge high prices (insurance is either horrifically expensive or impossible t buy). Look at those roll-down “blast doors” covering shop windows-and you realize why there is nobody on the street after dark. No role models for young people-just the local street criminals. And, given the usually crappy inner-city schools, you have a recipe for failure. Crime is the reason-as long as businesses cannot run in an area, this is what you get.
It is such a testable hypothesis, too.
Is there no foundation or charity willing to take a test case of say, 100 randomly selected ghetto conceptions and pour an essentially unlimited amount of conception-to-end-point money to see whether or not external resources can equalize what others say is non-fixable by money? The control could be 100 conceptions chosen at random from a privileged population.
I’m talking about real money, but a limited enough group so that it’s an affordable proposition. Spending, say, $25,000/kid/yr of additional money would be only 2.5M/year–surely a reasonable amount. Or, alternatively, select the same 100 and remove Mom and child from the ghetto completely. In 2, 5, 10 years see what you have.
Those chosen for such a study would clearly do better than those left behind–there would be no harm done–and those pushing for more resources would have proof that all it takes is money to make a given population as functional, productive, and high-scoring as everyone else.
I don’t quite think that would work. How do you account for more experienced, better qualified teachers? Better physical facilities? A better measure is the effect of magnet schools without entry tests.
ralph124c makes a good point about the systemic issues in inner-city communities. What’s most disturbing is that policing is done in such a counterintuitive way. Instead of seeking out candidates for the department from the community, police and fire departments used testing to keep out candidates of color. Now you have two generations of people of color who have come up distrusting the police, and many of these communities are seen as being ungovernable. Compare that to the community where I live, where a lot of the police are from the town and know people. It’s not unusual to see a police officer or fireman in the supermarket, or a diner.
There was a D.A.R.E. officer at my school that was amazing. The kids loved her and respected her, especially the girls. She was a young African-American woman, and the kids usually didn’t believe that she was a cop - because all the cops they’d ever seen in the community and on TV were White, and they didn’t believe she was there to help, not to bust somebody. I think community policing is a critical part of resuscitating inner-city communities, and cities should start aggressively seeking out people from the community to work the so-called tough neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the reputation of the police is so poor in a lot of low-income communities - for justifiable reasons - that probably very few would even consider it as a career option.
In my neck of the woods current spend is 12k/yr/kid. As a throw-out number for an experiment I’m proposing another 25k/yr. And you don’t think 37k/yr/kid would buy enough leg up to equalize the difference? That kind of spend would get you 10 teachers (10 kids/class since they are all the same age) at, say, $125k/year to make sure you are getting the best. With 2.5M left over for whatever else you need.
Wow.
OK; so quadruple it. Whatever number is right to get the question tested: Is money the answer? I’m less interested in how much it would cost than in whether or not it would be an equalizer. Not better than the status quo, but actually eliminate the difference.
Is it worth doing just to get the issue off the table once and for all?
What a strange thing to say. Of course anyone can have mistaken impressions and read someone else’s opinions and be influenced.
Fact sheet on black, immigrant and refugee women in Norway
The article goes into quite a bit of detail.
I too have been to Oslo. But I’m sure it has changed considerably since I was there. It seems to have developed many of the same complications that I saw in Paris.
It’s been less than two years since that horrible fire near the Opera House in Paris. A hotel that was being used for housing for immigrants burned to the ground and many died. There have been many protests about the living conditions of the immigrants in Paris and the disrespect their cultures receive.
It’s a little more complicated than that. I think you would need to first ensure that the physical plant issues are addressed. Recent texts, computers, etc. Then you need strong instructional leadership in the schools - strong principals and administrators who know how to teach, know how to respectfully lead teachers, and know how to develop teacher talent. Of course, then you need a strong faculty.
Extended day programs and Saturday/summer school programs are helpful for students who are academically behind. But you need to ensure that teachers are rewarded for doing so. I taught extended day and Saturday school - it was a good chunk of change, though I admit it was a little too much school after a year.
I think those things are a start. Then you need time for teachers to learn how to teach the curriculum. A good group of substitutes so teachers can attend inservices for their own professional development. And then I’d state that the schools should be tested yearly, but they should have a five-year period where the school is not threatened with closure or reorganization. There should be an alternative assessment to measure that a school is improving, but it is very hard to teach in a school where the threat of closure looms over the head of the people who are working very hard to improve student achievement.
I think you are missing my point, but thanks for the sincerity.
FWIW, I’m pretty sure an experiment in which a given population, chosen at conception, was given $150,000/pp/per year worth of intervention would lay to rest whether fundamental differences are a result of nature or nurture. That amount of money should be able to fund all of your conditions and more.
What point am I missing? My point is that money is very helpful, absolutely. But there are considerable structural challenges and costs, some of which brickbacon noted, that inflate the costs to educate students.
Inner-city schools do not simply need to teach their students. There is also a considerable amount of building of capital that needs to occur at the school site, because it may not be present at home. Ideally, schools in such communities will have libraries available to students and families after school - because a lot of the families in the community do not have lots of books at home. They might also need childcare facilities, so parents can visit classrooms or attend parent-teacher conferences. One would also hope for significant support in the college application process, like filling out FAFSA forms and applications, test prep, and so on.
Having taught early elementary, late elementary, middle school, college, and graduate level classes at institutions from inner-city schools to Ivy League colleges, I don’t think for a second that there is even a scintilla of truth to the idea that there is a cultural or natural difference between students. I have encountered some of the brightest, most hardworking individuals as well as some of the biggest blockheads on earth at every stop of the way. Ivy League blockheads tend to have a lot of support and second chances, whereas the blockheads at the inner-city school don’t have much of a safety net or a second chance system.
Oprah has looked at these issues in a variety of ways over the years. IIRC, about a decade ago she personally paid to relocate (50?) families from poor neighborhoods, in order to give them a fresh start.
I can’t find the results of her experiment anywhere, but in searching I did find a book about the “Gatreaux Program”, which did basically the same thing in Chicago from 1976-1998. One reviewer noted:
Just ordered the book. Thanks!
Was there any objective, quantified follow up on the Oprah families? I would love to have that data in my armamentarium, and I suspect Hippy Hollow might also. Any links to the original event, or to any persons involved?
I tought at a magnet school in Hartford, CT. This school received virtually limitless amounts of money from Trinity College, Aetna, and Travelers. Its facilities were better than any suburban school I have ever taught in. Yet, things weren’t that different than they were in regular schools. The kids we got from the suburbs were for the most part the best students. Among the city kids, there were some very high acheivers, but I suspect most of them would have been high acheivers in any school. The rest of the students were still better than your average urban school, but only because, as the best school in the town, we got to cherry pick who we admitted.
I know this is only anecdotal evidence, but one of the things that was really disheartening to me was the evidence that money and facilities did nothing to really help solve the problem. Previously I had always been of the camp that thought “give money to schools to solve problems.” Instead I was treated to the disgraceful display of 60% of our students actively throwing away a golden opportunity on a daily basis. Worse, many of them actively worked to undermine what we were trying to do through acts of vadalism and other disruption.
To be fair, I can’t entierly fault these students. To echo what someone else said, educationaly policy is almost completely broken, especially in urban districts. I don’t want to hijack, but if others would like I’d be glad to elaborate on why I think so.
It goes back to what Hippy said. You can’t just have the money. That will get you teachers and administrators with the most seniority, not necessarily the ones with the most motivation or the best training or natural talent. The money is only part of it.
It might be fairer for me to say I haven’t made my point well.
My point is to ask whether or not applying the right resources, at any cost, will fix the problem. I understand those resources might be the right teachers, the right home life, the right security, and so on. Under the assumption that all of those things cost money, I used money as a shorthand for proper resources.
I understand, of course, that it’s deeper than money…money can’t buy you a good teacher if the teaching structure pays only by seniority, for instance.
But if you had the right resources, would the ghetto population rise to the success of every other population? The current system culls out their successful and talented offspring (who escape the ghetto), and leaves behind those least able to compete. To whatever extent our genes contribute to our success, this is a recipe for disaster. It would, therefore, be reassuring to prove that the remaining population is salvageable.
I would guess it would take a couple generations to see the results of that. Because the family that she has relocated already has the mentality that comes along with ghetto poverty. That mentality is passed to the children. Can relocating at that point help the family to shake off the mental chains that have made them feel inferior? Not speaking for the actual family that relocated…I am thinking more of a lot of families that I know of.
It seems to me those families I know would need to de-program a lot of the propaganda about poor blacks, that they have in their heads, if they want to see lasting results.
Interesting – and exhausting – thread. Part of the problem I have reading it, though, is that we’re talking about the ghetto as if it were confined to a handful of large, poor, isolated areas in our big cities. Much more disturbing is that, in my experience, “the ghetto” – or at least the “ghetto mindset” – extends far beyond those places, in little pockets all across the country, often cheek and jowl with functioning parts of society. My experience: I live in a little town in the mid-Atlantic with about 20,000 people. It’s mostly white (~85%), mostly middle class, and has little crime. We have one high school, where I work. It’s considered a good school – parents are happy to send their kids there, it has some good teachers and programs, and generally does a pretty good job of educating its students (at least by America’s crappy standards).
But still our black students are disproportionately struggling. The numbers confirm what I’ve seen in the classroom. 52% of our black 11th graders scored below basic in math on the statewide standards exam (compared to 22% of whites and 20% of Asians). 35% were below basic in English (15% for whites and 30% for Asians). Those numbers are worse than the previous year’s (though in fairness the number of students scoring as “advanced” also increased). This is not a school that ignores its struggling students: as I’ve posted before on these boards, if anything it spends too much of its money on “learning support” and “special ed” classes. (A huge number of my teaching assignments (I’m a sub) are in those classes, and the teacher/student ratios in those classes are ridiculously low compared to the (few) honors classes I’ve taught – just this week, I had a learning support class that had literally ONE student in it.) Is racism the problem? Maybe, but a significant minority of our black students scored “advanced” on the tests (16% in math, 32% in reading, plus another 19% and 10% that scored “proficient”), and are functioning just fine. Classes are not tracked – students can take whatever course they want. (Nor are the black students “unofficially” channeled into the lower classes – if anything, based on the figures listed above there should be more of them in Learning Support than what I’ve seen.) Black history and achievements are celebrated throughout the year – it’s almost de rigeur for classes to have at least one “Diversity!” or “Minority Achievements in the Sciences!” type poster. We have black teachers and administrators. I’ve never heard a racist comment in the teacher’s lounge.
Frankly, I don’t think the problem here is the school. I think it’s the attitudes and culture that a lot of our black students are coming from. Even here, in the middle of placid, normal, safe, stable Middle America, a significant number of our black students act as though they’ve been plucked from the mean streets of Detroit – in the way they act and dress and talk, and in their attitudes towards school and authority figures. There’s only so much schools can do if a student just doesn’t want to learn – or if his parents aren’t prepared to make him want to learn. It doesn’t matter how trained, experienced, or motivated your teachers are, how updated your textbooks are, or how many computers you have in a classroom: if neither the kid or his parents much care when the kid brings home an F or a discipline note, there’s very little the schools can do.
I saw similar things in my own high schools when I was a student, and I’ve heard about it from friends and relatives in other places. I even saw it to a degree in college. I agree with whoever it was earlier in this thread that said that we need to start seriously criticizing this ghetto culture and attitude instead of glorifying it.
All of that is just by way of saying that schools can only go so far. There’s more I want to comment on, but I don’t have the time at the moment…