Culture, not Color, is the Crucial Concern

I am not judging kids by the color of their skin, but rather the content of their culture.

I do not have issues with “Brown” kids. I do not have problems with “black” kids. I do not even different with Asian or white students, or any other group. The very idea that we can paint a picture in broad strokes assessing every teacher is just plain folly. A teacher cannot help but look at a student as an individual.

“Black” as a culture may carry more meaning than the color of the skin. A government policy which has targeted a group for affirmative action will help enable a culture of dependence, insolence, and extravagance, no matter what color the person may be. The discrimination, whether good or bad, that emanates from the state causes more problems than it solves. This explains the perceived element of racism and bias which hinders teachers and scares administrators.

When the state hands out welfare, when the state makes it easy for young women to become mothers before they are adults, and to do so without marrying a man, she is embracing poverty and difficulty for her children, who in turn grow up in a home without order, without expectations, without any sense of value or direction. Because these children don’t receive proper love and discipline at home, they take out their rebellious behavior on their peers and their teachers at the local schools. A teacher can be a parent for an hour, an hour and a half, even two hours if necessary, but to expect the teacher to take over as the parent every day for students whose parents have refuses to step and rear a kids: this is just an overburdening folly that leads to teacher burnout.

If a teacher must take on the role of a parent, at least the instructor must be granted the authority to be a parent, to hold kids accountable, to give them detention, to take away privileges from students. However, schools are cash-strapped and lawsuit-conscious, and therefore they have no interest in creating conflict with parents with no qualms about running to the school board or threatening a court action. Fear and financial limitations are crippling our teachers’ and our schools’ role as educators, including the necessary though sometimes unpleasant element of discipline.