Benjamin Netanyahu told liberal talk show host Bill Maher that there is a world-wide standard which pressures Israel to play along with the concert of nations.
I thought is was intriguing and refreshing that Maher indicted the mainstream media's knee-jerk tendency to cast, or rather castigate, Israel as the aggressor. More sordid complaints have compared Israel and the Jews to Nazis.
This moral equivalence is insulting, yet to this day world outlets cowering before the moral relativism which will not indict evil when it sees it, has succumbed to beating down any country, particularly, Israel for standing up to the moral decay of radical Islam.
The same cowardice which supports bullies while refusing to protect the smart and able students in our schools had pressured me for a long time, too. Administrators are timid creatures now, and more than ever they are more concerned about lawsuits or cries of racism or discrimination.
Right and wrong have to be about much more than the color of a person's skin. Right and wrong, really, are not enough to encapsulate what an education is really about. Students can never feel safe or sound in the classroom if they know that the teacher has no authority to discipline students, no matter what their color.
The grievance industries, masquerading as civil rights activism, have done more harm than good to minority students, infusing them with a sense of entitlement that permits them to say and do as they please without being held accountable. The pity which casts students into the "minority" fold has evoked an excessive degree of accommodation, one that will not prepare students for a world which is slowly growing more color-blind as now one majority population remains in place.
The confusion of race vs. culture has caused a greater degree of problems. Another Spanish teacher was contending with a riled-up, wily group of students in class. Because they shared the same ethnic background, though, and she found herself many times having to ask the students to leave, she was force to tolerate the disruption. The students, the parents, and the administrators would indict that teacher with "racism", then follow it up with "This student has a right to an education."
So, she like many teachers had to resign herself to a very difficult classroom experience.
The cry of "racism" is a very common one which teachers are forced to contend with. Automatically I am at a disadvantage, like many teachers, because I am "white" (whatever that means). Like the state of Israel in fighting for its survival, teachers are now forced to justify themselves while holding others accountable. Such a tension makes running a classroom unmanageable. The teachers in many cases are the real victims, yet the unruly students receive the protection, while the teachers get the correction.
I chose not to give in to this dynamic any further. I could not walk into a classroom and bide my time, as to whether I would hold certain students accountable or not. The inner stress was just too much. I resolved that I would push students to the wall as much as I could; if I had to throw three kids out, I would do it. Five students? So be it, if that's what it took to make a point and keep the class in line.
Still, the tension of having to establish myself and establish authority at the same time became a growing source of stress for me. Only at Los Padrinos would I get the kind of back up that I needed on a routine basis. An administrator would walk into the room if I had to send three students out in one period, informing them that if anyone else had to be sent out, they would be automatically suspended for the rest of the day. If the public high schools did this more often, I think that the substitutes and the full-time staff would have less to contend with on an on-going basis.
I had to stop being a victim, not just with the parents, but also with the administrators. I even told one probation officer that if they did not support me, I was going to go home. At another site, the students were so bereft of respect that I threatened to leave, except that the administrator cover that school, among others, told me that if I chose to leave, I would get written up.
The students were excused for their inexcusable behavior, and I would be accused of dereliction of duty if I chose to leave. One more example of blaming the victim, and the administrators were experts at this, for they were not about to send students away, lest they lose the attendance money or have to sort out a lawsuit.
I have stood up to my fair share of administrators. I lost my temper with one insolent stalwart, cursing at him once, and just my luck the site principal was walking by, but I chose to hold me ground, notwithstanding. Another assistant principal charged into my classroom after the second referral for the day, shouting that "This is the second referral that you have sent to me, and these students do not have a record or anything. What's going on?"
I calmly answered that the two students whom I had sent out received three chances to behave, and they just refused to comply with anything that I asked. Three chances is plenty. I know more diligent parents who do not let their kids hover as to whether they will cooperate with Mommy and Daddy or not, but I had to give myself some room to negotiate. When I had sent out the second student that day, the rest of the class got really quiet and really busy. Only when the assistant principal had showed up did they start acting up again. In some instances, the "leadership" on campus caused more problems than the students!
I also remember pressing the assistant principal when I was a French teacher in South Gate. I spent a portion of my time sending kids out who were a repeated interruption in my class. If possible, I could generate a long-standing paper trail and get the student out of my class or transferred to a nearby school. Los Angeles Unified provided this option in order to deal with the real problem students, like the ones who physically threatened or harassed other teachers, along with those who brought and sold drugs on campus. Still, I had no problem pushing administrators on campus to push students out who were more trouble than they were worth. I was dealing with students who were attacked by rival gangs, or with parents who refused to be parents. Either way, there was so many problems that I was dealing with, and all I could do was write them up and hope that their record would catch up with them and get them kicked out.
I burned pretty much all my bridges at the school, storming off after the principal stormed all over me for not granting me any hope, help, or honor.
Even as a substitute in local schools, as the year passed on I found myself receiving fewer calls, except for the one school where no one would go and cover classes. My last assignment as a substitute teacher, I discovered that I had been written up five months later, and no one had felt inclined to inform me. Still, I was not receiving any calls, and no one bothered to tell me that my work for that day was "unsatisfactory". It was at a local continuation school where I threw caution to the wind, where I stood up to the recently installed assistant principal, one of the most flagrant adherents of identity politics whom I had every met in the public school system. She crowed about how she was a "Brown girl" and I got the sick feeling over and over that she saw me as "the Enemy."
She babied the students, especially the "brown" students, although I have never seen the value of labeling students one thing or another because of the color of their mothers. Still, she let kids get away with a lot. She handed out cookies and treats to the students. When a real man showed up, one who would not baby them, no wonder I faced so much opposition. I had two strikes against me, then: I was not "brown", and I was a "male", and apparently many of these students got a lot of slack because they "hated their fathers", or did not even know who their fathers were.
All of that pity was just pitiful, and I for one refused to play along. And for that, I was written up, distanced, and eventually let go.
I was a victim on paper, dismissed without any support or redress, but inside I was a victor, refusing to give in to the namby-pamby pablum which passes for education in our local public schools.
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