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July 10, 2006

Why schools fail:

HBO: The Wire - Behind the Scenes - Ed Burns

Well, it's how damaged these kids are. I mean, it's profound. You get a class of 35 kids, of which five or six are thugs—what the DSM calls "oppositionally defiant children." So they're fighting and disruptive and cursing you like sailors.
[...]

Their needs are so phenomenal on the educational level. And then, as you get to know them, you realize that that is just the crust on the cake. Kids are seeing people killed in front of them. In the first year I was teaching, there were 120 kids in our group; thirteen had been shot. This was in seventh grade. Lots had been stabbed. All of them had been abused, one way or the other. So when you put them in a classroom with a curriculum that doesn't compute with their world, everybody has a way of surviving, right?

For the record: I was stabbed in homeroom—at a private school...

I have never seen a theory of education reform that accounts for this. Other than “reform our whole F---ing society”, I don’t know that I will. Ultimately, our school’s failures are a small example of the larger failures of American Society. Fixing us will fix the schools. Nothing else will do much...

Posted by Andrew at July 10, 2006 03:16 PM

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Comments

I was beaten unconscious and left to bleed to death in the shower area of a locker room in 7th grade. The gym teacher found me from the trail of blood flowing to the drain. It was a school in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in town...

In other words...I totally agree with you.

Posted by: Afaeyre Maede [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 10, 2006 07:02 PM

Wow, as if I didn't love The Wire enough.

Posted by: punchusout [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 15, 2006 10:19 AM