‘It all comes to back to race.’
Over at Isthmus, Dylan Brogan has committed some excellent journalism on Madison’s public schools. We’ve linked to his piece on the chaos at Jefferson middle school, where parents and public wonder why a 13-year-old student who shot another student with a BB gun remained in school after 25 previous, serious disciplinary incidents. We know about that sorry history only because a whistle blower released the disciplinary file to Channel 3000.
His news story is headlined “A rotten semester.” It is the No. #1 trender at Isthmus on-line and has attracted considerable comment, including this brilliant insight from Blaska:
Behavior education plan
The late Milt McPike is revered as an educator because for 23 years as principal (and 5 years as vice principal before that) he ran a tight ship at East high school. The man was known to frog march a miscreant student outside to the waiting squad car. The WI State Journal reports a revolving door of principals at 9 of MMSD’s 12 middle schools in the last 3½ years.
Not coincidentally, that followed the bureaucratic behavior education plan that Jennifer Cheatham imposed on the district, removing control of the classroom from teachers and schools from principals. Cheatham was supported by a school board invested in “white privilege” and “implicit bias” to excuse the chaos in the schools.
This trenchant observation drew a response from one Stan Endiliver, who (contrary to his intention) betrays why virtue-signaling progressives like himself are piping at-risk kids to disaster by playing the victim fife.
MMSD teacher here; relax
1. If you are a parent of a student in MMSD, you have nothing to fear.[Blaska: as long as you stay out of the line of fire.] There are many caring teachers and principals that are doing great things. Our district is not perfect, but we are doing our best to serve all kids …
3. If you are looking to Blaska as a saviour, just move. [Blaska: Which is why Sun Prairie is building a second high school] He has no idea what he is talking about. I am in a MMSD school every day, and have been for 15 years, and his vision of us is ludicrous. Leading kids out of school to squad cars is exactly why we are in the position we are in. We have a lot of kids dealing with real trauma and there are a lot of problems that are rooted in mental health issues. Give the district more resources to heal, and that would be a great place to start.
5. It all comes to back to race. Have you done your homework on Madison? The zoning? The fact that our schools were only fully integrated in 1983? The days of blindly complying with your teacher are over, but many people would love to go back to the time when it was like that.
I hear teachers say things like “when I was in school, you would never…” well guess what, when we were in school we were being socialized into a white supremacist system. That system is coming down, and this worries a lot of people, whether they consider themselves woke or not. — Stan Endiliver
That system is coming down
Yes, Mr. Endiliver, the days of blindly complying with your teacher are, indeed, over. Now we have 15 to 20 middle school students trashing Lakeview branch library and taunting the first responders, “We don’t have to listen to the police” and “You can’t touch us.”
Progressives like Endiliver might call that progress. We do not. At some point, these kids will have to blindly listen to someone, some place: if not the teachers or the librarians, if not the police — then whom? Certainly not an employer or a customer. At what point are they — and you, Endiliver — going to quit blaming the past for the present? These kids’ parents were out of school by 1983! And do not tell me that Madison 1983 resembled in any way Selma, Alabama 20 years earlier.
I do not know where you were schooled, Endiliver. But my schools in Sun Prairie, public and Catholic, did not socialize anyone “into a white supremacist system.” To the contrary, it reinforced our responsibility to family, community, and our God. But you are correct on one point, MMSD teacher, that system is, indeed, coming down.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: This quote attributed to America’s unofficial poet laureate, Bob Dylan: “A hero is someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
What do YOU think?
But wait, there’s more!
As if proving MMSD teacher Endiliver’s pont about the system coming down:
NBC TV-15 reports: Five school-aged teenagers were arrested Tuesday afternoon (01-21-2020) following a high-speed pursuit that wound through several Dane Co. cities before the suspects abandoned the vehicle on the Beltline.
Three of them, Ashanti Freeman (age 17), Toneice Horne (17), and Reginald Sexton (18), were booked into the Dane Co. jail on multiple counts, while the other two teens, ages 15 and 16, were taken to the Juvenile Reception Center. The 16 year old had seven active arrest warrants.
According to the Monona Police Department, all five were piled into a GMC Acadia as it raced away from a Dane Co. deputy around 1 p.m. January 14 along the Beltline. Town of Madison officers laid stop sticks along the road, near Rimrock Rd., that punctured its tires, but the suspects kept going.
Monona Police say its officers joined the pursuit near South Towne/West Broadway and followed the SUV until it stopped near Monona Drive.
About that kid nabbed with a gun at West high
From Madison police blotter: South District detectives have developed probable cause to arrest a teen, arrested earlier this week at West High for having a gun at school, for armed robbery and disorderly conduct after connecting him to a drug-related holdup.
Tyrese T. Williams, age 18, Madison, is accused of pointing a handgun at two other teens, both acquaintances, after the victims picked him up under the premise that Williams was going to purchase a small amount of marijuana from one of them. The trio drove to the 1900 block of Post Rd. where the crime was committed around 2 p.m. Saturday.
Instead of providing cash, Williams, pulled out the gun and ended up fleeing on foot with one victim’s backpack.
Blaska’s second Bottom Line: Yes, teacher Endiliver, the days of blindly complying with your teacher are over, but many people would love to go back to the time when it was like that. Blaska is one of them.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
The “Isthmus” article was indeed a fine piece of journalism that lifted at least one corner of the curtain on the appalling sham that is the MMSD, revealing exactly what one would expect to see in a system that has for years been ruled with an iron fist by Madison’s liberal educational establishment–a system that sees as its goal the cultivation of boot camps for future social justice warriors (what used to be called schools) presided over by a cadre of cowed, servile functionaries (who used to be called teachers). How quickly and thoroughly the administrative elite circled the wagons as soon as the effects of their disastrous policies were revealed by a–gasp!–whistleblower, whose efforts to hold his or her superiors accountable is dismissed by district spokesperson Tim LeMonds as “harassment.” (I suspect these same outraged bureaucrats are unanimous in their praise for the whistleblower who precipitated Trump’s impeachment.) The article made it abundantly clear that those who set policies for Madison’s schools are so horrified at the prospect of being called racist that they eagerly sacrifice academic standards and reasonable expectations for student behavior in a muddleheaded attempt to somehow remedy racial disparities.
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As you prolly recall from your Catholic-school days, it is a firm Catholic social-doctrine axiom that every right comes with a responsibility. They are inseparable.
Except in Lefty-Land, wherever that may be in the USA.
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Or in republican land, where right doesn’t matter.
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We have a new superintendent! He seems like a very good choice. I assume he knows all about Freedom Inc and won’t repeat Cheatum’s mistakes in dealing with them. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
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when we were in school we were being socialized into a white supremacist system. That system is coming down…
Look at Madison schools and look at what they produce. Isn’t it exactly what you would expect from a group of people who believe society needs to be destroyed? The problem is not just the woke useful idiots. You also have the grifters who game their race and gender to advance far beyond their competence, like Tequila Kurth (btw-what sort of moron gives their child a stripper name?). They are like two varieties of cancer operating in symbiosis. In the end however both produce failure, blame racism for that failure, and then demand more money and power to fix the failure they created.
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The genius of leftists like Endiliver is that their argument is framed such that anyone who disagrees is a white supremacist. This logic so offended former Obama voters that they became Trump voters..
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Hopefully ‘Ole Gutie’ will do a bang up job going forward. But I expect more of the same. lowered expectations and failed outcomes for the perpetually offended. If you can move to one of the better districts where the focus is not solely diversity(divisiveness) and is actually academics. Good Luck
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Fire Endiliver and those of his ilk for insubordination.
Where does this chain of logic fail, even according to progressives?
The primary purpose of school is education. ( yes or no )
For students to learn, teachers must teach. ( yes or no )
For students to learn, there must be a measure of order and discipline in the classroom. ( yes or no )
Without order or discipline in the classroom, one or more students can, for any whimsical reason, negate the opportunity of other students in the classroom to learn. ( yes or no )
The primary purpose of school can be negated by one or more students who refuse to behave in socially acceptable manners. That is, urination on the gym floor shall not be allowed. Nor shall throwing of food in the cafeteria be allowed. Nor shall gun fights with live ammo be permitted, even during recess. Smoking — tobacco, weed, or other substances — shall be prohibited. ( yes or no )
Students who refuse to comply with reasonable social expectations, shall be given incentives to change. ( yes or no )
Rarely is it the case that if incentives are significant, students will continue to misbehave. Example:
A student, contrary to instruction, who attempts to stop a circular saw with his fingers, shall receive an incentive. ( yes or no ) Students who fail to execute tree-felling through the proper technique, shall receive an incentive. ( yes or no ) Students who persist in passing on double yellow, shall receive incentives to change. ( yes or no ) Students who refuse to use welding helmets will wish that they did. ( yes or no ) Students who cook their food too long shall discover that dinner may not taste well. ( yes or no ) Students who fail personal hygiene class are likely to have fewer dates. ( yes or no ) Students who fail to use safety blocks while working under a car might experience premature life termination. ( yes or no )
============================
The School of DoOver has been closed for many years. Those who persist in attending shall leading interesting lives, but they shall not be allowed to affect others who do not share their views. ( yes or no )
Finally, in what ways, if any, would educational expectations in China, Russia, Cuba, or Venezuela be any different than those above?
There is no point to tax ourselves to provide education if the object of life from age 5-18 produces only feral behavior.
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Fire him? No, no, no! Endiliver is management material in Madison’s public schools.
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Enjoyable & enlightening -Excellent purview by all commenters, sans one…. Geo_, you have become AnonyBob’s worst nightmare…. Abob is no longer the most outta touch troll. Share with us please your curriculum vitae, it’s gotta be a wow.
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Wear it as a badge of honor, geo_, like I do! The more they resort to personal petty insults and misuse of the word troll, the better you’re doing.
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Enter AnonyBob to, unequivocally, remove all doubt.
Priceless!!
The Gotch
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geo has two settings; incoherent non sequitor and unable to construct an actual sentence.
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