Standardizing People

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Today I came across an article where I found these insane lunatics (yeah, sure it’s redundant. Or not. I think they start out lunatics and become insane or vice versa.) are actively re-segregating schools, because it’s supposed to give you equity.

I could go into a long list of their major dysfunctions that make them sure segregating by race is better for minorities, mainly involving the fact that all their previous tweaks to achieve equity only made things worse and made minorities look bad, instead of average. It’s the same process as assuming every woman was going to be exceptional, because those who made it into the work environment when it wasn’t normal were exceptional. (DUH).

But that’s not important right now. The important thing right now is the Procrustes bed of EQUITY. This is not equality, but equality of outcome.

The only way you can have equality of outcome with kids — or any humans — is to SEVERELY restrict super-performers while enhancing the reward of poor performers.

In school this is easy to do, particularly in disciplines where grading is subjective, like most of the humanities. (And why it drove me insane as a young kid.)

In life it’s also easy to do, if you steal from one person to give to the other, aka redistributive taxes.

The devil is in the details.

You’ll note in the article that one of their indoctrinated victims says black and minority students get punished more. This is not true. Not only is this not true, but when younger son was going through middle school year from hell, I found out he was being given detention for forgetting a pencil for class (He didn’t forget it, the field trip arrived late, and he didn’t have time to go to his locker, which was halfway across the school. And yea, that was on purpose and — long story) while the kid who had the day before held the teacher at knife point wasn’t given detention, or really any punishment.

This is because in a multi-ethnic and huge middle school in a downtown environment they punished ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY middle class kids from our neighborhood. A) because they were scared of gang (mostly Latin) members. B) they had to show improvement. And it was easy to show that middle class kids who were forgetful got better over time, for fear of detention, but not so much that multiple-assault gang members improved.

As I understand it, it’s that way pretty much everywhere. So in schools near urban centers minorities and other blighted populations get lighter punishment.

And the problem is again in the details. Whether it is because you give them an A when their work is barely worth C, leaving them unable to face work or higher education, or because you failed to civilize them to 21st century standards, when their families aren’t up to the task, the result is the same: they’ll fail. And given the populations affected by it, often give ammunition to bigots.

In these circumstances, what will re-segregating do? Well, more of the same. Leading to accusations that they get inferior teachers, etc, leading to–

The truth is that you can’t make everyone the same. Equity is a stupid goal that should never exist, much less be enforced.

Look, one of the many ways that public schools are failing is that they’ve always aimed for equity. (I was explicitly told that it was easier to handicap my kids, than teach them ahead of the class, and they hated when parents taught the kids way far ahead. Yeah.) Just for convenience and ease of the teacher, it’s easier if the kids are all more or less at the same level. And the problem with that is that this goal is implanted in people’s back brain. (Even when insane lunatics aren’t in charge.) As is the idea that we’re all about the same.

We’re not all about the same. Took me to my thirties to figure out I didn’t care enough about money to work really hard at investing. I cared about having enough money for security (eh) not enough to roll in twice a week, and keep in a vault where I went swimming for exercise. Metaphorically speaking. I just wasn’t willing to work that hard.

It’s taken me to my fifties to realize I’m completely unsuited to work for myself, and keep a schedule, and only do it because I’m driven to write.

We’re not all the same. And doing well or badly in life is not in fact a matter of how hard you work.

That, and the idea that there’s always a right answer are probably the worst contributions of public schools to society.

Because they’re put in people’s brains when they’re really, really young.

Depending on what pursuit you’re involved in, your IQ might be secondary to your ability to focus; your memory; your ability to keep doing a boring task day after day; your organizational skills; your ability to see colors; your ability to hear notes… I could go on. None of these are strictly speaking IQ (though they can influence it.)

And your ability to work hard at writing a novel almost for sure won’t correlate to your ability to work hard at investing, or picking investments or even (groan) advertising. (Ask me how I know.)

Thinking “I’m smart and had good grades, I can be a millionaire” a stupid thing to do until your mid thirties when you realize “I don’t even want to live like that.”

Imagine how much stupider it is to think “I don’t want to work/live like that, but I should be given half of that person’s millions because he/she does or is.”

Yeah.

In the end, equity destroys everything because it’s the opposite of meritocracy. You should have the prestige of the job, even if you can’t do it. You should have the rewards of a top athlete even if you have two left (eh) feet.

And in the end the rewards aren’t even alike. They keep going to the “good boys and girls” who parrot the line and play victim best. (As we have reason to remember.)

Equity is a good way to starve everyone. Because growing food is harder than having an A on a test. It’s also far more important.

Will they succeed in putting it in every school? Well, they’re getting suburban parents to rebel.

But that doesn’t mean they will realize what a bad idea it is. They were told that everyone is the same. (Not that everyone should have the same opportunities, but that everyone IS the SAME) and that any disparate results are the fault of “isms” and “white supremacy.”

This means they’re going to go crazier and crazier in pursuit of a mythical result of everyone being exactly the same.

In the end we win, they lose.

But the damage on the way there is going to be horrifying. Keep yourself and yours safe. The waters are about to get rough.

219 thoughts on “Standardizing People”

  1. I just started reading MCA Hogarth’s book “Business For The Right Brain” and the first thing I did, after assuming I knew everything but was just lazy, was to look at the first chapter and go “What? You mean THAT’S what I have to do? Oh, good Lord in heaven….” It was like reading a foreign language.

    1. Yep. In my case a lot of it is like “I’m sorry. My brain doesn’t bend that way. But wait, maybe I can…..” And that then works. Weirdly, but it works.

    2. I’m not right brained but need to crack open my copy regardless. This is doubly true given my new hare brained scheme.

      1. I read “hare brained” and my imagination flashed to the Bugs Bunny episode where Bugs is the concert conductor. 🙂

    3. Funny thing is, I think I’m left brained, but decided to pick it up and read it anyways. What’s the worse that can happen?

      Turns out being a directed chaos engine is not actually a left brain trait…

      1. My entire working life was spent faking being a left-brained person, and being miserable, and wanting nothing more than to make the process (or whatever) beautiful, and the proper color.
        That’s one reason nothing makes obvious sense now–so many wrong messages my instincts have to be retrained.

  2. So instead of bread and circuses, they’re pushing pursuit of infinitely extended grievances. I see. Keep people focused on minutiae until they can’t see the supply chain falling apart…

      1. Shows they know no history. When bronze age palace culture collapsed the elite disappeared.

        The peasants kept farming the same as before.

        2. Your typical peasant in (e.g.,) Britannia or Gaul was probably better off with Roman taxation removed, at least until the next set of thieves moved in.

          1. Pretty much. Government’s origins are in one group of strongmen protecting working people from all the other groups. That’s the problem I can never get a solution for out of anarchists. I will accept there are options other than the state, but I don’t know them and want at least one articulated before casting the state off.

            1. Since the definition of government is “a group of strongmen”, the question is how do you keep the strongmen in their lane.

              1. That’s the 2500+ year old question.

                The most successful answers seem to involve divide and control by playing members off each other without threatening their entire status as the ruling class.

                One of the most successful non-violent attempts was the US Constitution which functioned for nearly 150 years but started to degrade somewhere around year 130 and completely broke down about year 148. Even now it is doing an above average job despite running on sheer momentum for 85 years (and yes, as much as we complain, it still is above average across the current world and certainly across human history).

                1. The U.S. Constitution is indeed our best effort in practice to date. And the government derived from it is indeed in a severe state of degradation. What the Founding Fathers failed to put in it was an effective, periodic, reboot to the initial state, triggered by a certain level of degradation. For lack of a better example, you have to reboot a Windows computer every so often to clear the mess made of memory. And you need to wipe the drives and reload the OS and applications every so often to clear the garbage that builds up over time. Both are systems, one the active state of the computer, one the storage system. A government is a system too, and it needs to be periodically purged.

                  1. “What the Founding Fathers failed to put in it was an effective, periodic, reboot to the initial state, triggered by a certain level of degradation.”

                    Oh, but they did. And it’s still as effective as ever, but they can’t require us to use it. I believe they called it the Second Amendment.

                    “A republic, if you can keep it.”

                    1. I think I’ve mentioned recently that I’ve been thinking of how I’d write a new constitution. One of my ideas is to have certain critical things be declared “red lines” in the constitution itself. Meaning, anyone above a certain level of citizenship is authorized to use any degree of force necessary – even lethal force – to stop members of government from doing certain things. And part of the oath you’d have to take before taking a government job would include an explicit agreement that you can be killed to keep you from crossing those lines.

                      I wouldn’t want many red lines – perhaps just a couple for the most critical things – but I think we need at least one somewhere. I think having an explicit reminder to both private citizens and government employees alike that the former are in charge and can kill the latter if needed to keep it that way would be healthy for society.

  3. I’m not sure that I completely agree. I stll remember having a very bad year at school due to almost-constant illnesses of vavrious kinds. So bad that I was kept down a full year. But in the following year I not only caught up with my erstwhile fellow students but passed them, because the work seemed easy to me.. And none of my friends – or the teachers – gave any signs of resenting me when I was jumped back up into the same year as I’d have been if I had never been ill.

    1. I think it varies with school, community, and era. “Catching up” is also different from “pushing ahead and leaving others foundering,” which seems to be what administrators imagine happening. One kid does really well, which steals points from the slower learners, or something.

    2. Did you go to school in the last 30 years? Because this was new to me too. It wasn’t practice before that. And forget getting “Jumped up” we practically had to draw blood to get younger son there.

      1. Been 35 years. Neighbor had a little girl. Birth date late September. Now when I was in school, if you were 6 (no kindergarten) before Nov 1, you started first grade. So I was 5 on the Columbis Day storm when we were dismissed early to walk home ahead of the storm (by a week or so). But now (IDK when it started) and then the child must be 5 by at least first day of school or if draconian district, by Sept 1. Either way this child didn’t qualify. They tried anyway. Got denied. Kindergarten fine, mostly social skills anyway. First grade, halfway through school wants to jump the kid a grade (at least they were still doing this option at their discretion). Parents said “No. You had your chance. Figure out how to keep her engaged in same level of classes, you know, with her friends.” What happened longer term, that IDK because they moved and bank took the house (set empty, or yo yo-ing owners, for years).

        1. If that were all I wouldn’t be complaining. But I sent them kids who could read. They tried to make them read again by whole word, aka “guessing” — took us forever to get rid of that nonsense.
          They’re not ALLOWED to dumbify my kids (totally a word.)
          This is why my husband said I regularly descended on the school, took out my broom and flew around the office. And why if I came in for ANY reason — including picking up kid for doctor’s appointment — the principal came from the office RUNNING and started apologizing. Elementary school.
          Middle school the personnel was dumber.

          1. Heck. I’m not allowed to use whole word guessing when reading allowed new words. In fact if there was a problem, dad helped. Because I am horrible about pronouncing words. Don’t read them wrong. There is a disconnect between “reading” and speaking a word I haven’t heard before. Kid is old enough that going to the internet and hearing the computer pronounce it wasn’t an option. Reading AND Math (which at least through middle school and geometry, and advanced algebra/trig, I could proctor (calculus, not so much). Then dad took over. AND guess and check was NOT an option, ever. We both read his papers. Dad was better at catching improper structure. I was better at reading and saying “Um. What?” which meant “not clear”. We won’t go over the political debate stuff (we might have talked to him about what they were promoting, then showed him the actual facts, and worked out how to prevent problems …).

            Yes. If I had a child in school NOW? We’d 100% be home schooling. No question. Social aspect? Problem? Like that worked out so well. Kid has No, None, 0, contact with any of his classmates. Fellow Scout Eagles from his troop? Yes. Both older.

            1. I still have trouble pronouncing “new” words, along with words that I’ve read for many years but for which I’ve not heard spoken.

              And then there’s German. After about twelve letters I pretty much give up and just mumble something, I might as well be Charlie Brown’s teacher. It’s a good thing I don’t have to actually know the language for anything important.

          2. One of the reasons I love our school is the fact that when our kids do thing like excel in math (the 7-year-old), the teachers say “wow, you’ve really got this down” and praise them for helping the other kids understand it.

        2. My birthday’s also in late September. I started school, in the first grade, in 1986. I could read already, so they made the decision to skip me over kindergarten. We had moved from Indiana to Illinois sometime earlier that year when we left my father. My older-by–two years brother was dyslexic, and ended up being held back by the combo of that and the move, so we ended up going through school in the same grade until we graduated. I would have been one of the oldest kids in my grade if I had gone to kindergarten. Instead I was always the youngest.

          Made things right interesting. Especially when I was also the person who consistently did best on standardized tests, or finished first in classroom exams but had only middling decent grades.

          1. I understand. I am a late October baby (6 before Nov 1, to start first grade). I was always the youngest in class. Really weird when our son went to school because we were among the older parents; same with scouts. Wait! What! 🙂 Because we had son so late. Not the only older parents in our son’s class or scouts but the other students had older siblings, or (sadly) were being raised by grandparents.

              1. Mom is mid-November, Dad is early September, so same class year, but mom is 10 months older.

                Also like the not twins I went to school with. One born Nov ’55. The other born late Aug ’56. Both in same grade, graduating same year. Even under the new rules they had been in the same class.

                  1. I have two cousins who were also born same year I was One September, one December. Both were behind me in class (because the “older” cousin was held out a year). The “younger” cousin took the GED late her junior year so graduated same year I did.

                    Interesting fact, in Susan Applegate’s book about writings by Applegate women from the time the Applegate Wagon Train left Missouri and down the years in Oregon, has a picture that is in the Charles Applegate house, labeled “Extended Family Gathering 1955” … I can name 1/2, or more, of the people in the picture. What is wrong with the label is the year. Not 1955. The only time aunt and mom were obviously pregnant at the same time, was not 1955. I’m in the picture, kind of; one of the babies-not-born-yet.

    3. Maybe part of that was that you were getting back to where you should be?

      I was at the front of my class as far as ability went.
      (Because my parents properly socialized us, I knew that didn’t mean much beyond that I could research and sometimes remember neat stuff. So I escaped the usual Smart Kid problems, I was measuring myself against grownups who were specialists in whatever subject we were on. MUCH healthier, mentally!)

      Since it wasn’t a matter of catching up… I “got” to “help” people keep up.

      That is, I was put in the groups with those who didn’t work at all, and actually taught a math class. I’m not good at math. I’d never had the stuff we were working on. But working hard enough, I was able to make sense of it, especially with the teacher’s edition. That teacher copied the examples out of the book on to the board, and refused to do anything unless everyone had tried to solve it already and had failed…which usually took more than a class period. >.>

      The paid educators whose job I was doing, and getting B level grades for all that work, definitely resented me. I don’t get it. It took me a while to figure out I wasn’t really a horrible person. 😀

      The good teachers mostly left me alone and gave me As, with the best ones giving me assignments I could do that would contribute to the class after I was done with them. (So I actually learned something, even when they couldn’t stop handling the rest of the class to teach me.)

      The teachers where I actually couldn’t muscle my way through with sheer pigheadedness pretty much just put stuff up and did a lot of busy work.

  4. I have realized that it always comes down to individual v collective. The inspired message of Christianity is that YOU are responsible for your own choices. You are not responsible for their outcomes, those can be affected by many things out of your control, but YOU and only YOU are responsible for your own actions. That is the difference between “honor (reputation)” cultures and “guilt” cultures. The entire woke (communist) enterprise is to deny individual choice, individual guilt, individual merit, and individual rights.
    As I told my company regarding vaccination mandates,
    “If my government intends to send me to Manzanar, I will go, but I will go following Neil Armstrong’s advice:
    ‘The single observation I would offer for your consideration is that some things are beyond your control. You can lose your health to illness or accident. You can lose your wealth to all manner of unpredictable sources. What are not easily stolen from you without your cooperation are your principles and your values. They are your most important possessions and, if carefully selected and nurtured, will well serve you and your fellow man.'”

  5. What I want to know is what damfool moron thought up the idea that passing kids regardless of what they do and having no consequences for their actions is any kind of favour being done for the kids, rather than horrible sabotage.

    1. The same people who assume that being with people your age is much healthier than being with people of the same skill.*

      *Within limits. Emotional maturity should be weighed along with pure smarts.

    2. I’m going to bet on teachers who said, “I’ve had to deal with this kid for 9 months, and there’s no way I’m taking him again next year. Let the next teacher handle it.”

        1. That only helps the ones broken enough to get self-esteem from empty praise. From being awarded for what they have not achieved. It poisons the rest of the class.
          ———————————
          It is so much easier to check credentials than to evaluate ability.

        2. That’s what they say, of course, because teachers are saints whose every action is for the benefit of The Children. Naturally, this includes decisions about promoting kids vs. holding them back. If a teacher chooses to promote a kid who learned nothing, it’s definitely for the benefit of the kid’s self-esteem, and most certainly not because dealing with this particular kid was WORK and not something the teacher is willing to do two years in a row.

          Yeah, I know the various educational pedagogy theories, but I find it remarkable how many of them seem to line up with “What a maximally lazy teacher would do in order to avoid doing any work.”

          1. Example:
            “It takes two to fight, so you will both be punished.” Means you don’t have to do anything when someone is assaulted, they’ll help hide it from your notice!

              1. Mine did that. (And my mom radiates that she will be punching any adult who tries to stop her kids from defending themselves.)

                The high school I graduated from threatened to call the police on the kid who resisted having his head slammed in a car door, and his parents folded.

                Among the reasons I homeschool.

              2. My line was, he takes the first shot, go ahead and finish. (My boys were junior karate champs, so I wasn’t too worried) You take the first shot, you answer to ME! Neither boy started anything, but they did occasionally finish something.

          3. If a teacher fails to properly educate a child in the school year they have them, they should not be given a second chance to double down on their mistake.

            1. Mike, as long as you have students being “mainstreamed” who literally can’t learn, some of them will fail. The problem is that they disrupt the teaching environment for the rest.

              1. The mainstreaming students who “literally can’t learn”, nor students who can’t help but be disruptive (screamers, fighters, physically abusive), were not intended to be mainstreamed by the education ADA act. Just get my 80 year old aunt started. It is a rant that she can go on with for hours. It was her youngest daughter that was the test case for Arizona. A bright articulate child who just happened to be in a wheel chair because of a birth defect. She needed physical assistance for private facilities. That is it. This was late ’70s so no internet. They even tried to get homeschooling approved. Nope school district insisted on putting cousin in “special ed” warehousing. Required, they couldn’t just keep her home either. Parents objected. Legal PTB were looking for a test case …

                I’ve heard the horror stories of the students who shouldn’t be mainstreamed by my sister, a neighbor, and the same aunt above (she got her teaching certificate after being a class aid for her daughter in school, after daughter died at age 13 from the birth defect complications).

                1. Meanwhile, older son had a classmate — crack? baby — with an iq of 50. Who was mainstreamed. His “aide” did all the homework, etc.
                  MEANWHILE some days he chose to scream or hide, and the rest of the class had to wait till that was resolved.
                  TONS of fun.

                  1. FWIW, I did a bit of reading about the “crack babies” scare a while ago, and the word (at least from the articles I read) is that a scare is all it was. The babies were fine. Fetal alcohol syndrome, on the other hand…yikes.

                    1. Well, this kid was being raised by a grandmother after his drug-addicted mom relinquished him. Her mom thought it was the drugs that caused the issues, but I don’t remember which drug.

    3. “passing kids regardless of what they do”

      30 years ago, it boiled down to “there are kids who will never be able to pass the coursework no matter what, and if we keep flunking them there will be a huge indigestible lump.” So my mother and her cohorts were told explicitly “You can only fail them one time, and then they must be sent on to the next higher grade.”

        1. Yes.

          Not holding them back. Not giving out ANY “F” or even “D” grades. For awhile “D” was “passing”. Now self esteem means “nothing less than a C”, if that.

          Do not get my sister or my Aunt started. At least the aunt retired before it got horrible. Sister is only a year or two retired. She is still heard to mumble about the policies. She gave “F/D” grades until the day she retired. School administration had over ride rights. It was a huge deal.

          1. Hey, they’re not even giving out letter grades here anymore. You’re either getting a 2 (making progress, doesn’t define how much progress though) or a 3 (on grade level, approximately). There are no 1s or 4s given. Even the teachers are being evaluated on the same scale this year. It’s ridiculous.

            1. Been headed that way for awhile. Grade school, 1 – 5, okay. 6 – 12, not okay.

              Even status was going away when I got my 3rd degree (2nd bachelors). I kept recalculating my degree GPA and overall GPA because that degree just listed grades (why I didn’t write it down after the first two times, I don’t know. Didn’t expect to have to do it again, and again, and …?) Both prior degrees not only listed GPA for quarter, but each year, the entire program, and the second degree (AA) program added in “college GPA average”. The only applications that required this were government (city, county, state, and federal).

  6. Public schools IMO are an artifact of the Industrial revolution. Factories needed workers who could count past ten with their shoes on, and wanted someone else to pay for it. Children were widgets, just like cotton spindles. If one breaks, gets an arm ripped off oiling the looms well, so what? plenty more where that came from. The progressives AKA Early Marxists thought they could use the schools to create the new modern socialist man. It hasn’t worked out that way, its more like Sauron and the Orcs: He didn’t create them, he just twisted and ruined them.

      1. Industrial accidents happen in the city, where there are spectators and inspectors and busybodies.
        Agricultural accidents happen on the farm, in the hinterlands where there are just farmers.

      2. A kid I was in Machine shop with, and my 7th grade Art teacher were Potato Machine amputees. She lost all fingers but the thumb on her hand (right at the “life line”), and he’d and arm off just below the elbow. Now the Machine shop teacher’s missing fingertip was farm related but was building an addition and nipped the tip at the cuticle with a circular saw.

          1. My grade school janitor has only a thumb and forefinger on one hand. We loved him and he scared us to death. A grown man with a HANDICAP. It was so real, we were in awe.

          2. I never knew until well after he died, but my great uncle lost part of a heel due to a homesteading accident as a child. Kept him out of the front wave sent to Europe and Pacific theaters WWII. His unit was headed to Europe when Germany surrendered. Then to the pacific when the bombs were dropped. To me it shows the coarse the war was going. The US was committing those who had been termed fit for civil defense units (deformed and more elderly), but not front line service. Little else to send … Grandpa was kept out of WWII theaters by polio as a child. However, he’d had been in the next wave ….

      3. Mills are usually a single system. They also tend to have everything they need to operate without killing off the workers. Farms often have over a dozen different systems the farmer and family are all trying to manage at once. And often without the best tools and infrastructure needed; and occasionally without the education and knowledge needed too. (Decisions based on imperfection knowledge is a basic operating principle of farming. Mother Nature can be a real cast-iron bitch.)

          1. My city’s been incorporated for over twenty years and there’s still an ag track at the main high school (May be at some others, too, but that one’s the closest to us.)

    2. I have an education textbook from 1960. (I pick up weird stuff.) It specifically praises the Soviet model of education…or as they rightly called it, indoctrination. The only difference was the main thesis was to install love of the country. Oh boy did that get corrupted fast!

  7. “Just for convenience and ease of the teacher, it’s easier if the kids are all more or less at the same level.

    My wife is dealing with this problem from the teacher side. Someone had the wonderful idea at the district level to have the Gifted And Talented (GATE) kids do a deep dive on the American Revolution in 4th grade. That’s great, except the state standards say that the 5th graders should be learning about the American Revolution. So when the GATE kids get to 5th grade they’ve already seen the material and gone into it deeper than the regular classroom stuff does, leading them to be bored out of their minds. And since the district doesn’t have enough resources to pull those kids out of the classroom yet again to teach them something new, they’re stuck there.

    2. Yup. Something similar is how this I-love-math-geek got put in remedial math. It’s funny to me, but how many were lost to this broken system?

      1. They told us our older kid who went to school reading MOSTLY YA books (like intended for 12 to 14, and that only because we were trying to keep him away from risque subjects) would never be able to learn to read, and was mentally retarded.
        We retaliated by having his IQ tested, and confronting the teachers with the results. (Profoundly Gifted I believe was the diagnosis.)
        And I’m serious. At three and a half, before entering Kindergarten, he was reading YA books. In KG they put him on a “Great stories of the world” group with middle schoolers. Mostly stuff like Aladdin, etc. They read and discussed and the teacher thought he was amazing.
        His first grade teacher decided he was mentally retarded and tried to get him shunted into “special education.” No, seriously.

        1. Oh I can believe it! I went through a lot of that, except my parents believed the Authority Figures. The only people who helped me were rare teachers who paid attention, that I was bored. I still remember one perplexed teacher taking me aside telling me I could get an A if I just finished the homework. I made A’s on the tests, but his grading meant I would get a B. Why didn’t I? This was physics. The textbook was huge and I had to walk many blocks from the bus stop to get home and we couldn’t afford a backpack. At that point in my life grades didn’t matter. All I cared about was did I know the material.

          1. Oh yeah, ran into that with one of the algebra courses. I had perfect test scores, but one of the daily work grades was for note taking. “If you’d just take the notes I put on the board you’d have the highest score in class.” “Yeah, but I don’t take notes on walking and chewing gum at the same time either,” didn’t really endear me to the teacher. I typically did my assigned problems on top of my locker just before class each day. I think it drove her nuts that I was able to visualize what the equation was going look like when graphed out.

            1. LOL! Doing my slow track trig homework in the few minutes before class started was my way to challenge myself. The teacher after a month came up to me and told me, “You’re in the wrong class. I think you need to be put on the fast track.” But if the teacher hadn’t been paying attention, and willing to fight the guidance counselor, who hated my guts for existing, I’d have been truly lost in the system.

        2. My sister was given a prize for reading in third grade. It was a copy of Tootle, which she could read before going to school.

        3. For me, the early-to-mid 80s were a relatively good time to be a gifted kid. “Homework done? Good. Are you sick, bleeding, or otherwise severely inconvenienced? Good. Go do something and stay out of my hair.”

          My parents took me in for an IQ test when I was five (rural South, they knew I was smart and didn’t know what to do with me). Results were satisfactory, and when going through my late mother’s papers I started cracking up at the increasingly-more-irritated notes from the researchers. (“Asked child to draw a dog. She drew two horses instead and informed me that a mommy and baby horse were a mare and a foal.”)

          I remember this as a fun morning with adults who paid attention to me. Reading the notes, however, I was terrifyingly reminded of my own experiences raising Kid.

          1. Results were satisfactory, and when going through my late mother’s papers I started cracking up at the increasingly-more-irritated notes from the researchers.

            :laughing:

            That sounds right!

          2. That sounds so much like my son in first grade. They thought he had a learning disability, but he could already read the words in their little exercise and was amusing himself by finding visual patterns and making adult-level associations between the meanings of those simple words.

            And to my lasting shame, I eventually allowed them to put him into the special ed track where he was even more bored, felt even less need to produce work, failed to learn basic things like grammar, spelling, and math, missed out on music classes, and got taken out of the only history class he ever actually enjoyed.

            Somehow his love of learning survived all that. He got interested in writing after high school and taught himself how to do it right, and does deep-dive learning on anything he’s interested in. Trying to convince him to get serious about publishing, because he’s that good.

            1. My daughter is terrifyingly smart and also, at the very least, ADHD. There are many things I regret about how I and others handled her early education. But on the plus side, it’s so much FUN to listen to her doing a deep dive about Favorite Fictional Character du Jour, which is generally at least as insightful as your average English Lit prof could manage. I’ve gotta get this kid writing…

              1. Being ADHD myself and knowing what it looks like from the inside, I suspect that while I may make many mistakes with my children’s learning, missing signs of ADHD won’t be one of those. So far, though, they’re showing just the normal level of hyperactivity for their ages, so it’s quite possible they didn’t inherit my ADHD. One specialist I talked to in Texas said that studies had shown anywhere between 30% and 80% chance of inheriting ADHD traits, which just went to show (she said) what a wide variety of genetic traits were linked to ADHD, and how it wasn’t just one thing.

          5. “(“Asked child to draw a dog. She drew two horses instead and informed me that a mommy and baby horse were a mare and a foal.”)”
            “Scwew youw wules, I’m a little webel!” 😉

            So as long as we’re telling funny IQ stories…

            When I was a child I tool an IQ test – an official, formal one – and scored so high that they wouldn’t tell me what I got for fear of it going to my head. All they’d say is that I was in the top half of the top 1% of everyone who had ever taken the test.

            ALSO as a child, I took a personality test. Not a proper one; I got stuck waiting at Wal-Mart while my mother was having the car worked on and they happened to have cheap, informal IQ and personality tests on display, so I bought one to pass the time.

            One of the questions asked me to pick 5 new people I’d met within the past year and rate highly I thought THEY thought about me. Just one problem: I wasn’t exactly outgoing at that point in my life and couldn’t even think of 5 new people I’d met recently, so I couldn’t answer the question. And the scoring system for the test didn’t allow for any unanswered questions, so basically the test didn’t know what to do with me.

            That’s right, folks: I’m so smart they’re afraid I’ll turn evil and build an orbital death ray if I ever found out, but I’m so boring that I somehow managed to flunk a PERSONALITY test.

            I swear, all I needed were some wacky neighbors and a laugh track and I could have been a sitcom character.

            1. God DAMN IT, what the hell is WP doing with my formatting? “Scwew youw wules, I’m a little webel!” was supposed to be part of my reply.

              Does anyone know how to force WP to insert a blank line between the quote and my reply?

              3. Probably a typo in the </blockquote> tag.
                Nope. I’ve tried <br>, <p> and </p> as well as a few other directives. Nothing seems to work. I finally cursed WPDE and inserted a line with one hyphen after the blockquote.

                If you’re reading your comment ON the WordPress site, it puts a blank line after the blockquote.

                1. Damn, now it’s gone and F’d up my formatting, too. It’s spreading! What are you doing, channeling Murphy? 😀

                  There was supposed to be a ‘1.’ in front of the first line, a blank line, and a ‘2.’ in front of the second line. Where did they go? Do you have them? Did they run past you on their way to wherever they went?

                  Will this post do something wacky too? Let’s find out…

                  1. It’s spreading! What are you doing, channeling Murphy? 😀

                    Yes, clearly Murphy is God and I am his high priest. A rather ironic fate for an atheist, but as Sarah says, God has a sense of humor.

                    I just wish the joke weren’t on me.

                    1. I don’t know, the way my life goes I was sure I had that title from Murphy. =P

                2. I’m not even using blockquote tags. I’ve just been using a greater than sign to act as a header, which worked fine until recently when WP started interpreting lone greater than signs as the signal to start a block quote.

                  1. You know what? I think WordPress is quietly starting to use Markdown syntax.

                    This line had a greater-than sign in front.

                    The third word in this sentence had asterisks around it.

                    The third word in this sentence had underscores around it.

                    This is a link in Markdown syntax: square brackets around the word (or text), followed immediately (no spaces) with parentheses containing the address to link to.

                    Let’s see how all of that comes out.

                    1. Yep. Markdown syntax. Follow the link in my 12:52 AM comment to see how it all works.

                    4. It’s not working. Neither double-spacing at the end of a line nor using the [br] tag will break the blockquote and let me insert an empty line. And it seems like starting my reply with any punctuation mark makes WP think I want to continue the blockquote.

                      But I suppose I could just go back to my old style using something other than the greater than sign to designate quotes. Let’s test that:

                      }} quote 1

                      ]] quote 2

                      || quote 3

                      reply

                    5. Okay, I guess that works, but I don’t really like the look of it. I resent the fact that I can’t insert a simple blank fucking line after a blockquote and if anyone figures out how to I’d appreciate them letting me know.

        4. My junior high gym teacher tried to put me in “adaptive PE,” that being the predecessor to “special needs.” Partly my and my dad’s fault. I told my parents about the girls in PE who were walking by and sticking pins in my butt while I read after class, and he told me to tell them outrageous stories. I told his outrageous story (involving aliens, a fence post and a buzzard), and she decided I was mentally disturbed.
          My parents made a visit to the principal’s office and the matter was dropped. But it was the sort of think that sticks in your mind.

      2. 7th grade English Teacher wanted me in Special Ed. Math/Homeroom Teacher told him the problem was I was smarter than the English Teacher and I was bored. The History teacher laughed about it when he heard, then sat and told my parents that other than the usual, I was learning fine, but it’d be nice if I completed more of the assignments.

        1. Grade school openly had ‘special ed’ to include those who would disrupt class non-maliciously– let them show amazing achievement (I went from “couldn’t” read, because I wasn’t good at reading aloud, especially with folks yelling at me, to reading well above grade level) and kept the classes tame.

          They had the further issue of then trying to find reasons to keep anyone who’d been in special ed in the program, but that’s a different issue– the good sense of ‘special’ including ‘too advanced’ was quite good.

          1. My 7th grade English teacher let me bring books from the family library to read for our novel assignments instead of having to check out books from the library as long as I promised not to use books I’d already read. I did Alistair MacLean and Agathie Christie back then.

          2. I used to disrupt class in fourth grade, because I was finished with the worksheet earlier than the rest of the class and was getting bored. The teacher, who I later learned was on her first or second year of teaching, didn’t know what to do with me. After multiple parental visits to the principal’s office (who was very helpful and cooperative), he agreed with them that that teacher wasn’t a good fit for me, but since it was a small school and they only had one fourth-grade class, my parents put me in a different school, a couple months into the school year. This was a school that specialized in kids with special needs; there, my fourth-grade class had just six kids in it, so the teacher was able to give all of them individual attention. Which soon translated into “Give Robin sixth-grade math worksheets and let him learn at his own pace, and give him the next worksheet as soon as he finishes the previous one.” I loved it. They also had a computer room with the Logo programming language, which they turned me loose on for an hour per day. It was perfect for me.

            So yeah, special ed should mean “pay attention to this kid’s individual needs”, not “can’t learn so don’t even try to teach ’em”.

      1. OK, I had to go see your blog for that one. Apparently you are NOT the friend with the daughter Faith who is a holy terror.

        1. Well, I do have one, just not by that name.

          Fortunately, directed to the good side. In her own way. She chewed her fifth grade teacher (retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant) up and own for making her brother cry.

          We did have to explain to her that he had good reason (second grade boy trying to play basketball with the fifth grade boys). That somewhat mollified her…

          Turned out well, though – she was his favorite student that year. Probably a story he still tells his Marine buddies.

      3. “That just popped an image of Faith in my head.”

        The Buffy The Vampire Slayer character?

        The first thing that popped into my head was Random Dent. But then, I’ve been looking up Guide scenes from the BBC miniseries of Hitchhiker’s Guide lately. And getting disappointed at how few of them have been put up on Youtube.

          1. Ahh, that would be Faith Smith, aka Shewolf. Zombie-stomping badass 13 (almost 14) year old. Hates Barbie guns, feels naked without a .45 and a Ganga Ram kukri. Went “Squeeeee” over Trixie the pink M-1 Abrams tank.

              1. Shewolf does not care for rifles chambered in .223 such as the M-16, M-4 or AR-15. She quickly gets annoyed at having to shoot the same damn zombie 5, 6 or 7 times to make it lie down and be a good zombie. Because with a .223, that’s about what it takes.

                So, she disparagingly calls them Barbie guns to distinguish them from real guns chambered in .308 or 7.62 x 39 that can put a zombie down with one or two shots. 12 Ga. rocks; one shot, one zombie, most of the time.

                Her response to the M1028 120mm canister munition for the M-1 Abrams main gun was…enthusiastic. Yeah, let’s leave it at that. She’s only 13, after all. After seeing it in action, she decided that the very worst thing about the end of the world was that they weren’t making M1028’s any more.
                ———————————
                “Ehh, on second thought let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.”

                1. Also, Barbies were originally made by Mattel…. and the M16 with its’ polymer stock was also known as the “Mattel rifle”.

            2. Grr… The aging memory goes in strange directions this time of night. “Smith,” certainly. (I know two “Faiths” and one “O’Neill.” But not paired up. Sigh.)

  9. The resegregation of society by the Democrats isn’t even going to pay lip service to “separate but equal” but rather will openly proclaim that in the name of “equity” disfavored groups (i.e. whites and heterosexuals) will be treated worse than favored groups as “reparations” for harms, real and imagined, and that such treatment is to continue in perpetuity (at least until they get around to carrying out their Final Solution Redux)

    1. At this point, I am so damn tired of BLM and excusing black criminality in the streets, schools and everywhere else, I’m totally OK with resegging schools. They moaned and complained for years about segregation … give the moaners what they want now and let the rest of us make our own way.

    2. Friend of mine had to go see her Honorary Nephew, because he hit all the PowerBall “social justice” numbers-sensitive heterosexual white male Odd. Got caught by his family talking to some of the transgendered “influences” online that were “helping him to break out of his gendered egg-shell” and when his parents learned of this, they restricted his Internet access, found him a therapist that was going to treat him like a human being on Zoom, really looked into his school course material (I swear, the second-order factors of the COVID lockdowns might actually be what kills the current E!Democratic Party. I hope), and in general were trying to be helpful and keeping him from doing something stupid until he turned 18.

      His new “friends” online were telling him how to do credit card fraud, get black-market hormones from Mexico and have it shipped somewhere that he had access to, get chastity devices to shrink his penis…and it’s all being run from places in Eastern Europe that are treating this like a cash cow.

      So, no, I am not surprised at all. I suspect that this is one of the big goals of trying to drive people out of the suburbs and back into the cities, one way or another. So that they can be properly “pressed” into grey wallpaper paste.

          1. There’s miles upon miles of trackless swampland in places in the South. Cheaper than transport planes. What gets lost in the swamp, it don’t come back out. Them as would do such things to innocent children… Got no good things to say about that.

            And shame on anybody that aids an abets such predators. That’s swamp-worthy behavior, too.

              1. There’s always “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Warrant:

                I know a secret down at Uncle Tom’s cabin
                I know a secret that I just can’t tell
                I know a secret down at Uncle Tom’s cabin
                Know who put the bodies in the wishin’ well

    1. You know, I had a lot of sympathy for Tayla Parks, who decided to wear a Bowzer the Dragon costume to the Grammys. It looked comfortable, nobody could grope her, and it was more flattering and self-respecting than most of the gowns. The chest area could have been tailored a bit better, but it gave the Grammys all the respect it currently deserves.

      1. She looks nicer, and happier, than anybody else in the photos that came up for this year’s Grammy’s.

        Not that it’s a high bar, note.

        1. She’s not just a singer; she’s a songwriter and dancer, and comes up with some darned interesting music videos. The kind of songwriter who makes money off other people recording her songs and having hits.

          (Not work-safe, mind, and not necessarily wholesome. But they’re well-written songs and she sings them well.)

          1. She’s also kinda stout, but in an extremely muscly, dancer way. Healthy but big-boned and plump-cheeked.

            So yeah, I’m sure that searching for dresses that didn’t make her look like a mother-in-law was frustrating, and therefore her choice was kinda clever.

  12. I remember the light bulb moment when Meg, in “A Wrinkle in Time,” exclaims: “LIke and equal are not the same at all!”

    The left wants us to be in Kamazotz, bouncing identical red balls on the street at the same time. How on earth the left lets “A Wrinkle in Time” exist in libraries, I’ll never know. God bless you, Madeline L’Engle.

    1. THANK YOU, that’s one of the ones I should give Daughter. She keeps asking for new books lately. Now if I can just figure out where I put it….

      1. …how old is Daughter? I can probably help out with suggestions if you need or want them.

    2. Because the left thinks Camazotz is the Right, forcing mindless conformity upon suburbia. (It may even have been intended that way.) But I know far, far more righties with a non-sterotypical opinion or six than I know lefties who even use non-standard vocabulary. (Even when I HAD Democrat friends, I had exactly one who was pro-life. I don’t know her opinions on anything else and won’t be asking, for fear of demoting her from friend to acquaintance.)

      1. Worse, they think that’s a reasonable summary of the suburbs– all identical houses, all identical people– and ignore that not only have suburbs not been like that for ages (when someone looked for a completely original Craftsman house, they had to settle for the least modified one, because the paint didn’t dry before folks modified them) but they’re the ones doing the enforcement.

        1. I live in a usedtabe mill town, and the first few years we were literally renting a house on Main Street, in a two-mile line of usedtabe mill houses. They’d started out identical in the 20 and 30s, but by the time we got there the neighborhood was visually delightful. Because everybody over the last 90 years had altered things to their satisfaction, and the overall effect was harmonious instead of “designed” or “whimsical”. (Now I’m living further out, where the architectural vibe is “eh, let’s go with that”. Still works.)

          1. “HOA”

            Shudder.

            There are two times HOA’s apply. There had better be a recreation center, with a pool, hot tub, sports courts, and golf coarse, that the fee’s maintain, apply to nothing else. Or any combination of the list. Or Condos, where prior list may or not apply, but common ground and exterior maintenance, does. I can even agree to the latter where not condos, but single custom family homes, but (again) the HOA does the maintenance on exterior homes and grounds.

            HOA’s didn’t help during the “Zombie Homes” starting in 2008. Some of the surrounding post 2k neighborhoods have HOA’s. There were zombie homes.

            We aren’t in a neighborhood with an HOA. Some of our newer neighbors seemed to think we are in one. Boy were they surprised. “So. Where is the signed HOA agreement in your mortgage company documents? We sure never received one, ever. Been here 32 years. Neighbors 40 to 50.”

            Don’t get me wrong. There is one home 1/2 mile away that just needs to be torn down. A zombie house that isn’t (been that way since we moved in, same someone lives there). I feel for their fence sharing neighbors, and the street. Heck our neighbor’s home, while not Zombie status, is a hoarder. Mostly that affects only inside. But until recently the backyard had “I’m creatively using for plants” and didn’t. The yard sections were cleaned up last summer. Not being mowed or weeded again. I refuse to excuse it as age. Mom’s place is immaculate. She has a yard service. It is something mom chooses to budget for (mom has less income than the neighbor, both homes are paid off, have reason to know) VS something else. Mom is just as hard on the service as she was on us kids when we were her yard service (before leaving home; I swear weeds spring up behind you). Flip side are RV’s. Or “excess” vehicles. I don’t care. *RV’s should be off the street, that is all I care about, not that it always happens. Excess vehicles? Well when you got teens and you can afford the derivable vehicles? Good for you.

            Technically there is a county statute that deals with RV or any vehicle “street storage”. Only enforced if someone complains. That requires so many days not moving. Which with family vehicles being used, won’t happen. RV’s it can.

            1. One of the houses we looked at had an HOA. I consider it the only realistic one I’ve seen. It had one purpose: Care and maintenance of the gravel road in the subdivision (private road so the county wouldn’t touch it and far out enough it belonged to no city’s budget). That was it. They graveled it about twice a year and had a reserve for when pieces inevitable washed out. That was all they were contractually allowed to do.

              1. Inlaws place on Little Dechutes between Sunriver and La Pine, south of Hwy 97, and west of La Pine State Park road, didn’t have an HOA they paid to, but a road district. Same thing. It existed to gravel the roads in the subdivision. Also used to get grants to replace the bridge over the river, plus any extra assessments need. They haven’t owned the property since ’87. But principle still applies.

      2. I doubt L’Engle intended the suburb as a critique of conservatism. Her focus is religious – specifically Christian.

    3. Is it still in them? Serious question.

      More importantly, is it taught?

      The Left is smart enough to realize (or was, this bit of wisdom seems to be wearing off) that leaving things in the library but never teaching it works on two fronts:

      You can point to it and say “we’re silencing no one”
      By making reading a chore with propagandistic dribble you know that kids will lose a love of learning and thus never seek it out while being forced to read your propoganda.

  13. In regards to how people are getting segregated again, I saw this article posted on Lucianne.com this morning. A rather informative if not frightening insight into what may be the source, the “Mount Doom(s)” of the divisions.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/similarities-between-crt-and-prison-culture-help-predict-where-crt-can-lead-christopher-rufo_4375662.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-04-02-4&utm_medium=email&est=y9xsgesxncRcYvcXif31ASyg%2FluWZdzL2%2FdWpVKvJSzmtmB4VBSQaG7f%2Bh9mx7Q%3D

    “Writer, filmmaker, and researcher Christopher Rufo realized while working on a documentary that the ideology of prison gangs that leads to racial segregation in prisons holds similarities to the critical race theory (CRT) being promoted in society.”

  14. Waters about to get rough? I’m turning 64 in a few months. In the last 10 years I’ve had 8 serious operations that kept me in a hospital at least overnight (2 were 3+ weeks). I’ve watched atheists turn America rather effectively into a type of Venezuela or Zimbabwe (you know what happened to their economy and currency). I’ve spent e of the 10 years unemployed between 7 jobs (mostly as a contractor). I’ve lost all but two of my older relatives. And our “President” walks around molesting children and filling his Depends because he can’t control his diseased bowels. And don’t get me started on the lying scuts of the GOP.

    Folks, it is already rough. It’s about to get paroxysmal. And not in a good way.

    I’m leaning on God. We can’t fix this. We need Divine Intervention. Please don’t trust only in other people, guns, politics, voting, or other “unicorn farts”. We earned where we are now (Romans 1:18-32). God can save us, if we repent. Read Psalm 16 and Psalm 91 and pray that God will forgive us and heal America (along the lines of 2 Chronicles 7:13-14). There are promises like Romans 10:13 and Hebrews 13:5-6.

    Yes, I’m weak — and I complain too much instead of “looking for the bright side” or just accepting what He provides and trusting it will be enough (as it always has been). Yes, I want an easy life — not the path I’ve had or the scabrous trail of unlimited filth I anticipate we’ll see in the next 10 years.

    Yes, “we win, they lose”; but not under our own power without God’s help. So “Let’s roll!” but the way He wants…

    1. And if you disagree, please try to understand where I’m coming from. I’m not pitching anything more than personal responsibility and accountability.

      1. From what I can see… I think you may have an overly pessimistic view. Powers are moving. Battle lines are drawn. We are not abandoned.

            2. The Last Battle is the one story in the series that I’ve only read a few times. It’s too close to the real world, and it discourages me.

                1. Yeah, me, too. The way the monkey treats the donkey, and the skin suit. Awful.
                  If I can make it to the part where the dwarves are stuck in darkness and Aslan is back, I’m good.

            2. As long as we hold up our end and do our part – G-d is our rock and our help, not our mommy.

              … and that’s as far into religion as I will go here.

          3. The Holy Spirit tells me this every morning in my cold shower. It was moving to see it in print.

        2. I hope so. Some of the stuff going on right now makes me wonder just how much further things can go before a large rock gets dropped on us.

      2. “I’m not pitching anything more than personal responsibility and accountability.”

        Yes you are. This is a motte-and-bailey switch. You’re implying that atheists are the cause of the trouble and exhorting everyone here to turn to God.

        You’re drawing the line in the wrong place; pro- vs. anti-religion is not the same as pro- vs. anti-civilization.

        1. I’m not anti-religious, just resistant to having religion pushed at me. I want better answers than “Some people wrote some stories 3,000 years ago.”

        2. You’re really reading a lot more into what I wrote than what I wrote…

          But it isn’t “atheism” that causes issues. It’s worship of created things instead of worshiping God. And, as the Bible says, “All have sinned.”

          This is about >>>all<<< of us.

          And think about it quietly for a moment. How much would I need to hate you if I believed those who reject God will suffer for eternity — and then refused to warn you.

          We all earned what we’re going to receive unless we understand that we can’t save ourselves and need to ask for help.

          I’m not demanding anyone do anything; but I am suggesting that we need to take responsibility and be accountable — at least to ourselves — for where we’re headed.

          If someone chooses to reject the Bible, as an American, I accept that. As a Christian I cannot celebrate it; but I also accept that.

          1. You’re really reading a lot more into what I wrote than what I wrote…

            Am I?

            You said:

            I’ve watched atheists turn America rather effectively into a type of Venezuela or Zimbabwe

            You singled out atheists and no one else, as if no one with a shred of religion had anything to do with it. What is that, if not implying that atheists – not statists – are the cause of the problem?

            You also said this:

            I’m leaning on God. We can’t fix this. We need Divine Intervention. Please don’t trust only in other people, guns, politics, voting, or other “unicorn farts”. We earned where we are now (Romans 1:18-32). God can save us, if we repent.

            What is that if not an exhortion for us all to turn to your God?

            What I read into it is what you wrote. Like I said, you’re trying to pull a Motte-and-Bailey defense.

            And one more thing:

            And think about it quietly for a moment. How much would I need to hate you if I believed those who reject God will suffer for eternity — and then refused to warn you.

            No matter how much you may believe I’ll burn for eternity, the fire-and-brimstone routine is wasted on me.

            When I was a young child someone who thinks much like you tried to convert me to Christianity. Warnings of eternal damnation for not believing in God were involved. But even with a child’s terror of eternal suffering to motivate me I still couldn’t force myself truly believe, because my brain just doesn’t work that way. I was 12 when I finally gave up faking it and accepted that, if what I was taught was true, I was going to burn forever no matter what I did. I lived with that fear until I got over it.

            So why don’t just save us both some time and write my soul off now? Because after that, no threats involving the afterlife are going to phase me. As far as I’m concerned, any God that would punish someone like that simply for being an atheist, regardless of their reasons or other behavior, deserves loathing rather than worship.

            I like Sarah’s God better; I don’t believe in that one either, but at least hers has a sense of humor about these things. Your version is just a merciless tyrant.

          2. I don’t ‘reject The Bible’. I don’t reject The Odyssey, either. I see both of them as works of ancient mythology.

    3. The LORD’s judgement is strongest when He abandons a nation to its degeneracy. I think that was something either Sproul or Strachan said that I saw semi-recently.

  15. This has been going on for a long, long time. I futzed around my entire fourth grade year (1972-73) out of sheer boredom, at which point my parents pulled me out and put me in private school. The school administration also told my parents that I had shown no progress between third and fourth grade on the annual Iowa State achievement tests… because I had tested at the top in third grade, and did it again in fourth. And this was in what was considered to be a good school district, with decent discipline in the classes.

    1. Spring ’73, end of my junior year, the class had to take math assessment. Everyone, even those who had actually taken math throughout HS. See math wasn’t required. But if you couldn’t pass the basics, then required to take basic math senor year. This included those of us who were already well beyond basic math and headed toward calculus. I don’t think one of us, in that category, took longer than 10 minutes, of a 3 hour test, to complete, not one of us used the scratch paper provided (before calculators, and didn’t have access to slide rules either). Then they wouldn’t let us leave the test area, at least right away; we just weren’t able to stay “quiet enough”, so they shooed us out to the library. The next year any student who were taking higher math already were excused from the assessment test.

    2. “You scored perfectly last year. You scored perfectly this year. So, no progress?”

      One wonders what they used in place of a functioning brain…

  16. I had a terrible seventh grade, mostly because I acted out my issues with school (and being an Odd in a relatively decent suburban school at home), got bullied, got harassed and teased…

    Eighth grade wasn’t fun either.

    Ninth grade sucked. But being the “crazy” kid got me out of a few fights.

    This was about the time that my school district was going from a grade/junior high/high school (K-6, 7-9, 10-12th grade) program to a grade/middle/high school (K-5, 6-8, 9-12th grade) program…in a school district that had closed one of the two high schools, was already parking portables on the lawn of the only remaining high school, was already overcrowded and had issues with fights and bullying and gangs and general issues…

    It was sheer luck that my parents learned of a private school that sounded like it had a better academic program (this was the early ’90s, so no real Internet out there…), and rather than do all of the summer trips that we probably would have done those three years, I went there.

    (Hell, a good portion of Chapter 8 in Solist At Large came from either my experience in school or talking to people that had gone to our high school after I left for the private school. And, I could map the Four Rules Of Nerd Interactions on every statement made. Including the temptation to make Columbine look like amateur hour.)

    I’ve had one friend that had to go and sit on her Honorary Nephew because of some other issues, and she got to listen in on his classes over Zoom. She apologized to me, because she was convinced it wasn’t as bad as I made it out. “It’s worse, much worse,” was what she told me.

    And, I figured out that a widget job (or an “and” job) was going to drive me insane. Let me be a crazy creative wizard somewhere that you came, got something from the Oracle, and left me to do my own thing. The problem is that businesses like widget jobs because you can write performance metrics for it.

    Fingers crossed that I can be a mad Oracle again.

    1. “And, I could map the Four Rules Of Nerd Interactions on every statement made.”

      Wait, Four Rules Of Nerd Interactions? What are they, pray tell?

      1. Rule One-The vast majority will pick on you if you give them the slightest excuse. Or even if you don’t.
        Rule Two-Authority is useless, either heedless of your complaints or more inclined to punish you for being bullied than punishing the bullies.
        Rule Three-You are helpless. Resistance is futile.
        Rule Four-It’s not what you do that matters, it’s who you are.

        Read it years ago in a blog post. Always stuck with me.

  18. At this point, it’s home school or die in most areas, especially if you can get a group together..More learning, less time wasted, no CRT or grooming…I tutored such a group for a short while…

  19. “The truth is that you can’t make everyone the same.” Thomas Sowell has pointed this out. Paraphrasing: “You can’t even make siblings raised in the same household turn out the same.”

  20. One of the unintended consequences of the pandemic – for the first time, parents got to hear exactly what their children were being taught.
    The ripple effect of that is going to shape the next 30 years of the education system.
    The number of homeschoolers has increased by between 800 – 1000% between 2018 and 2022. Eight to ten times as many families as pre-pandemic have taken their children out of school and are teaching them at home. This trend is only going to increase in the next few years. Cooperative homeschool groups are popping up everywhere (my husband teaches at one of them). Rural, suburban, and urban families, religious and non-religious families, are homeschooling their children.
    The next school board elections nationwide will be VERY interesting. You’re already seeing parents rebelling in uber-liberal California. As 2022 goes on, you will see massive upheavals in school boards, with a large number of incumbents replaced.
    Parents got to see exactly what passes for education in their schools, and they’re furious. They’re pulling their kids out of school. They’re demanding changes to the schools. They’re filling up private schools.
    Parents are voting with their feet, their wallets and their ballots.
    It’s going to be very interesting to see how this plays out.
    Get your popcorn, ladies and gentlemen.

      1. One of the ways local charter schools in Oregon are getting funds is they attach themselves to a district. District gets a small percentage of the funding to “manage” the charter school; generally minimal management (some because there is at least one charter that has “moved” districts). Which means the state and federal funding is filtered through the district. This has spawned a lot of free chartered schools, if you can get a seat, which includes two (I think … at least one anyway) public home schooling options (no seat limit). A public option of $ follow the student. Not full $ follow the student, because $ do not follow student to private schools. At least with the public homeschooling option parents can monitor and contradict, more easily, any objectionable material or methods. The public homeschooling option is the one my niece is using with her oldest, and their 3 year old will join as she starts school, overseen by grandma, when grandparents are not traveling.

    2. If I get to retire to “writing” at 59.5 as planned, I’d love to teach for local homeschool groups that needed my advanced skills. No or nominal pay is required if it is 10 hours/week or less, although given at least one mom in a homeschool group is going to be one of those supermommy types lunch on days I taught would be more appreciated than money.

    4. We have a few years before we need to commit (kid is 2yrs old). But I am *not* happy with what has surfaced.

  21. When Ron sat under the sorting hat at Hogwarts, the hat said, “Another Weasley. I know just what to do with you.” Imagine being the child who is pre-judged by teachers’ bad experiences with her older siblings, parked in the front row “to keep an eye on you,” receives a C on an assignment “because I know you could try harder, like your sister,” and is the last person picked for the team because “Weasleys suck, everybody knows that.” Being treated as a unique individual would be a gift from heaven.

    Now replace Weasley with Asian. Latino. Black.

    Homeschooling is looking better and better. At least Mom knows I’m not as smart as my sister but loves me anyway.

      1. My brother was eidetic, in a school system that consisted mostly of memorizing stuff.
        (In retrospect I was too, but so ADHD that it didn’t show, because I rarely HEARD the stuff.)
        I spent my life disappointing people.

        1. If they were people who insisted you should have been a second incarnation of your brother “because siblings” they deserved to be disappointed. At the very least; I’d vote for something more permanent, but I tend to think the punishment should fit the crime.

    2. It always struck me that the sorting hat had to suck for the kids at the end of the alphabet anyway. Hannah Abbot goes to the place where she fits best. Blaise Zabini could easily get, “Well, by nature you would fit in Ravenclaw, but we’ve got too many of them already this year. It’s Slytherin for you!” Frankly, Ron may have been lucky that the hat just put him with his brothers.

    3. “Imagine being the child who is pre-judged by teachers’ bad experiences with her older siblings”

      Hubby’s school stories. 1 – 12 (he’s 70, K was not “invented” yet … older than dirt, don’t cha know?)

      First day of class/classes:
      “M. P.?”
      “Here”
      Pause.
      “Related to S., J,, and B., P.?” (Although B may have been out of the system so depending on long instructor had been there, may have been dropped from the inquiry.)
      “Yes.”
      “I don’t want any trouble out of you.”

      Made worse by the fact that he is 10 to 5 grade years younger than his older siblings, and he was doing his siblings homework for at least the next two oldest, before he was out of grade school. Especially math … By the time he got there, he’d already had the math material twice, reading and history material at least once (older brother is reading dyslexic, we think. Put a diagram in front of him, he’s savant. Reading, not so much. Older brother is a mechanic.) Hubby hasn’t said, but wouldn’t surprise if he wasn’t all but accused of plagiarizing, or “strange this is awfully similar to the paper your brother turned in 5 years ago”, but improved (because of critic from prior submission), or “did your older brother help you write this?” … Well duh, hubby wrote his bother’s paper 5 years before. Can you plagiarize yourself?

      We spared our child of this. Not by choice. He had no siblings. His same age cousin who lived a mile away, was in a different district. They weren’t compared by the school system.

      1. My husband had a bit of the reverse of that. Outside of one incident, the science teacher that went “I had your brother and your sister, I don’t want any trouble out of you.” actually didn’t bring it up or bother him about family trends. The singular incident involved a strange genetic anomaly. The teacher was discussing VERY basic genetics with ear lobes as an example: Attached or detached. My husband had one of each so voted twice. It was an option the teacher wasn’t aware was possible (one of each not voting twice).
        “I thought I told you I didn’t want any trouble out of you.”
        “I have one of each!”
        “Show me.”

        And then proceeded to do a short lecture on genetic anomalies and some of the causes before proceeding with the main lecture.

        I will say, in the teacher’s defense the whole lot of them are stubborn, opinionated, and constitutionally in capable of letting a matter rest. (Including my husband who happened to be the only geek in a family of normal folk… he fits MUCH better with my family.)

        1. > teacher’s defense the whole lot of them are stubborn, opinionated, and constitutionally in capable of letting a matter rest.

          Wait! What there are more of them out there? Hubby, and his family, are exactly the same.

            1. The consanguinity between “unreasonably stubborn” and “Odd, weird, Not One of Us, etc” is quite high. The reason, I believe, is that without the stubbornness, we wouldn’t be quite as Odd as we are.

              As a trait, it comes with its own share of baggage and difficulties. But for resisting peer pressure, spotting obvious (but popular) lies, and the ability to say “No!” when it is really quite necessary, well. I’d say it’s top notch.

              Just don’t expect me to say no to more good books is all.

  22. The heading I put on this when I shared it was;
    =>Remember, “EQUITY. This is not equality, but equality of outcome.”, is one of those impossible, ridiculous things that attempting to enforce only causes more harm than what you are trying to fix. The Gods of the Copybook Headings have proven this again and again.

      1. …and “glampers” should be a generic epithet, like “quisling” (or, in a different venue, “bemmon”).

  23. Hey friends.

    https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/04/05/kremlin-newspaper-and-a-putin-confidant-endorse-genocide-as-russias-final-solution-to-the-ukraine-problem-n545699

    It turns out that Putin is purely motivated by a Christian love for his fellow man.

    So, what does this give us, as Christians, in the way of guidance?

    Well, in terms of relative population, and proximity, Russia and Mexico are both to the United States, what the Ukraine is to Russia.

    Denazify Occupied Kekistan!

    1. AKA, Putin invites the Americans to come in and exterminate the Russians because of some insane bullshit argument intended purely for domestic consumption.

      In America, we have a senile loony who may have forgotten that it is no longer the 1970s.

      In Russia, there is a senile loony who has apparently forgotten that it is no longer the 1970s, and that the religious communists may not automatically swallow whatever feces that the Russian government decides to vomit.

      I’m not sure what flavor of crazy Xi is.

      Trudeau in Canada is another idiot.

  24. Not trying to start a flame war, but I’m curious: has anybody else noticed the people pushing Equality of Outcome are mostly the same bossy girls who wanted to run things in high school?

    It’s not FAIR that Gina got to be Homeroom Queen three days in a row, watching us study while the teacher took a smoke break. Everybody should get a turn, even if they don’t want it, so that Gina doesn’t get it again.

    Is this a female thing? Group over individual? Nobody is happy until everybody is unhappy?

    [ducks and scurries out the door]

    1. It’s not gender-specific; it’s individual-as-useless-as-tits-on-a-bull-specific. “I’m incapable and lazy, and no one else should do any better than I can!” <spit!>

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