Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Life . . . passing by at 33⅓ RPM

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
-- Joni Mitchell

Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you got till you've gone. Homer's sold you LPs, and you took home somebody's life.

Me, I thought it was just an exceptionally eclectic bit of birthday shopping at the Old Market record store -- everything from Oingo Boingo to Paul Mauriat, with some Louis Prima and Keely Smith in between. Oh . . . and a 1968 album by The Vogues.

Just a while ago, I was taking the old record out of the old jacket, and out fell a piece of somebody's life, a picture of a pretty young girl. Maybe a high school picture, maybe just the Kodak paper evidence of splurging on a trip to the photographer's studio.

I do know this, though. It looks like my long-lost, teenage journey through the last half of the 1970s. I remember that hair, and that blouse rings a bell. Definitely the last half of, if not the Age of Aquarius, certainly the Age of Dacron Polyester.
A 40-YEAR-OLD portrait stuck inside a 50-year-old LP for safekeeping. And then somebody sold the hiding place to the record store, kind of like the kinfolk giving Goodwill the mattress that hid Grandpa's life savings.

The mattress full of Benjamins is just sprung springs, spent stuffing and some clandestine cash. This picture right here, though -- that's somebody's youth. Somebody's lost youth that's been gone about the same number of years as mine.

I remember that youth. Not as well as I once did but, like the flipped curls and summer blouse of a beautiful young woman, it rings a bell.

Who is she? Where is she now?

Have, for her, the years between Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump been as long and strange a trip as they have for . . . well . . . me? How many joys and how many tragedies has she counted off between the vast plain of a life yet to come and the bittersweet reflections in the rear-view mirror as we of a certain age cruise toward eternity?

Regrets, I've had a few. I hope that young woman -- the one forever gazing toward a Kodachrome future that now lies largely in the past -- has had fewer.

Once, like the song on that Vogues album, she was somebody's special angel. I hope she still is.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Dispatches from Trump's Amerika


Somewhere in Bumf****, Fla., there's a principal who apparently isn't obsessed with where one half of 1 percent of the American population gets to pee.

Unfortunately, he is obsessed with using authoritarianism to foster Americanism among his students. In other words, "Love your country . . . or else." A story Wednesday from WBBH television in Fort Myers proves that you can't make this stuff up:
A Collier County principal is requiring students to stand during the national anthem at school events or face ejection. 
Lely High School Principal Ryan Nemeth told students during video announcements they'll be ejected from school sporting events if they refuse to stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner." 
Nemeth told students the issue is very important to him, and the policy applies to students at all school-sponsored sporting events. 
"You will stand, and you will stay quiet. If you don't.. you are going to be sent home, and you're not going to have a refund of your ticket price," he told them.
NEVER MIND that respect -- or love -- coming at the barrel of a gun (or the threat of being kicked out of a football game) isn't. What it is, is a lie. A Potemkin pledge. It is standing for nothing before a national symbol that half-assed dictators have turned into full-fledged idolatry.

The only legitimately American response to a half-witted, authoritarian bully like a certain Florida principal is to quite deliberately, ostentatiously and quietly sit during the Star-Spangled Banner.

And students who do will find the Constitution is on their side.

"Over a decade ago, Chief Justice [Charles Evans] Hughes led this Court in holding that the display of a red flag as a symbol of opposition by peaceful and legal means to organized government was protected by the free speech guaranties of the Constitution," Justice Robert Jackson wrote for the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1943 when it decided West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnett.
Here, it is the State that employs a flag as a symbol of adherence to government as presently organized. It requires the individual to communicate by word and sign his acceptance of the political ideas it thus bespeaks. Objection to this form of communication, when coerced, is an old one, well known to the framers of the Bill of Rights. 
It is also to be noted that the compulsory flag salute and pledge requires affirmation of a belief and an attitude of mind. It is not clear whether the regulation contemplates that pupils forgo any contrary convictions of their own and become unwilling converts to the prescribed ceremony, or whether it will be acceptable if they simulate assent by words without belief, and by a gesture barren of meaning. It is now a commonplace that censorship or suppression of expression of opinion is tolerated by our Constitution only when the expression presents a clear and present danger of action of a kind the State is empowered to prevent and punish. It would seem that involuntary affirmation could be commanded only on even more immediate and urgent grounds than silence. But here, the power of compulsion is invoked without any allegation that remaining passive during a flag salute ritual creates a clear and present danger that would justify an effort even to muffle expression. To sustain the compulsory flag salute, we are required to say that a Bill of Rights which guards the individual's right to speak his own mind left it open to public authorities to compel him to utter what is not in his mind.


REMEMBER, this ruling came in the middle of World War II. The justice continued:
Government of limited power need not be anemic government. Assurance that rights are secure tends to diminish fear and jealousy of strong government, and, by making us feel safe to live under it, makes for its better support. Without promise of a limiting Bill of Rights, it is doubtful if our Constitution could have mustered enough strength to enable its ratification. To enforce those rights today is not to choose weak government over strong government. It is only to adhere as a means of strength to individual freedom of mind in preference to officially disciplined uniformity for which history indicates a disappointing and disastrous end. 
The subject now before us exemplifies this principle. Free public education, if faithful to the ideal of secular instruction and political neutrality, will not be partisan or enemy of any class, creed, party, or faction. If it is to impose any ideological discipline, however, each party or denomination must seek to control, or, failing that, to weaken, the influence of the educational system. Observance of the limitations of the Constitution will not weaken government in the field appropriate for its exercise. 
2. It was also considered in the Gobitis case that functions of educational officers in States, counties and school districts were such that to interfere with their authority "would in effect make us the school board for the country." 
The Fourteenth Amendment, as now applied to the States, protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures -- Boards of Education not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights. That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.
WELL, this is the Age of Trump, and I suppose it's more likely than not that "to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes" is exactly what people want out of public education today.

This is precisely why we have a Bill of Rights. Perhaps it's not so much to protect us from an abusive government but, instead, to protect us from ourselves.
 
Language of fascists, racists and morons in this video definitely NSFW

IN TRUMP'S AMERIKA, the above video displays what "love of country" comes to when severed completely from any understanding of human dignity or the principles at the core of the American republic. 

It is the principles that underlie the Bill of Rights (and the Fourteenth Amendment) that define the United States of America. Not race, not region, not class, not ethnicity and not religious affiliation, but those principles define what it means to be American.

And whether we're talking about half-witted, racist vulgarians in Massachusetts or authoritarian school principals in Florida, that shared contempt for those tenets that define us as Americans call into question the loyalty of those making "patriotism" such an issue in the first place.

Traitors are as traitors do.


HAT TIP:  Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

The things you find


SHOWN HERE in a high-school journalism scrapbook from 1976, saved by me and then my parents for no discernible reason, is an example of a "society picture with cutline," noted at top, which happened to be of Mr. and Mrs. Miller Williams, shown center, feted in Baton Rouge en route to Rome, where they were to reside for a year at the famed American Academy. With them at the large party in the home of Dr. and Mrs. Hulen B. Williams on Castle Kirk Drive were Mrs. E. B. Williams, left, the mother of Mr. Williams, and Miss Lucinda (Cindy) Williams, daughter of the famed poet, who had won the Prix de Rome awarded by the still-famed American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two years later, Miss Williams would begin her famed recording career, which was not initially feted, but achieved some note in 1988 and then became famed in the early 1990s, when she was feted at the famed Grammy Awards, where she won the award for Best Country Song for "Passionate Kisses." She then released her famed album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" in 1998, which was awarded a gold record and for which she was again feted at the Grammy Awards.

Serendipity was feted for my happening to cut out this particular "society picture with cutline" from the famed Sunday Advocate in Baton Rouge some 37 years ago for my journalism assignment. Attending the small party in the Omaha home of Mr. and Mrs. Mighty Favog are Mr. Favog and a bottle of moderately priced bourbon.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

'In the deed, the glory'


I wish I were 30-odd years younger and had talent.

That's because I want to play high-school football for Coach Victor Nazario at Beach Channel, which now stands amid the ruin on the storm-swept Rockaway Peninsula of Queens. I would kick ass, take names, clean clocks and run through a brick wall for a guy who can put it all in perspective before a state playoff game like this:
"Sandy took a lot of shit from us -- a lot. It did not take our courage; it did not take our will. It did not take our courage; it did not take our will, because your will is what got you here today. So let's finish this job, gentlemen. Let's just go out there and go out in style."
Beach Channel suffered the same fate as many of its students: equipment room flooded out, pads, jerseys -- you name it -- swept away by Hurricane Sandy's storm surge. No power. No practice field. Before Saturday's state playoff game, Nazario had salvaged what equipment he could and borrowed those things he couldn't.

THE BIG QUESTION, though, was whether he could field a team from a student body hunkered down in darkened, cold homes or evacuated to God-knows-where. From a New York Times feature story:
Breland Archbold woke up hungry at his grandmother’s house on the Saturday morning of his last high school football game. Typically, Archbold, the quarterback and captain of the Beach Channel Dolphins, spends the night before game day at a teammate’s house in Far Rockaway, eats chicken fingers and macaroni, and then in the morning tackles mounds of eggs and turkey bacon. 
This time, Archbold, his 6-foot, 200-pound frame straining at the contours of a strange bed, awoke wondering whether he would eat at all before the game. It had been like that for two weeks, ever since Hurricane Sandy had flooded and disfigured his Rockaways neighborhood.
Still, there was a football game to play, and no ordinary one. Beach Channel was set to play at Port Richmond on Staten Island this past Saturday in the first round of the Public Schools Athletic League playoffs. Archbold, 17, who still dreamed of a scholarship offer, maybe from the University at Buffalo, was nervous, and grateful, too.

“This was the last time to make everything count, and in the middle of a crazy time,” he said.

Archbold’s father, Dexter, drove him to the team bus pickup spot, and the route, as it had been for days, remained otherworldly. Instead of stoplights, there were police officers dressed in fluorescent green directing traffic, and on the sides of sandblasted streets stood shells of homes and businesses, little more than piles of rubble.

Archbold’s own uniform bore the taint of the storm. His shoulder pads reeked of bleach, used to kill mildew; his rib guard was gone altogether, washed away after Beach Channel’s locker room flooded. Port Richmond, in one of a number of acts of kindness, had lent Beach Channel what gear it could. Beach Channel, in the nearly two weeks since the storm, had practiced only twice, on a dark and borrowed field at Far Rockaway High School.
 (snip)
Breland Archbold moped for a week after the hurricane. He thought his senior football season would be left incomplete. He was in his father’s car in a line for gasoline on Long Island when his coach called him. The playoff game was on, but could the Dolphins play?

Nazario salvaged what equipment he could from the flooded school, and Port Richmond Coach Lou Vesce would lend the rest. But it was Archbold’s job as team captain to find out if the Dolphins could field a squad. He called teammates he had not seen since before the storm.

“Are you serious? I’m in,” Fatukasi said.

The Red Raiders scored again after halftime. Then again. A scuffle broke out after Archbold, also playing safety, tackled the opposing quarterback, Victor Pratt, as he ran out of bounds. The Red Raiders’ captain, Compton Richmond, bumped Archbold with his chest, and Fatukasi rushed over to protect his friend. Referees threw flags. The score was 30-6 and the frustration was palpable among the dozen or so Beach Channel fans.

Dexter Archbold had used his youth league football connections to secure the Dolphins practice time at the powerless Far Rockaway football field Thursday and Friday. About 15 players showed up Thursday, but the scrimmage was little more than a head count. On Friday, four more players showed, and the team did its best in the twilight. A few parents tried to battle back the darkness by shining their headlights on the field, burning precious gas, but it was little use. Some would miss the game the next day because they did not have the gas to get to Staten Island.

If this were Hollywood, the Dolphins would have rallied. But this was Staten Island. They lost, 38-6. After the game, the team huddled on the field. Some boys wept. Fatukasi called his teammates family and told them that despite “all that adversity, we’re leaving this field with respect.”

HALF A CONTINENT away from the Rockaways, in Lincoln, Neb., there's an inscription on Memorial Stadium, where another football team plays: "Not the victory but the action; Not the goal but the game; In the deed the glory."

University of Nebraska philosophy professor Hartley Burr Alexander wrote that. Through the veil separating the world that is seen and that which we cannot -- across the boundaries of time and space -- I'd like to think the good professor was able to see those words of his, carved into stone in 1923, transform themselves. On a cold Saturday in Staten Island, an abstraction suddenly wasn't.

"Not the victory but the action." A high-school coach and a couple dozen teenagers.

"Not the goal but the game." A remnant in borrowed gear, huddled in a cafeteria-turned-locker room, ready to step onto a field and stare down the winds of fate.

"In the deed the glory."



HAT TIP:  Rod Dreher. 

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Paging Capt. Renault . . . Capt. Louis Renault


For decades now, we've been leeringly drenching our entire culture with the ethos of sex as just one more recreational sport, women as nothing more than objects there to help men get their freak on and humans in general as being worth only what we decide they are.

And prime-time TV has become, more or less, all-American Pie, all the time.

Yet, people still are shocked, shocked whenever they're confronted with the extent to which their little darlings have internalized it all. A "fantasy slut league" at a California high school?

Aunt Pittypat, quick! Give me your smelling salts!

C'MON, people. We are a country where suburban housewives are gaga over Fifty Shades of Gray and hold Tupperware parties, only with plastic dildos (among other sex toys) instead of plastic bowls that you burp and seal.

No, this Los Angeles Times blog item from the Bay Area is the most unsurprising thing in the world:
Officials at a Bay Area high school say they are taking steps to deter the type of behavior that led to a "fantasy slut league," in which male student athletes "drafted" female students and earned points for documenting sexual activity with them.

The league at Piedmont High School was loosely modeled after popular online fantasy sports leagues, but instead of drafting athletes, male students drafted females. And the game, instead of baseball or football, was sex. And, instead of being pure fantasy, the league was quite real.

The school's principal, Richard Kitchens, sent a letter to parents last week informing them of the existence of the league and saying there was a "general recognition that over the past 5-6 years such a league has existed in one form or another as part of 'bonding' for some Varsity Teams during their seasons of sport," according to a copy of the letter posted by Piedmont Patch.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

King of all he surveys


Michael Holton is a popular guy. So it's no surprise that he's homecoming king at his Georgia high school.

Not only that, but by all accounts, Mikey has been both a blessing and an inspiration to his classmates, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a single one of them with a bad word to say about their new king. He did win with 97 percent of the vote, after all.

Michael Holton has Down syndrome. That he became homecoming king, has earned scores of friends and been an inspiration and a blessing to modern-day American -- teens desperate for both inspiration and blessing -- is because his mom, Amy, was among the 8 percent of women who don't abort their unborn child after receiving a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis.

Think about that for a minute.

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

When alumni get mad, miracles happen

This . . .

. . . is the last I saw of my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High School. I took these photos in October 2007.

Baton Rouge High is my hometown's best high school -- one of the nation's best, actually -- filled with talented, high-achieving students. Literally, filled with what hope a poor, dysfunctional state can count on for the future.

The facilities they inhabited pretty much showed them what a city and a state thought of them -- and about its future.


THEN enough alumni saw enough of what had become of the grand old school at 2825 Government St. And they got mad. And the engineers told the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board that the piddly repairs that had been scheduled for the campus were wholly insufficient -- indeed, impossible, given how far gone the facilities were.

So, in response, the school board considered tearing down the whole campus -- including the main building, a Gothic masterpiece built in 1926. And Bulldog alumni got really mad.

What grew out of that was a miracle. Just look at this grand tour of the school taken Friday by Channel 2 in Baton Rouge, WBRZ.


FIVE YEARS AGO, I was heartbroken at what I saw of my old school. No more.

Today, my heart soars. Investing in your children -- and in the places most important in their lives -- is never, ever a mistake.

These are the things futures are made of.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Grace crashes high-school reunion

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


We live in a world that doesn't easily grasp the concept of divine grace.

Likewise, we live in a world that doesn't believe it is fallen -- as in, "No, I'm not OK, and you're not OK, either." We think we're nice people, and that's all that counts.

I'm here to tell you that I'm a pretty big rat bastard and that you may be, too. Or that, at some point, you likely were.

A bunch of teen-age rat bastards circa 1987 just received grace, which led to insight, which led to repentance, which led to more grace . . . which may lead to healing for a woman who was horribly bullied in her California high school and for those who bullied her all those years ago.

God often shows up when and where you least expect Him. That's the reality of this MSNBC story . . . and that's the deeper reality that American mainstream journalism is constitutionally incapable of reporting.

A woman says a Facebook poem she posted about bullying has brought pleas for forgiveness from former classmates who tormented her at a California high school 25 years ago.

Now, some of those classmates want to make amends and have asked Lynda Frederick, 42, of Rochester, N.Y., to attend her 25th high school reunion in Escondido, Calif., on July 27, compliments of the Orange Glen High School Class of 1987.

“I am nervous,” Frederick told msnbc.com on Friday. “I am looking forward to seeing them, even knowing that what has happened has happened. I have forgiven those who have hurt me in the past.”

Frederick said she received phone calls, emails and Facebook messages from former classmates after she posted a poem on the Orange Glen High School Class of 1987 Facebook page.

In her poem, she wrote:
that little girl who came to school with the clothes she wore the day before
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
the little girl who had to walk to school while others rode the bus
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
the little girl who had bruises and was dirty
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
the little girl who was always crying
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
“They’re all apologizing now for how I was treated,” Frederick said. “I had one man call me up and we talked for an hour on the phone. He cried and cried. I kept saying, ‘You can’t fix yesterday, so let’s fix today.’”
GRACE. It's what's for sinners.

Monday, April 16, 2012

The second-to-last refuge of scoundrels


If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, "policy" is the last way station before you get there.

And "policy" is why ditwad administrators at a ditwad school district in Carrollton, Ohio, won't let a high-school senior "walk" with his classmates at graduation this year.

You see, Austin Fisher has 16 unexcused absences this year -- the limit is 14 if you want to go to prom or participate in the graduation ceremony at Carrollton High School. And it doesn't matter why you're inexcusably absent.

For example, missing school to care for your cancer-stricken mother. Your terminally ill cancer-stricken mother. When you're all she's got.

WJW television, Fox 8 in Cleveland, reports:
Let Fish Walk.

The phrase is taking over the small town of Carrollton, from car windows to signs at local businesses. It’s a grassroots effort for 17-year-old Carrollton High School senior Austin Fisher, who has made it clear that his role as ‘student’ comes second to his role as ‘son.’

“He’s been my hero, my rock,” says Fisher’s mother, Teresa, as tears stream down her face.

Teresa has been battling breast cancer for six years. Last year doctors told her it was stage four–terminal. Through months of chemo and radiation, she leaned on Austin.

But being his mom’s lifeline meant sacrificing school.

“I missed a lot of school for that. Running her to cancer treatments, staying home when she was in bed–it’s just me and her at the house,” Austin explains.

The varsity baseball player, who worked two jobs when his mom was too sick to work at all, racked up 16 unexcused absences. That is two more than the Carrollton school policy will allow for a student to attend prom or walk at graduation.

The news was devastating.

“Those are the moments you cherish,” Teresa says. “I said, Austin, hold your head up, don’t be negative about it. I said, they’ll look at this situation, they’ll come around.”

But Austin says a meeting with his principal proved otherwise.

“They can’t change it. They said guidelines are guidelines. It won’t be changed. I can’t walk,” Austin explains.
A COUPLE of millennia ago, longstanding policy dictated that a woman caught in adultery be stoned to death. Jesus Christ thought better of that, stopped "policy" in its tracks and told the woman to "go and sin no more."

Of course, we know where stuff like that got Him.

Policy dictated it. Just like policy in the Carrollton school district is coming down like a ton of bricks on a teenage kid who knows WWJD . . . and then does it. Some things never change in this life.

I have a new strategy for the seniors of Carrollton High School -- "If Fish doesn't walk, none of us do."

Sometimes, life requires that you put your mortarboard and tassel where your mouth is. And, in the process, bring down the full weight of an entire town of enraged parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles down upon the temple of the holier than thou.


UPDATE: You can't make twits smart or scoundrels virtuous -- at least not in a day -- but you can turn the heat up so much on your average bureaucracy that it cries "UNCLE!" as a matter of self-preservation.

Late developments in the story come from The Repository newspaper in Canton, Ohio:
Austin said that although his story exploded in the last three days, he has known since January that he wouldn’t be permitted to walk at the ceremony.

Upon finding out, he said he immediately went to Principal Dave Davis, as did his mother, but Davis told them, “Rules are rules.”

Petitions were circulated in January, but were confiscated, Austin said.

On Monday, as the story went viral, classmates wore “Let Fish Walk” T-shirts to school.

That afternoon, Austin and Teri met with Fogler and the two building principals, Davis and Jason Eddy, along with an attorney for the district.

Teri agreed to not talk with the media as part of the agreement.

According to Austin, the group discussed the negative publicity the school has received.

“I never intended that,” he said emphatically.

He said the administrators argued the number of absences for the first semester to be 17 days, not 16.

In the end, the decision was reversed.
WHEN YOU genuinely scare chickenshits, they rarely go quietly (or penitently) into that good night, but they do go. That's because while they generally don't much care about doing good, they do dread looking bad.
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
AMEN.

Thursday, March 08, 2012

The radiophone voice of Central High


Omaha started to go "radiophone" crazy as far back as the end of December 1921, when R.B. Howell over at the municipal water-and-gas works fired up his transmitting apparatus, and station WOU became Nebraska's first broadcast voice.

A few months later WAAW chimed in from the Omaha Grain Exchange, and then station WOAW just a year later. By April 1923, radio fever was getting the river city a little bit radiophone delirious.

Take Central High School as a case in point.

In 1922, students were agitating for a radiophone receiver to be installed at the school on "Capitol Hill" downtown. By May 1923, Central had opened its own broadcast station -- KFCZ, operating on 360 meters.

Think of it . . . we fancy ourselves today as quick to embrace transformative new technology. We got
nothing on the teachers and teenagers of nine decades ago.

Nine decades ago
in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. High-school radio . . . in 1923.

Every generation, in its youth, thinks the well-worn path it trods is
terra incognita. For some reason, I think this phenomenon is worse in the South -- in the late '20s, Louisianians actually thought they were being progressive by implementing free textbooks in public schools. Instead, they were finally catching up to the Yankees.


I
N 1977, we thought we were some sort of a first when WBRH signed on with a whole 10 watts of FM power at Baton Rouge High. Not exactly.

And a half-century before, my college alma mater, Louisiana State University, got its first station in 1924, months and months after Omaha Central High.
KFGC was Baton Rouge's first radio station; KFCZ was Omaha's fourth --maybe fifth.

For a while, at least, Omaha's high-school station was on a par with everybody else in town -- the suits at the grain exchange and the fraternal bigwigs at Woodmen of the World, WOAW's owner. At least in terms of the oomph behind those "Hertzian waves" that emanated from the KFCZ aerial.


IN 1925, the radio voice of Central High would become KOCH, running with as much as 500 watts by the next year. Back then, that wasn't nothing -- that was on a par with the "big boys" of broadcasting. Well, at least as big as Midwestern broadcasting got in the mid-'20s.

Broadcasts were received 100 miles away and, according to the school paper, The Weekly Register, "students and teachers participated in making our broadcasts equal to the best in the city."


BY THE FALL
of 1928, though,
KOCH was no more. Back in Washington, D.C., the Federal Radio Commission had decided that high-school radio stations weren't a compelling use for precious frequencies on the now-crowded broadcast band.

I suspect many student broadcasters thought that was complete bushwa. Imagine . . . nonsense emanating from the rarefied ether of our nation's capital.

Nine decades on, some things never change.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Kids: The other endangered species


McDonogh 35 High will have to remain batty for a while longer.

The variety of bat infesting the New Orleans school, you see, is an endangered species. You can't harm a little bat hair on their little bat heads. And now, apparently, the "exterminators" have to . . . not do that.

Instead, they have to catch and release all the remaining bats. Meanwhile, the endangered kids inside McDonogh 35 have to hope they don't come down with bat-scratch fever.
Or something.

NOW, don't get me wrong. I don't want to kill the little endangered winged mammals -- bats have their place in this world, albeit not inside somebody's kid's school.

On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice if our society placed the same emphasis on the health and well-being of its children as it does on that of a bat?

Apparently, we can move heaven and earth not to kill the winged love children of Grandpa Munster, but -- in Louisiana, at least -- no one can lift a finger to make sure kids have clean, well-maintained and bat-free public schools.


In the Gret Stet, among other places, you have to pay the "private-school tax" for that. That's because, when it comes right down to it, we don't give a bat's ass about our children -- or the future they represent.

MAYBE INSTEAD of worrying about the bats in McDonogh 35's belfry, the now-kinder and gentler "exterminators" ought to be trapping the McDonogh 35 student body . . . and safely releasing it far, far away from the Gret Stet of Loosiana.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

A school only Grandpa Munster could love


It was only a matter of time before the bat-s*** craziness of my home state extended to . . . bats. And s***.

In New Orleans, McDonogh 35 High School's flying-rodent problem has been well known for a while now. In fact, it made the TV news in January (above).

Plans were hatched (none of them, sadly, involving input from Grandpa Munster, who knows bats better than your average ghoul), and Orleans Parish School Board officials spoke earnestly about the school's winged dilemma.

On the television, doctors gravely noted that people can, like, catch stuff from being around bats -- and their droppings. Rabies, for one.

Of course, this wasn't deemed a problem, and district officials noted that a student was far more likely to die falling through a floor or when a ceiling caved in on him.


OK, Orleans school administrators didn't actually say that. It well could be true, but that's because the McDonogh 35's falling-down problem just might be worse than its bat-infestation problem.

Anyway, that was last month. Plans hatched. Anti-bat blitz promised. Students thought to be perfectly safe --
just so long as you didn't actually think about it.


NOW WE fast-forward to Friday's TV news.

It seems students are protesting outside the school and are refusing to go inside.
Now, why might
that be? Guess.

Actually,
WWL television didn't have to. Let's go to the videotape . . . and the Channel 4 story below:
Students at McDonogh 35 High School refused to go to class early Friday morning, saying they are fed up with problems at the school, specifically bats in the building.

Students and parents say there have been bats inside the school for months and they've begged the principal to do something about it with no results, so Friday students stood outside the building demanding action.

Outstide the school students chanted, “No more bats, no more bats.”

Organized and determined, these high school students said enough's enough. They were teaching the first lesson Friday morning, and it was the right to protest. They say the school building is old and falling apart, and they've been living with that but say now its infested with bats and they can't learn.

“When I walked out the class and turned the corner,” said student Tatiyana Nodoselski, “I saw a white bat and it was coming toward me. It was in my face and I forgot the wall was behind me, and I ran, and it forced me into the wall. I just panicked.”

Parents share the frustration and stood alongside their kids demanding something be done immediately.

"The only thing we want to do is protect our children, this right here is our future and if they dont' care about it, we care about it," said Gail Greathouse, a parent.

Orleans Parish School Superintendent Darryl Kilbert said bats are common problem in older buildings in blighted neighborhoods. He said they will close the third floor of building, at least through Mardi Gras, to let pest remediation continue.

IF YOU'RE shocked, you must not be from Louisiana.

What
is shocking, though, is that parents and students cared enough to actually raise hell. That may be a first.

Obviously, all that flappin', swooping and screeching must have driven them, uh . . .
batty.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

We can't handle the truth


At the tender age of 30, suburban Philadelphia English teacher Natalie Munroe found herself at the heart of the fall of Rome.

It was right there before her in her Central Bucks East High School classroom.

"My students are out of control," Munroe wrote in her blog Oct. 27, 2009. "They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying."

Then the entry got good . . . or bad, depending on whether you're reading it or living it:
In the past week alone, I've written up 4 separate students--one for dropping the f-bomb in class, one for repeatedly saying "s***tin'," one for crafting a pencil topper made from paper clips into the shape of a man and woman having sex, and one for being disrespectful to me (Me: Stop tapping. Him: (ignores and keeps on tapping. Another student tells him to stop but he still doesn't, indicating that if he didn't stop when I told him to, he wouldn't stop for this kid either. Another student then kicked the back of the first student's chair. Me: "I DID tell you to stop that already!" Him: "Yeah, you were ignored." Me: Do you want me to write you up?" Him: "Go ahead." Me: "Done!")

Then there's the kid in the other class who wasn't happy with the score he earned on his test. (Nevermind that I told kids what to study in preparation for this test, or that I offered to move the test to Wednesday instead of Tuesday to give them more time to study but they voted to keep it on Tuesday.) So this kid earned a 54% on the test, having lost 2 points for not following directions, 7.5 points for being unable to match the names of characters and settings with the story names (which is the easiest section on the whole test if you've simply read the stories for lan's sake!), another 10 or so on another section asking him to match definitions to terms... really, the kid just didn't study enough.

The issue was, though, that his test grade brought his overall grade down significantly (because he had an A, he had farther to fall), from an A to a B. He approached me last Wednesday when I handed back the tests and wanted to know if we did second-chance learning. No, I told him. He wanted to know if he could do some extra credit. No, the English department doesn't offer extra credit, I told him. On Thursday he approached me to find out how many more points are on the marking period because he wants to be able to pull his grade up by then. I told him the assignments I know I'll be grading prior to that time. On Friday he emailed me and explained that he was unhappy with his score and again asked for extra credit or a chance to make up his test, citing that he must have been having a bad day and was very upset that his grade dropped so much. He then approached me the same day in class and wanted to discuss the email. I explained again that the test is done and he needs to move forward, just working as hard as he can before the marking period ends to recoup points, but that he could not do other work to make up the grade. On Monday there was an email waiting for me from his mom weighing in on the no extra credit/no retakes policy and intimating that the test was unfairly weighted as it brought her son's grade down from an A to a B. I responded to that email sharing the information about where he lost points on his test (indicating that he should have studied harder), explaining how it's unfair to kids prepared the first time around to have an opportunity to make up the points somehow, defending the weight of my test which was 67 points and was the culmination of 3 weeks worth of work, and giving her the heads-up that college courses often base their grades on 2 tests and a paper. Today this boy visited guidance during my class. I'm not positive that it was about this grade issue, but I suspect it may have been. I did not, however, receive any emails from guidance trying to get me to modify my stance, so perhaps it was simply a coincidence. Frankly, I really want the issue to drop because it's rather annoying me that I've had to have the same conversation about this issue as many times as I have. What it comes down to is this: you did poorly on your test for whatever reason; you may end up with a B because of it; move on and try harder next marking period. It really isn't the end of the world. Maybe the next time I announce a test and give insight into what should be studied, I will be taken more seriously.

Or not.
OBVIOUSLY, there's a problem here. Unfortunately, what's so obviously problematic isn't that "(k)ids today are out of control." It isn't that "teenagers are complete asses." It isn't even that "(t)here's no respect for adults, for authority, for teachers," or that "(p)arents won't allow anyone but themselves to discipline their kids, but THEY don't do any disciplining either."

No, the problem is that young high school English teacher in affluent Bucks County, Pa., said so. In her anonymous blog.


NOW MUNROE has been suspended with pay, escorted out of the building by the principal and a security guard, and just might lose her job. For being honest.

It would seem we can put up with a society of spoiled louts and incompetents --
Hey, Rome managed it . . . until it couldn't -- but what we can't handle is the truth.

And the truth, folks, is that a lot of your kids are a-holes and cheats. Ignorant ones at that.

If you doubt what I say -- or, more importantly, what Munroe wrote -- the comments on her most "notorious" post, left after some Central Bucks East students somehow came across the blog, serve as a rather bracing quod erat demonstrandum moment.

READ ON and be educated:
dontcare said...

Jokes on you because this link is being cycled throughout the students of
CB East via facebook. Have fun applying for unemployment.

Sincerely,

"cooperative in class."


brett said...

haha shes leaving due to being knocked up... she probably found a piece of toilet paper in the trash that a guy cleaned up after himself with and impregnated herself; i can think of no other way this homely ass c*** could get f*****


cbeast123 said...

Well..good luck getting a job as a teacher anywhere else.

If you're in a school district as prestigious as CB East, you should act like it and stop blubbering to people who couldn't care less about your life.

Just because you hate your job, doesn't make it okay to whine about it on the internet.

And I can guarantee that at least 50% of the students you just spent making fun of will become a lot more successful than you.

How sad is it that you're way too busy blogging about your students that you have no time to actually leave a mark/make a difference on their lives. I can't imagine that you do not aspire to be that one teacher that changes someone's life, and if you do not..why are you a teacher?

If you hate kids, your own intellect would tell you to choose a career avoiding them.


ConcernedStudent said...

Why would you waste your time blogging about how we are belligerent f*** (you spelled belligerent wrong dumbass)? You should be spending your time helping out students instead of insulting them on here. You have cheated, screwed, and under-cut every single one of your students this year. And i speak for everyone when i say you were a douche to all of your students in class and made no effort to help any of us achieve our academic goals. Maybe you should learn to teach and be compassionate with your students. Respect goes a long way, and the only way people will respect you is if you respect them (too late). Have a nice life. Good luck with the inner-city s***hole they call a school in philly.


grapist said...

Students suck almost as much as teachers who think they're god and spend more time trying (and failing) to control their class than actually teaching. I feel bad for her and all the other bad teachers who just don't get that.


jcs002 said...

Dear... you,

Hey, I remember you. This is Jeff Shoolbraid talking, just so you know I'm not hiding behind a computer screen and just randomly bashing you. I'm not sure if you remember me, but you were by far the worst teacher I've ever had because you were simply a c***. Turns out my assumption was correct. Though, if I just sit here and call you names and such it really doesn't prove any points and makes me essentially as unintelligent as you. It also doesn't really solve too much, but now that it's out of the way, here are my just as pointless two cents: Students can be a pain, but it's your job to deal with them. So this means it's your job to deal with the a**holes, weird kids, drama queens, quiet kids, and so on. The students, on the other hand, don't really owe you anything. You see, as a teacher, the world should not revolve around you. You should revolve around the students' lives. Sure, maybe kids treat you like s***, or don't give a s*** in general as far as the class goes, but you have to remember the demographic here. You're teaching high school kids. These are the rebellious/self involved/self discovering times in there lives. They are transitioning from being kids to adults. So sorry if they don't exactly know how to go about being interested in a high school English class. You need to give them a reason to give a f***, and this starts with showing respect to them, which involves a little bit of extra work on your part. Though, if you're not willing to do that, I don't blame you. I for one don't know what it's like from a teacher's prospective like yours, and I'd believe you if you said it was tough. Maybe teaching isn't cut out for you though. It doesn't give you the right to virtually abuse your class via an internet blog, which is just tacky by the way. It also doesn't give you the right to rob you students of a solid high school education. It's not a students' job to please you, it's your job to get a student an A to the best of your ability in a reasonable fashion. So sure, some students may still not give a s***. If so, give them an F. Some students might still be a**holes, but I had a pretty good relationship with Silverfox and all the principles at the school (not in a bad way) and I know they're all more than capable with dealing with those kids. And sure, some kids still might be drama queens (and kings, lets keep it pc) but hell, that's life. I also heard that this little stunt is getting your fired, and to all the students and parents that you've pissed off over the years, I'm going to take this opportunity to say good riddance!

Sincerely,
Jeff Shoolbraid

PS. Presidents have something to do with politics, I hope you've learned this by now.


matt said...

wow ur future as a teacher is pretty muched f***ed at this point. i dont even go to east


style&music said...

Real Classy Ms. Munroe. I just have to say that I am very disappointed by this. I originally didn't completely loath you like the rest of the junior class, but my feelings have now changed. I don't appreciate how in a previous post you stated that describing teachers and administrators with four letter words was inappropriate, is describing your own students with these same words acceptable? How's that for a rhetorical question?

Also, how could you not have even thought to delete this? The worst of the posts are from a year ago, why didn't you delete them? It's understandable to want to talk about your day at work, but the internet, seriously? By the way, what is my "cooperative in class" comment mean?

"A complete and utter jerk in all ways. Although academically ok, your child has no other redeeming qualities." well I don't believe an hour and a half a day for half a year can really lead you to a point where you can see a person's full character, you can't make those types of assumptions.

"Asked too many questions and took too long to ask them. The bell means it's time to leave!" FYI your job is to teach.

and the classiest "Rude, beligerent, argumentative f***." you tried to throw in a few "big words" but the final four letter word makes up for it.

I am not going to call make up some "comment" to describe your teaching skills, personality, or character because I only spent an hour and a half each day for a semester with you. Just a small part of my day, and an even smaller part of my life. I can't judge you from just that... But your blog(this post alone) gives me a better and full picture.

P.S. How was my use of ethos, pathos and logos?


WhatThe.... said...

Hit the screenshot button so many times, it's borderline rape.


Laura said...

Why in gods name would you become a teacher if you have so many problems with all your students. This is insane, I'm a senior at cb east right now and I'm almost positive you're leaving this school with me after this year.. sad thing is, I'm actually going to do something with my life.. you just ruined your chances. It's really sad that a 17 year old girl like myself can be more mature than a grown freaking woman like you. I'm just glad i had Hendrickson and Rosini my first couple years at East, I couldn't stand the thought of someone like you secretly bashing me and my classmates. Shame on you.



HELL HATH no fury like a teenager whose self-esteem has been assaulted. Especially those who have been raised by wolves.

I will, however, award a couple of points to the commenter who upbraided Munroe's condemnation of problematic students in her blog with some of the same profanity she found objectionable in the classroom. That would be at least a middling command of logos, while I found this aggrieved student's attempts at pathos and ethos less compelling.

Then again, my wife and I were volunteers in Catholic youth ministry before Munroe even was in high school herself. We've seen it all -- and that was at church. I can only imagine. . . .

Then again, I don't have to. We have the cache of a beleaguered educator's blog from the front lines of American decline. The date: Dec. 2, 2009. It sounds about right to me:
That brings us to today. There were myriad problems with today's class proceedings; so many, in fact, that I won't even bother to circumscribe them here. For the sake of relevance, I will note only those bits that concern this lad. First, when I was checking vocabulary and another boy didn't have his, I mentioned to the unprepared kid that this is the 3rd week in a row he didn't do his work. He asked if it would hurt his grade. I told him it would, a great deal. Then the other kid chimed in and said, "Yeah! She ruined my grade last marking period." I said, "I'm sorry... I ruined your grade?" "Yeah." "No. YOU ruined your grade. It was your actions or inactions which earned you your grade. I think it's time for you to stop trying to pass the buck to other people all the time, and start taking responsibility for your own actions. All you ever do it blame others for what happens to you. You need to own it." He told me I sounded like his mom and should stop saying things like his mom would say. Then, he had his head down for most of the block. When he did finally raise it, he took out paper and--surprise!--wrote another note. After my lesson, when walking past his desk, I confiscated the letter. He tried to hold the page down. I sternly told him that he'd better let it go because I was, indeed, taking it. He tried to tell me that I had no right--that it was his letter. I said, "Actually, it's MY letter. This is MY time in MY class, and this is now MY letter." I took it and put it on my desk. I didn't even look at it. Moments later, he came up to my desk and picked it up as though to take it. I said, "You'd better put that letter back on my desk and walk away." We had a reprise of the "It's my property" conversation, but I said, "I suggest you put it down now because if you leave here with that letter you are most definitely getting written up for it." He said, "I was just going to rip it up and throw it out." I told him that I would take care of it. He then followed me to the door saying, "I'm waiting to see you rip it up. I'm watching.... Rip it." The bell rang. I fixed him with a stare and said, "This is now my letter. I will do with it what I want. The discussion is closed. Get out of my room." By this time, he was in the hall and the girl was coming over from across the hall. He said something to her like, "Yeah. I don't have the letter--" I interrupted and said, "--I have it. Now go." Then SHE started in, trying to get it from me. She goes, "Can I have my note?" I said, "No. It's my note. Goodbye." She said, looking annoyed, "But it's mine. Can't I just have it?" Me, getting more and more pissed off, "The note is mine. He wrote it in my class on my time. You two are always writing notes back and forth and texting through class. It's going to stop. You aren't getting this letter." He sort of pulled her away and said something to her. I can only assume he'd indicated the contents of the note to her because she came back, told me that she'd asked him to write it, and some other bunk. I interrupted a final time, a nanosecond from writing this chick up, too, for arguing with me, and said, "I don't know what the note says. I didn't read it and don't really care what's in it. I won't even read it. But neither of you are getting it back and I'm not going to discuss it with you further." The boy latched onto that, saying, "You didn't read it? Good. Because you'd cry. But ok, if you don't read it, good. Deal!" and pulled the girl away with him.
WHAT CAN one say? Apart, of course, from "We welcome our new Chinese overlords!"

Perhaps when they take over what's left of America, it will be safe for Natalie Munroe to teach once again.