Irish Translation Forum

breandan_ui_ciarraide wrote:

Redwolf wrote: Yikes! Where were you...Austin? Sounds like something people might say here in Santa Cruz or Berkeley.

Redwolf

Washington state actually, not too different from Berkeley

I grew up in Spokane, and it's still pretty conservative. The Puget Sound area, on the other hand (Seattle down to Oly, especially) is another story...just call it "Berkeley in the rain!" Of course, in Spokane, they also have to deal with the REAL Aryan nations just across the border in Idaho, so they may be a bit hyper-sensitive these days as well. Those Aryan nations
groups are seriously scary!

Redwolf

While we're talking about Ebonics, Aryan stuff, and being labeled a skinhead anti-everything person, let me vent for a minute..

My school is about 50% white, 25% black, and 25% Hispanic. (I live pretty far from my school, I live in an all white, Irish-Catholic neighborhood) anywho, when I was a freshman, I got beat up by 3 or 4 black gangbangers while using the pisser. And when I say beat up, I mean beat up. Bloody nose, lip, black eye, bruised ribs, etc.

You see, I went to an all white Catholic grade school and I had never seen a black person before (except on TV) until I graduated 8th grade and started high school at Omaha Central High (my current school). Now I'm not saying that's a bad thing, because I realize that I needed to embrace "diversity".

But getting beat up every week by those black dudes just gave me an EXTREMELY bitter attitude towards blacks in general. I used to be an extremely racist person my freshman and sophomore years because I was a puny little Irish kid who got beat up every day by that certain "racial group". Some of my friends thought I was a neo-Nazi or something and a skinhead.

Now that I'm a senior in high school (and now that I'm over 6 feet tall ) I have met a lot of very nice black kids. I don't hate them as a group now as much. I just hate the individuals who used to kick my scrawny arse every day. And I also know a lot of Hispanics. (I knew a lot of Hispanics when I went to my Catholic grade school, so I've been around them) South Omaha (my neighborhood) is pretty much 3 cultures all mixed together: Hispanic, Italian, and Irish. (Odd combination huh?)

So, that's my little speal on things. Hope I didn't piss anyone off.

Interesting Tom. We never had these problems going to school in Ireland, although of course there was the usual teenage bullying and fights. So did these black kids pick on other white kids as well or was it something they didn't like about you?

When I was a kid, I used to get beat up by the girls from the other side of the main street (no one to this day is sure why there was all the hostility between the two sides of the street...we were all pretty much of the same race, religion and economic sector -- i.e., dirt poor. It was just that, if you lived north of Mission, you were a target for anyone south of Mission, and vice versa). Then I went to a private girls' school on Spokane's south side and found out that I (and the girls who used to beat me up) was considered a "Hillyard Hood"...the lowest of the low. I didn't get beat up, but for the first three years I was teased and tormented by other Catholic girls who lived in million-dollar homes.

Seems no matter your race, religion or ethnic background, there's someone out there who wants to hate you. Best thing to do is (as you've found) to learn not to hate back.

Redwolf

Redwolf wrote: In the public school my daughter was in, the teachers wouldn't correct spelling or grammar, because the powers-that-be thought children "shouldn't be traumatized by being told that their spelling or grammar is substandard."

That's amazing!! I find that incredible, how could people be so stupid??

Does this still happen?

Ailill wrote:
That's amazing!! I find that incredible, how could people be so stupid??

Does this still happen?

Sadly, yes. One of the problems with being a liberal/progressive in America is that all of these politically-correct bleeding heart pantywaists are always around to give your political ideology a bad name. I went through 2 1/2 years of education courses at university, and I finally had to quit because of all the noxious political crap like what has been described above. Aparently, teachers -- in their worldview -- aren't supposed to teach, but instead build the child's "self-esteem." Bullshit. Children build self-esteem by doing esteemable things, not by having some pantywaist blubber to them that they're perfect just the way they are, so they never have to grow or change or learn, and so when they're confronted by a real challenge (like real life) they crumble and give up.

God! I HATE people like that!

Can't they be fired for not doing ther job? ie teaching??

The mind boggles here. No wonder people complain abut the dang gubbmint wasting their taxmoney.

In most cases, they can't be gotten rid of easily at all. Now, I am a firm supporter of unions and organized labor, but teachers' unions have had the tendency to become teachers' mafias. Once a teacher gets tenure, it's next to impossible to get rid of him or her, no matter how incompetent they may be. I'd say about 1/3 of the teachers I had in the public school system should have gotten the sack.

Ailill wrote:Can't they be fired for not doing ther job? ie teaching??

The mind boggles here. No wonder people complain abut the dang gubbmint wasting their taxmoney.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? The trouble is, the establishment that trains and employs the teachers is what's pushing this junk. This goes well up past the administrative level to the state government level. Often, the teachers themselves don't buy it, but they have to teach to it, because otherwise they WILL get fired.

The teachers' unions don't help, I'm sorry to say. While a lot of what they stand for is good (decent wages for teachers, health care benefits...you know the U.S. doesn't have any kind of National Health Service, right?...etc.), they also have made it very, very difficult to oust a teacher who isn't doing his or her job. My daughter's second grade teacher was actually psychologically abusive to the children, and I and several other parents tried like crazy to get her fired, but no luck...she had tenure, and that was that.

In my area, schools that encourage students to work to their highest potential are called "elitist." There is one public charter school that offers an accelerated curriculum, and it's constantly under fire from locals, who insist that "all children are equally gifted" and that "no child should have his self-esteem destroyed by actually being made to work to standard." I'm hoping my kid gets in there after next year, but it's done by lottery,and there are a lot of hopeful parents out there. Homeschooling is the only other option, as private secondary schools here cost upwards of $16,000 per year.

Just makes you want to move to the good ol' U.S.A., doesn't it? (yes, I'm being sarcastic). My husband and I occasionally (half-jokingly...but only half!) talk about the possibility of emmigrating, but I don't think that will actually happen. Our families are here, and at least we don't owe money on this house...but it is just about enough to drive you crazy sometimes!

Redwolf

This is why so many of us homeschool. It's odd, but the supposed "backwards" mentality of living on a farm and educating your children in the home actually is being proven to turn out upstanding, hyper-educated, hardworking honourable folks. Guess it goes to show that 8,000 years of known human history held onto that for a reason