The 1950s are coming back

Of course you want to go back to the 50s because you’re probably male also. You enjoyed affirmative-action even though it wasn’t called that.
Women didn’t have any recourse when they were abused. And what’s with this the left embrace of Islam? Why do you throw around such silly things? But as long as you can give one example of something and then make it fit everything it’s very difficult to have a discussion. Practically all pedophiles are men so shall I conclude that men are pedophiles?

 

What is the title of your book?

Old hippie, huh. Snap. (Sort of.)

One of the things I've noticed about education is that a few really enthusiastic teachers, who are give a free hand and some resources (money), can make a big impact on children's lives. It almost doesn't seem to matter what educational theories they're putting into practice -- constructivism, direct instruction, whatever -- it's the enthusiasm, the fact that they actually care, that it's not just a job, that can turn the kids on and get them really interested in the world. So much of education is, let's be honest, boring, routine, created in order to be easily tested. (I tutor math and science in the UK, and I have never had a tutee, and I have had hundreds over 25 years, who seemed to have picked up any interest in science at all from school science lessons -- and this in an age where science is turning the world upside down and inside out. I don't blame the teachers, they've got to follow instructions and teach to the test, and the tests are inane and awful.)

I try to follow educational research -- mainly in the area of mathematics education --- and so much of it is vacuous. Even the studies that supposedly follow good practice with respect to control groups -- the ones that ... ERIC is it? -- that Federal Government agency approves of -- don't seem to take into account the 'teacher effect' (I know this is a standard idea in educational research, but I'm talking about something more than just the 'teacher in the classroom', I mean the general atmosphere).

Some people you would probably appreciate knowing about: Daniel Willingham (You probably know about him already -- he has a column in American Teacher, the UFT magazine.) He's my go-to guy for what the cognitive psychologists have determined works and what doesn't. He doesn't seem to have a political axe to grind.)

You should read about Michaela School. I doubt it would be your cup of tea, but it seems to work for the kids who go there. However, whether it could be reproduced anywhere else, I don't know -- it's possible that its success -- assuming that it is successful -- is down to the charasmatic woman who started it, Katherine Birbalsingh. (I'm going to visit it next year along with a couple of full-time teachers. )

You ought to know about the late Siegfried Engelmann's work, as well. It's more in the line of Michaela School, so, as I said, probably something you wouldn't find congenial. Yet when Operation Followthrough actually looked at the results of different approaches to teaching, his method beat all the others. I'm not an uncritical partisan of either Engelmann's methods or Michaela School -- I don't have enough real-world in-front-of-the-classroom experience for that. But if you have the time take a look at either or both of these links, I would be interested in your opinions.

Classroom management is a big topic over here in the UK. I'll bet the issues are identical. There are several fairly recent best-sellers (in the ed world) on how to handle classrooms here -- I wonder if they poached any ideas from you?

 

You really embarrass me because you seem to know so much more about all these interesting programs, but being out of the classroom for so long has me reading other things ....like knee replacements etc (kidding) for obvious reasons i can’t tell you the book.....
I recently had one of the greatest experiences and it was kids I had my first years of teaching. 16 of them found me on Facebook and we met in New York. Last time I saw them they were 13and now they are in their 50s. I remembered every single one of them .
I am going to be in the documentary with a very famous person who i taught and I will send it to you privately....if we’re still friends when it comes out
But recently a reader emailed me and told me she was having horrible problems with her classes. I felt sorry for her so I gave her my phone number and told her to call me. She gets on the phone and says, “let me tell you what the animals did today” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and she kept referring to the kids as animals. I told her that she does not belong in the classroom and she might consider a job working for about veterinarian
You said you tutor...do you have another career? Sounds like you should be teaching at a college level!

 

You can't go home again, no matter how nice home was for you. Even if it was nice for you, it was not so nice for others.
Most of the changes since the 1950s have been steps forward, but not all.
We need to spotlight the changes that have not been good and try to deal with them.

One big change, although I don't how to deal with it, has been the loss of optimism we had in the 1950s. I was a teenager then, and read a lot of science-fiction. There was some dystopian fiction, mainly along the lines of a corporate take over of America, but most of it was optimistic.

It was taken for granted that we would go to the stars, have large flat screen color TVs on our walls, little tiny Dick Tracy telephones, flying cars ... a lot of those predictions have come true, but some time during the 80s ... maybe as a result of our defeat in Vietnam ... dystopian sci-fi -- eg Blade Runner -- became popular.
But there is no reason for such pessimism. Communism has collapsed, severe world poverty has almost disappeared, we're on the verge of dramatic breakthroughs in genetic medicine.

Right now, the Hard Left dominates our intelligentsia. They actually hate all this progress, because it gives the lie to their view of a decadent capitalism. At the moment, they're making a lot of progress ... but you can't fool life, and at some point, the pendulum will swing back toward common sense, towards the recognition of the achievements of civilization.

Or maybe it won't, but let's go down fighting.

 

I did teach at university for 25 years, in Computer Science. Then I took half-retirement and started tutoring in mathematics and science. I also do volunteer teaching in local schools, and ... even in my hand-picked class of the best and the brightest in mathematics, I have run into behavior problems -- mainly little irritating ones, where the kids talk to each other when they should be listening to me, but also worse. Nothing that a taser wouldn't deal with, but the school bureaucracy wouldn't let me have one.

The thing is, we are animals. One of your fellow New Yorkers said that each generation faces a barbarian invasion, in the form of its own children, whom it must civilize. I think we are seeing one of the 'unintended consequences' of modern hyper-individualistic capitalism, in countries that have not faced existential challenges for the last seventy years. I don't really have a Master (or Mistress) Plan to put everything right. However, I can say that the young people I have tutored -- obviously not a random selection, but not all middle class kids from wealthy parents by a long chalk -- have been very nice kids, with decent instincts. If we can just avoid a big war I believe things will work out.

 

But I imagine you are a white male.you you Saw the world differently...we all do. We all see through different eyes.
I also grew up during that time and I remember telling my class how I needed a higher average to get into Brooklyn college than boys did....they assumed I was angry but I explained that’s because I didn’t know any better. I have very few options, like being a nurse a teacher or a secretary. But I didn’t know any better. I rarely saw women in positions of power. ..and the language was male unless otherwise stated
It isn’t a hard left that hates all the progress it’s the far right when they see women and minorities blocking them from having the whole pie ..the pendulum is swinging backwards...women are once again fighting for reproductive freedom, racism and anti semitism are skyrocketing.

 

Oh Doug you sound like everyone from a previous generation. I grew up during “drugs sex and rock and roll”..my parents had the jitterbug and other things that would destroy . Kids can be rude and they always were but in the 50s it was blamed on something, in the 60s it was blamed on something else, in the 70s it was blamed on something else etc. kids are kids and they won’t always do anything to be different
When I Keynote I point out to teachers that the biggest change I have seen in education are the parents not the kids.
I know you pine for the good all days, but as a woman, I don’t. Black people do not paying for segregation etc. We tend to idealize the past.
I think the Internet has really changed culture

 

No recourse? That's bullshit.

Oh but look at you now. Foul mouths, abortions on demand, tattoos out the wazhoo, fat slobs, uncultured 'ladies' haha.....'we can do anything a man can do and more'.

 

I really can’t respond to this because obviously you’ve been damaged by women ..everything you describe is so sad because you probably believe it

 

I agree entirely about the Internet changing culture, and in many ways for the good. It's very hard for the dictators to keep information from seeping in to even the most tightly-controlled countries. Not just the internet, but digital technology in general, where you can put many gigabytes of information on a tiny card, is helping undermine authoritarian rule.

I personally have no desire at all to return to the 'Good Old Days'. I'm all for everyone being admitted to the full feast of civilization, and when a woman wins the highest prize in mathematics, I am delighted. I actually wrote to the woman in question, Miriam Mirzakhani, to ask if we could name the math club I was starting at the school I was doing volunteer teaching at, after her. She never replied. Now I know it was because -- or so I think -- she was dying.

The whole racism thing is much more complicated than people think. When the Black students from Texas Southern University began their sit-in at Weingarten's supermarket, in early 1960 as I recall, a friend of mine and I joined them. We were idiots,and almost caused a riot, and had to be rescued by a plain-clothes policeman from the Texas Department of Public Safety, who was irritated with us for almost turning what he observed, obviously approving, was a peaceful protest into a riot. This was a Texas policeman sixty years ago. Life is complicated. A few years ago in Texas driving from Austin to Dallas, I saw a Black highway patrolman giving a ticket to a white speeder. Enormous progress. The hard Left despise America, but show me another country which has gone so far in two generations.

There are some ugly, backward currents among some of the people who think of themselves as on the Right, no question. The United States has the capacity to develop a genuine mass-based far Right movement -- I reserve the word 'fascism' for a certain kind of far Right movement, one that presents a 'leftist' program as Hitler did, and don't use it lightly, but it could even be a fascist one. The fact that a significant number of police are non-white, that 30% of our military (and 20% of our officer corps) is non-white, and that these men are concentrated among the personnel with their fingers on triggers rather than spreadsheets, would play a role in constraining them, but if armed force becomes the final arbiter of who rules, it's going to be very ugly. At the moment, the hard-core racists, the Jew-haters, the white-sheet wearers, are shunned by most conservatives, despite what many liberals seem to believe. In terms of actual numbers, I would be willing to bet that there are more conscious anti-Semites among people who normally vote Democratic, than among Republican voters. In fact, among evangelical Christians, there is a very strong pro-Zionist current -- they are less critical (i.e. are not critical at all) of Israel than most American Jews are.

But the relentless growth of 'identity politics' among our intelligentsia -- something genuine liberals and even 'orthodox' Leftists have warned against in the past - could help to change that. Given a big American humiliation by China coupled with a big depression -- and we could see a genuine fascist or near-enough-to-fascism mass movement develop in the US.

Oh well. What's a 'Keynote' speech, anyway? I think it must be an American educational term. Over here in the UK we have "Professional Development" days, with speakers like yourself. By the way, if you want to see some of the problems we have over here, watch this. Interestingly, the same problems you have with Black inner city kids, we have here with white workingclass kids from deprived areas. (A piece of evidence about class vs race is the fact that here, Black young people whose parents are Afro-Caribbean do worse in our exams than young Blacks whose parents are African immigrants -- despite being genetically 'less Black'. But their parents came over to fill workingclass jobs, whereas African immigrants tend to be middle class.)

 

NO, it isn't BS. Wives were fair game, everyone pretended they didn't see it, claimed it was a husband's right, and the cops didn't interfere because it was between wife and husband inferring that wives were the possession of men.

IF women knew MEN in high places or were related to them they could seek recourse.....but not many women had men around who cared.

Denying history does NOT change it....

LOL! You sound so put out that women can do what men can do and your description of men is so APT, "foul mouths, tattoos out the wazhoo, fat slobs, uncultured"....as YOU said ""anything men do""....


And now women can do what men do, choose any career they want, go to college, get equal pay , be lazy, be uncultured....anything they want just as men have been doing since Adam...


BURNS doesn't it

 

Outwardly the 50s seemed ideal, but there was no equality for minorities or women. Problems like abuse, substance problems and crimes against kids were hidden for fear of not living up to some ideal. So No thanks, from what I’ve read and heard the 50s were not great.

If there was a way to combine equality with some of the values people did have back ...that would be a good thing.

 

Female equality. As a conservative, I'm all for it. Look what it gave us! Saved Britain from Socialism .. blessed be her name, peace be unto her!

 

How exactly is the black community better off now than it was then?

 

Don’t forget...

Aunt LGB

 

Lol, good pun it took me a minute to catch that.

Barney's kind of quirky so I can see I'm going both ways. It would be a fun reboot in today's environment.

 

The US and the world had just gone through quite a dramatic experience in WWII. Tens of millions were dead and many more were mourning and rebuilding after all the death and devastation. The US was also recovering from the Great Depression as new fiscal and social policies were instated to care for those in need. There was an explosion of industry tied to a great deal of pent-up demand and the then still fairly new fiat currency system allowing for much greater liquidity, investment and growth.

I don't know why you would imagine that period is about to come back. It is a very different environment today in every respect imaginable. The closest thing I could foresee would be settling down back to a more quiet, peaceful existence after all of this political turbulence and the long years of war in the Middle East. A lot of fools will have to settle down and we will have to get back to a feeling of optimism and satisfaction with our current situation for anything like the 1950s to return. Even then, our economic situation is not comparable. Perhaps this could come about if, say, we were cut off from foreign manufacturing and had to endure economic collapse and hardship that would follow. This might mimic our Great Depression and WWII situation a little bit, and we would be faced with a similar need to rebuild. But what would bring that about? It would be a stupid thing for us to do intentionally. WWIII might make it happen, but then WWIII would probably go nuclear and our future would resemble the fantasy world of Fallout more than it would the historical period of the 1950s!

 

I'll give you an anecdote, rather than quoting statistics.
Where I grew up, Blacks were not allowed to go to the public school nearest them. The schools were segregated by race.
They couldn't drink from the water fountains in the supermarkets -- or rather, they had to drink from the ones marked 'colored'. Same for bathrooms.
They had to sit in the back of the bus. Literally.
There were no black employees in the big department stores -- not public employees, anyway. We -- a group called the Progressive Youth Association -- picketed Foley's Department store with signs reading, "Don't Shop Where You Can't Work". We had "stand-ins" to try to force the local movie theatres to admit Blacks. They couldn't eat in the 'white' restaurants.
In the late 60s, one of the prominent Black leaders in Houston was a guy named Lee Otis Johnson. A typical race hustler, by the way, like a lot of Black Panthers then, although he wasn't a Panther. Liberals, unable to criticize anyone who is Black, would cave in immediately to him at meetings. It was painful to watch. You can read more about him here, but the main point is, he was a pain in the neck to the local police. So they got an undercover stoolie to buy a marijuana cigarette from him, busted him, and he got ... THIRTY YEARS in prison for it. I think he served four.
Couldn't happen today. Huge progress.
And the thing that I find amazing is ... a lot of this progress is due to liberals and leftwingers. But today, they want to say, everything is terrible, there has been no progress. Utter nonsense. We've had a Black President, for crying out loud. Conservatives would kill to get an equivalent of Obama, a savvy, intelligent Black political leader. Let me know when China or Russia or Germany elects their equivalent of a Black president, a Muslim.

 

You just spelled out NOT trying. What kind of juvenile BS is 'things didn't work out and we're not happy'? Do you think the success of a marriage is LUCK, or controlled by magical fairies?

No, I never said people shouldn't get divorced. Obviously, when addiction or abuse are present, and the broken person refuses to be healed, then divorce is the only option. BUT, why on earth would you choose such a person to marry in the first place? The idea is to avoid such people like the plague. It's not difficult ... when you have intact self-esteem and half a brain. They are easy to spot in a crowd.

Other than that, what reason would you have to break up a family? If the spouse is a reasonable human being who cares about staying married and is a good parent, any 'unhappiness' is of your own making.

As for marrying the first person you date ... it's not a bad idea. When kids (as in, late teens/early twenties) are brought up properly, have very solid self-esteem, and so aren't seeking validation and approval all the time, they are quite capable of making a lifelong success of an early marriage to their first love. A vast percentage of intact marriages start that way .. and in fact the stats tell us that they are the least likely to get divorced. The highest divorce rates are seen in those who marry after multiple other relationships.

 

The average weight of American women is 171 pounds.

https://fupping.com/tattooguy/2018/07/13/who-has-more-tattoos-women-or-men/

I rest my case.

 

Obviously you don't understand human nature. I can't believe, given all of your work amongst 'the poor', that you still think these people hate the welfare life, and would rather be responsible and hard working people.

 

Ah....so in your “mind” people can only get divorced if addiction or abuse occurs. Otherwise everyone should stay married no matter how unhappy each other is. And you accuse ME of being juvenile...hahahaha...you’re a laugh.

 

No, they can do whatever they like. If they actually believe that their 'unhappiness' (clearly of their own making, if their spouse is a reasonable person) is going to be magically cured by being divorced (hint: it rarely is), then they should go ahead and enjoy their regrets and loneliness and increased poverty (check the stats) etc. All while knowing they've massively harmed their innocent kids in ways they'll never fully appreciate .. because ... muh unhappiness.

 

And the laughs keep on coming. Thank you.

 

Not true, in spite of all our best effort jobs, relationships ect ect...sometimes just don't work out.
Championing irresponsibility might include admiring someone for choosing abusive partners over and over. Or someone who keeps quitting jobs because they are never emotionally fulfilled by the work.