Yesterday, I posted a story about a charter school in Miami founded by a rapper known as Pitbull. This fellow was lauded by NPR for his philanthropy in founding a charter school. The fact that he has no qualifications to run or create a school is of no matter. He is known for his vulgar language and his contempt for women. The school will be managed by a for-profit corporation that has become very rich in this new entrepreneurial venture called “charter schools.” Read the post, but more important, read the investigative reporting by Jersey Jazzman and Mother Crusader. Mr. Pitbull’s school is a real money-maker. So, hey, this is America! Anyone can open a school! Come and get the taxpayers’ dollar! No one is watching the store! This is called “reform.” Will the students study the works of the founding father, Mr. Pitbull?
This reader looked up some of Mr. Pitbull’s oratory and though that this printable selection should be posted as a plaque on the building:
| I hadn’t heard of Mr Pitbull before this, and so naturally I rushed to look up the lyrics of his songs. You are correct in saying that most of the lyrics are not worth repeating, but I thought this little excerpt from his 2004 song ‘We don’t care ’bout ya’ was relevant in this context:
We don’t care about yo clique Maybe this could be engraved on the new school’s signboard as a kind of motto. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That is the Charter School “MOTTO.” Thanks Pit Bull for letting us have your song and MOTTO. Now we can more easily focus on who you are. That is fantastic.
I love that you call him “Mr. Pitbull”. Will the students call him that or by some other word found in his lyrics?
Lisa, irony. Dignity.
Isn’t that his stage name, not his real name as is usual in entertainment and these kinds of name in rap especially. After all, you have to be the OG. Ever listen to Snoop Dogg?
Did you ever see the VH1 bio of him where he talks about selling drugs? Bravo, bravo Florida!! When will the taxpayers of Florida demand that their tax money is returned????
I don’t care about his music, but rather what the school is about. Making his lyrics the issue is an error. What is wrong with Andrei Agassi’s schools isn’t that he played tennis, but the schools themselves.
I care about his lyrics. He is should not be held up as a model for children. If a public school administrator or teacher wrote that and posted it in public, most likely heads would roll.
Those lyrics also reflect exactly what getting into education is all about for him and others. Few non-educator celebrities were interested in education until there was free money for the taking. If they want to be involved in education, they should sponsor needy public schools or open up their own private schools, not rob the public coffers.
If a public school teacher wrote and posted those “lyrics” to a FB page or twitter account, he or she would be looking for work.
Commercial music is nice for making money and having fun. I certainly spent a lot of time with music and in recording studios for free as they liked us but that is not the point now is it. This is about education as Michael Goldenberg has stated. Music is a part of the arts and helps with creativity as music is very creative. One of our friends dads was Henry Mancini’s arranger. We were lucky for our exposure at an early age to the best music of the time, I was born in 1947.
When it comes to Pit Bull and his school if he is not making a school with high quality, critical thinking students I don’t care how much money he has or anything else he can go. This is not about money except for educating our youth fairly and completely for the next generation to take over and make sure it gets better for ALL not, as is now being stated with the latest global warming information just released I have read, having, as some scientists are starting to say, the beginning of the “Next Great Die Off” as happened 65,000,000 years ago. This is not a joke and the study does not take into account the methane from the permafrost or the methane hydrate on the ocean bottom which is 35 times more global warming than CO2 and when it breaks down it does it into 4 CO2 molecules for another shot at us.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/rethinking-school-lunch/?hp
Nice story about a foundation helping kids in public schools eat better.
They actually interviewed the kids when they went into their school, instead of issuing directives from foundation headquarters and they don’t seem to be selling them anything. I’m not seeing any “branding” anyway, I hope they’re not selling product.
This may be a game-changer. Someone alert Arne Duncan 🙂
Please give us the link to Pit Bull telling people to sell drugs so that we can see how insane Florida is in giving him a charter. This totally fits with the DOE OIG study on Florida, Arizona and California having no accountability at any level on charter schools. The audit is ED-OIG/A02L002.
Can you post a link please, George?
I can’t find it on DOE site. Thanks.
Yo, don be dissing on the “Bull”! That man mix a mean rhyme, you know what I sayin? He’s sick! Dont be hating! I starting my own charter. I gonna call it “Cashflow Academy” Im gonna get young women workin there like in Hooters. Tha would be the bomb! That would be sick! With teachers like those, I would have graduated highschool just like the “Bull” Forget all that math and stuff. I hated that junk. Let’s learn how to rap and tag stuff. Instead of PE, students would learn MMA and fight it out in the cage. That would be the bomb! That would be sick! Where do I sign up?
Jon, youse gat tater ya yar. Way bad, OG. We don’t needs na edcaton. Jus rap n’ tag. This was fun. Thanks for some fun John. Only this fun is too real. Do you all remember Ebonics? I sure do. Only 10-12 of us stopped Ebonics and stupid math. Every educrat, superintendent and so called expert from the schools said this was the best thing they have ever seen. Lucky for us in California at the time we did not have ding dongs at the state board of ed. and they got rid of Ebonics and stupid math. This guy is Ebonics and stupid math all in one clean bad package. How does this happen in a rational world? Simply, it cannot, as this is how far down the rabbit hole we are. Time to come out of it.
Chiara, go to the DOE OIG website and then go to audits for 2012. It is ED-OIG/A02L002. You have to scroll down some. I could not find it at the DOE website. Funny, isn’t it since the Obamameister and the Duncanmeister are pushing charters and this shows them for the joke they are and Pitbull in the middle of the joke on us. Or if you have any trouble and/or want it right away email me at georgebuzzetti@gmail.com and I will sent that and the Parent Trigger laws for California and Florida to you so you, and it seems almost no one else, will know what they really say, not what those who do not know say. Facts are interesting things.
George, unfortunately Mr. Pitbull has a lot more in common with most of America’s youth. Old school teachers are part of “cultural lag.” We still want to teach in the traditional way, where kids actually learn things, take notes, listen, and broaden their minds. Most Americans kids want to do nothing- basically. There are of course a few outliers. Sometimes I get Russian students right out of Russia who take notes, actually listen in class and want to learn. It’s astounding! The same goes for Nigerians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, German, Afghani, French, and Indian students. Students from basically anywhere in the world are usually much better than our own “native” “homegrown” variety. 99% of the questions I get in class (from our own homegrown students) are, “Mr. _____, can I go to the bathroom?” Such young curious minds…They do love their cellphones though and always keep one hand in their packet touching their precious, glowing, vibrating devices. Our problem is cultural. Something has gone very wrong with American culture. It feels like a massive decline. I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it.
Let’s hope that being a Gangsta is not what it is all about from now on as if it is we are finished. This is a process which has been allowed to get out of control and what we are supposed to be doing is getting it back in control. If we don’t, considering what is going on in every other sector and worldwide, we, the human race, is in for a very bad time. Read just the global warming information just released which does not take into account the methane from the permafrost and the methane hydrate on the bottom of the ocean and we have a real, as they are now beginning to call it, the “Next Great Die Off.” This is real. For the first time man is capable of wiping himself out. No joke. This is why we must finish stopping them as we need those smart youth not being the leaders of the gangs, as it is now, but being those we motivate to solve the problems we face. They are smart, we are showing them that being a gangster is what is good. After all, don’t politicians act like gangsters? Don’t corporations act like gangsters? Don’t many school districts act like gangsters? So, what do we expect if this is their role models, even at school. They are not stupid. They know they are being ripped off. They tell me this. Recently, I was asked by some students at Santee High School to come outside and explain what I was talking about. I always have my laptop, an iPad is useless for real work, and paper documents and I show them the spreadsheets on the money and API scores over time and they see the stealing of the money and test scores and enrollment going to 1/2 and such and they say to me, and I never used the word, “You taught us critical thinking and no one ever did that before.” Too Kool, for me to hear, no one had ever taught them even what it was, they recognized it just as a part of learning, it was one of the koolest things I ever had happen. This is what drives you forward. Same with when my friend puts Zumba, for exercise as the kids like it, and the arts into a new school and now, at my suggestion to stop the need for remediation, in elementary schools as once they are addicted to it there is no remediation. At these early years their minds are sponges and it is natural not having to learn. Once that is in place all else follows naturally.
Screw Pit Bull and his scam on our youth. Being tied up with the crowd of scammers in Florida is enough for me. I have seen it too many times before.
Mr. Nobel Laureate himself was always up to his usual elegance and eloquence in lyric writing, but how any government on any level can allow this cretin to head up schools just goes to show how decadent our society has become.
Are the elected officials in Florida nothing more than a collection of Disney World character bobble heads? Who allowed Pit Bull to have a say in education with public funds? Goofy? The evil queen from Snow White?
How many thousands of children and how many generations will be wasted upon this piece of garbage and his opportunism?
Florida’s own Disney World must now come up with another attraction or ride: The World of Pit Bull. You get in a cart, buckle yourself in, ride on a track through a scary, spooky charter school in which children are taught the virtues of celebrity possibilities, and then through a public school, in which all the differently abled children and English language learners and overcrowded students are taking test prep in September, with tons of rote and drill and other robotic scripting.
Principal Pit Bull will do a few unannoucned observations and rap his potty mouth commentary to the teachers in front of their students.
Teachers, brace yourselves; here comes Monsieur Sewer Mouth.
Kiddies, quick! Cover your ears!
Mr. Pit Bull . . . . . He’s SO cool.
In a despicable, abhorrent, hateful kind of way . . . . .
There ought to be laws banishing him to dwell among his relatives, the crocodiles in the Everglades. Now that’s a scene worth the tub of popcorn: Pit Bull being thrown into the Everglades, the widest part of them, and forced to swim among his kind . . . .
I smell the super fresh scent of money laundering.
Welcome to the “Wonderful World” of easy money to steal. All you have to do is say “For The Children” and the floodgates open for you if you are the billionaires, that is.
The Pit Bull ride at Disneyland would be so Kool. Only would Disney allow his rap songs in the ride like “It’s a Small World?” It might increase their revenue and if so why not, from a corporate perspective?