After a career in education in Pennsylvania, Arnold Hillman and his wife Carol decided to move to Hilton Head, South Carolina, after their retirement. They spent 35 years advocating for children in rural schools.
Here are some unsettling first impressions, which Arnold wrote for this blog:
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY ?????
This will be the 10th week that Carol and I have lived in South Carolina. It just seems like we have been getting settled in, which means unpacking boxes, buying new furniture, reordering our medications and going to copious doctors. The travel through the medical esplanade has been an awakening. We have concluded that the medical care here is superior to that which we received in Harrisburg.
It appears that docs here use the most advanced technology. It is difficult to conceive how much more we will find out as we run through them all. I am now enthused about how I might take the age spots off my hands, or eliminate the need for specs. I was even happy that I will now be able to eliminate some of these pesky growths on my arms and head without having them frozen off. In some ways these are positive things. You can figure out why they might not be.
We are living in a dream world. The community was built starting in 1995. It has every amenity you can think of. It has encouraged us to get into good physical shape. It has so many activities that some people have to take tranquilizers just to keep up. We will not be doing the club circuit as yet. We are more interested in what is going on outside the gates of the community than inside it.
What we found is rather sad. We understood when we moved down here, that Hilton Head Island is an extremely wealthy community. The first bizarre item is that there are tons of thrift shops. I guess when the wealthy change their home décor; they must get rid of their former furniture. It is also a place that houses many older people. That means when they pass (a southern expression) the items in their homes become grist for auctions, so that relatives can turn them into cash. There are even booklets with the names and locations of most of the thrift shops on both Hilton Head and Bluffton (where we live).
Carol and I are pretty much convinced that what we know as “Southern Charm” is just a cover name for racism. The county that we live in is next door to a very poor county. The kids in the schools there – they have county school districts, are 85% minority. In 2010, the graduation rate for the high schools in that county was 39%. Can you believe that, 39%? The well to do and mostly white county, in which we live, serves 21,000 students and is growing at a rate of 500 more students per year. Its schools are either new or are well turned out. Some of the elementary schools that have some poverty seem not to be as well resourced as some others.
The animosity of the community in the poor county can be viewed at every school board meeting. Most of the time, the white board members are attacking the school superintendent. She is African American. She is also very talented and has raised almost every major educational marker since she came here 5 years ago.
Because of her desire to improve the education of the children, she has embarked on a journey that has improved the district as a whole, but has angered those who enjoyed the fruits of a dilapidated system. Things like nepotism had run rampant. The hiring of those without the proper certifications were daily occurrences. School district economic issues were handled behind closed doors. People in the business office were not professionals and budgeting was helter skelter.
This appeared to be o.k. with a board that had seen significant turnover and co-terminus with superintendent turnover.
When the new superintendent arrived from being an assistant in a large city in South Carolina, she began to do away with nepotism. She dispensed with the uncertified staff and got rid of some of the employees that were there only because Uncle Louie insisted on their being hired. This began a minor conflagration with those whose reason for being on the board was to somehow influence the district to send business to them or their friends and family members.
As things started to improve, those who see African Americans with education as “uppity” wanted this all to stop and wanted to put her in her place. This all has a familiar ring to it. At the last election, most of the new board members had a beef with the superintendent. One new member wanted to have her daughter be the homecoming queen, even though she had lost. The mom wanted the superintendent to declare her daughter the winner.
Another member was a longtime volunteer from the wealthy side of the community. He worked at the high school and presented information he had gleaned there to make public presentations about how things were going so poorly. He was asked by the teachers to please leave.
I believe that South Carolina is the only state that buys its buses for all of its school districts. The buses that they purchased are usually used ones and last time they were those from Tennessee. Of the 30 some odd buses in the county, 20 of them are over 20 years old and have over 300,000 miles on them. This puts pressure on rural schools, because you might have some dough to lease other buses, but if not, you are stuck with the ancient ones. If you buy your own buses, the state removes THEIR buses one for one.
Some of our neighbors here in Disneyworld for adults, have never seen or experienced racial bias. I was forced to tell them that they did not look like the people who were being discriminated against. It is our experience that African American women are more likely to tell you what’s going on than African American men. I believe that is because it falls on their children to battle the forces that want to keep them in their place. The moms know what’s ahead for their children and have their feelings on their sleeves.
Carol and I may have some small understanding of discrimination. We have felt it as a result of living in rural communities where there were few or no Jews. There were a few incidents in the schools they went to. They were taken care of by the principals. Sometimes it’s good to be the superintendent of schools. Even the principals began to understand.
We went to a specialist for Carol’s issues in Savannah. Some of the preliminary testing was done by an African American woman in her forties. As the test was quite long, we were able to strike up a conversation with her. I guess, as patients, we were not anyone that she would have to worry about. She was quite frank with us about how the color of your skin meant more to people than what your skills were. She did not complain about having been passed over for a job. She explained that the kind of discrimination that goes on in the hospital must be seen with a wider eye.
Her view was that most of the jobs in the hospital, including physicians and nurses, were the province of those that controlled things. The city itself was set up so that only certain people were permitted to rise to the top. Even with an African American as mayor, the system was always the same. There was kind of a glass ceiling that everyone was just supposed to obey.
There was little of the outward prejudice that one might think was there, but it is more insidious and much less on the surface. Greetings with the terms, ma’am, sir, and so on are plentiful, but the real lack of respect is what happens after the introductions.
“The Corridor of Shame” was a documentary about the schools along rte. 95 in South Carolina. It extends from the North Carolina border to the border of Georgia. It is rife with poverty and schools with insufficient funds. It was also the subject of a lawsuit based on the Abbeville School District that began in 1993 and was concluded just last year. The Supreme Court of South Carolina voted 3-2 for the legislature to produce adequate funding for its schools. The legislature was given to February 2016 to come up with a plan.
The legislature has said that it had no intention of fulfilling that order.
88% of those school districts children are minority. Looks like another victory for Southern Charm.
Northerners without your direct experience in SC will find this hard to relate to. I am a relocated Yankee in the South for over 15 years, and, although the counties I am acquainted with are not like the one in your blog, I have no doubt that this scenario is wide-spread in more than just SC. Thank you for sharing this rarely-mentioned area of Southern shame.
I retired to the Gulf Coast near Pensacola, and I can relate to the resale shops and abundance of pay loan store fronts. There are also many white Christian schools whose real intention is to provide an opportunity for parents to choose a school without minority children. Part of the Southern hospitality is the “good old boy Christian network” that refused to expand Medicaid to the poorest residents of these states. The poor in these states must depend on the largesse of the local churches. Other than than they must pull themselves up by their boot straps, if they could only afford the boots.
It’s not just the South, though. This could describe Utah, except that the persecuted minority is Latino/a, not African American.
Here’s an example of Southern Hospitality: http://www.salon.com/2015/10/27/come_on_im_going_to_get_you_up_south_carolina_high_school_resource_officer_brutally_attacks_student_for_sitting_while_black/
Wondered when that was going to come up. Those confrontations are more common than the public believes. It seems like opinions are split between an officer doing his job to arrest a disruptive student to a brute using excessive force against an innocent child.
Having been in high risk settings and watched “children” send teachers and other students to the ER, it is tough to watch. But a major reason we pulled our own children out of a school and found another. The fights, assaults on teachers, drug raids, and personal threats to our own kids was too much. Our family values education and other students (and some parents!) did not.
Not sure the best solution to handle disruptive students.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see how flipping an unresisting student on her head, still in her desk, at the risk of breaking her neck, and then throwing her across the room could reasonably be construed as “doing his job”.
Yes, it is good the public is shocked by this video. The physical confrontations are always messy and unpredictable. It is watching sausage being made and opens a window into what teachers in many schools must try to address daily in their classrooms. I was less shocked and more saddened that there are not more resources, better training, and alternatives to handling disruptive students.
I would be curious, since this is a forum for education, what others would do to handle a disruptive student who refuses to respond to the teacher nor leave the classroom when asked by the administration? I would be most interested in other teachers who have been in these potentially explosive situations or high risk settings. I’ve never really found a great solution for some of these students.
I’m not condoning this man’s behavior, and he shouldn’t have approached an angry teenager and “help her get up”. And before anyone comments, she was not innocent. If administration needed to be called to get her removed, she was not. She may not have been acting out in a wild and crazy manner, but that doesn’t mean she was innocent. The officer should have told her to get out of the seat and leave the room before this (and maybe he did – videos didn’t show this). Or perhaps a staff member close with that student could have stepped in to try and reason with the kid. Or maybe the girl should have just got out of her seat.
We don’t know the entire story. The one thing I noticed in the video, playing devil’s advocate, is that before she was flipped out of the chair, the teenager slapped the officer. Now, of course, being slapped doesn’t mean flip the girl out of the chair out of anger for being slapped.
All of this could have been avoided if the girl did what she was supposed to do. Regardless, both of them were way out of line.
When I was teaching and a student refused to step out (this didn’t happen much), I’d call security. The student usually left after yelling, etc. Security sometimes had to carry students out, or pin young men against the wall who were threatening people to get them to settle down. It’s not always pretty.
These situations are frustrating when an adult (wrong or right) is given all the attention and the spotlight is left off of the student. The kids aren’t all angels, but professionals need to remain professionals and handle things appropriately.
MV,
As I responded to fb postings of this video last night. There is no excuse whatsoever for this officer’s action, hell, even the sheriff’s office stated that the girl (and yes, she is still a girl at 15) had not been violent at all.
But my concern lies with the fact that the administrator did not handle this situation correctly at all. First, when it became apparent that the student wasn’t going to cooperate the admin should have instructed the teacher to take the rest of the class to the auditorium, cafeteria or any other room available. He should have had the counselors on hand to help the student, and should have immediately had someone contact the parents to get them to the school ASAP. First give the counselors a chance to work their magic (and yes sometimes it does seem to be magical how a well trained counselor can work with recalcitrant students). That probably would have been enough to get the student at least to go down to the guidance office with a counselor to wait for her parents to arrive. If that didn’t work, then the admin should have waited for the parents to arrive to start working with them.
All of those things would more likely than not have obviated the need to use the strong arming tactics of the SRO (who according to reports was known for harassing African American students and parents and who currently has a lawsuit pending for such harassment). What the hell was that SRO doing in the school to begin with considering those facts? Again an administrative screw up.
If I were counseling the girls parents I would suggest they sue the school and the officer for gross negligence and assault and battery. The district set itself up for this to happen, and guess what, it did.
“The one thing I noticed in the video, playing devil’s advocate, is that before she was flipped out of the chair, the teenager slapped the officer.”
Where on earth do you see that? I’ve watched at least half a dozen different videos – on each one she is sitting passively before he grabs for her.
Yes, the room should have been cleared. These incidents are shocking. If this were not recorded, we wouldn’t be talking about it. But this also in many people’s minds will justify “no excuses” and parents leaving districts with too many disruptions. There comes a point that the school spends more time on behavior problems than learning.
My family values education. But we had enough of a school with these incidents, or worse, daily. The lawsuits you mention were filed, but usually by families of students causing problems. Calling parents was useless as they weren’t much better. Because of the lawsuits, MY kids were put at risk and my son assaulted by the very same people bringing the suit against the school. The school never took action – for fear of legal action.
So we left. Other families fed up with disruptions are slowly leaving. Teachers are burned out. Good teachers are exiting. The school deteriorates and everyone is worse off.
Exactly, Duane. There were FAR better ways to handle this. That girl, and others in the room, could have been seriously injured. The video scared me to death.
Duane,
I am ususally in agreement with you but I take issue with your response. I don’t pretend to know the entire story other than what I have seen very briefly on TV. I do not know who called for the officer although assistance was requested. I do know that students now are becoming increasingly resistant to the “adult is in charge” understanding that has been in place since we have been upright. I teach in a Pre-K-5th grade elementary school, one high in poverty. In recent years I have seen even my little bitties decide that they are going to do what they want to do no matter how we try to manage their behavior. This is happening with alarming frequency. It is
something that can be quite upsetting to the other students.
At some point we all come in contact with law enforcement officers. When I have, you had better believe that I am respectful and compliant. Just like the child you ask to toss the chewing gum in the trash can, if they do it, that’s all there is to the story. It’s when they continue to resist whatever they are asked to do that things begin to go haywire. I am not suggesting in any way that the officer’s actions were okay however, the young lady involved had better learn that we have rules and laws and ultimately the people who enforce them are in charge at that moment.
The situation described with the young lady on the phone behaving in a non compliant manner clearly needed to be de-escalated. We do not and may not ever know this student’s history. An entire class should not have to be disrupted and moved to accomodate a student seeking attention. If that were to happen frequently, it would become an even more frequent tactic used by students desiring an exit strategy from the perceived tedium of the classroom.
Students should aways be treated in a repectful manner and they in turn should respect those who are legally in charge of them. Civility is essential to our society.
Just my two meager pennies worth…
Ms. Librarian. I agree with you. I don’t condone the actions of the officer either, but I have witnessed many kids do whatever they want and act anyway they want. Throwing tables, punching teachers, ripping clipboards out of teachers’ hands and throwing them back at them, cursing teachers and administrators out, threatening teachers we’re the norm in the city school I taught in. I guess it is this experience that numbed me to the video posted. I’ve witnessed students assault our principal and security guards.
Again, I’m not advocating for the officer’s behavior, but I’m not supporting the student’s behavior either. And yes, she’s a teenager at 15, but she also knows how to act.
Dienne, the girl slaps the officer right after he tries to pull her out of the chair (I played the video in slo-mo, and this is what I believe I’m seeing), which is before she flipped backwards in her desk. I’m not saying he should have tried to pull her out of the chair, but she refused to leave the classroom. She had no right to slap an authority figure. One could argue that the girl was looking for trouble (and unfortunately, I’ve known students who have looked for trouble, though luckily only a few).
And I strongly disagree that all of the other students should have been escorted to another room while this girl gets talked to. The world doesn’t stop for you, girl. The other students weren’t the problem and I don’t agree with the message that would be sent to them due to removing them from their classroom of learning because of one defiant student.
But, some of us may have to agree to disagree with this topic 😎. This is just my $0.02 based on my biased experience working in an inner city high school!
But, to be honest, my mother would have never pressed charges on this man. My mother would have beat my a** because not only did I not do what I was told (which was to leave), but also because I laid my hands on the officer who grabbed me to get me out of the seat because I refused to comply.
So *after* he grabbed her and manhandled her, and in the split second before she’s flipped on her head, she “slaps” at him? Cripes. What do you think *you* would do in that situation? Are you human?
Some of you may need to think a bit about why kids, particularly minority kids, are (if true) becoming increasingly more “disruptive” and resistant to adult “authority”. Might it have something to do with “no excuses”? (Incidentally – I don’t see how this “justifies” “no excuses” – this video *is* “no excuses” in action). Might it have something to do with the mind-numbing drill-and-kill test prep curriculum they’ve been subject to from day one? Might it be the fact that even if they jump through every damn adult hoop, they still have few prospects for good jobs, and they’re still likely to get hassled, arrested or killed for the color of their skin? Might it be because even those who are able to get into college won’t be able to afford it and will end up with crushing debt? Given today’s social forces, I have to wonder about the mental health of any young people who *don’t* have a “bad” attitude.
This sort of shocking abuse of authority brought to bear by a white law enforcement official upon a person of color would certainly never happen up in the progressive northeast or Midwest!
:huge eye roll:
We Northerners don’t generally make any claims to being genteel, proper ladies and gentlemen. In fact, we tend to be rather proud of our rough-around-the-edges ways.
Dienne,
I am human. As a teenager I would have given up my phone (which I had to do in the past). What would I have done in this situation? I would have gotten out of my seat. The officer said for the girl to get out or he would get her out (paraphrased). If I were told that, I’d just get up.
Also, I’m not disagreeing with your “no excuses” points; however, there was no reason for the student and officer to act the way they did. His repercussions are far greater than hers, and yes, she needs to be disciplined.
We don’t need to make excuses for kids. Sure, we can be empathetic for what they’re dealing with (and help them deal), but not make excuses. All the girl needed to do was hand over the phone/get out of the seat. 😎
On the other hand, the officer should not have reacted the way he did. Period.
I don’t begrudge anyone a happy retirement, but there are economic consequences for communites when retirees relocate to warmer climes.
The retirement “over 55” enclaves are part of the problem for schools and municipalities because they often negotiate lower tax payments on the pretext they use fewer services. Adding to that, retirees moving from their home communities in northern states take their tax dollars and their community spirit with them. It’s a lose-lose, IMO.
It is funny that you make this comment, given that all public employee pensions in New York State, even for the 10,000 or so (and rising fast) retirees who receive a $100,000+ annual pension, are entirely exempt from state and local (NYC, Yonkers) income taxes, and this perk was “negotiated” precisely because of whines that it wasn’t fair that retirees skipping out to low-tax, right-to-work states like FL and SC and TX were getting to keep more of their money.
If you stay in New York State when you retire and are eligible for a pension, will you voluntarily contribute to the state treasury the equivalent of what you would pay in tax on that income? We’re all in this together!
I am just as alarmed by the non reaction of the other students in the class. It seems as if they barely gave a look to what was happening. Crazy!
the 100k plus pensions aren’t from teachers!
That is true; there aren’t many classroom teachers getting six-digit pensions. Most of those go to superintendents, district admins, and principals (for now; many more teachers will be joining the club during the next decade or two).
However, there are many teachers getting a pension well in excess of the median household income of their community. Yes, sure, this benefit was freely negotiated for the good of the public. But do you think it’s fair? Our schools in New York are starved for resources, remember.
Brad, I noticed that too. There are many reasons I’m sure, too. I can’t speak on the reasoning in this situation, but when I taught and had situations with classroom disruptions or a random fight, my students were always calm. I attribute it to my calmness and my being strict/no-nonsense from a classroom management standpoint. The kids knew I didn’t play games. In fact, there were some cases where a student was rude/disrespectful toward me and other students would out that student in their place (obviously I’d talk to the student later about their outburst). My same students would have gone crazy in a less managed class (and I’ve witnessed it). Just my $0.02.
One of the students is looking down, shielding his eyes. Another is filming this, and released or posted it. What about the teachrr–scared to death? This man should be in jail– the officer, that is! I hope the parents sue the cap out of him or press assault charges!
Brad,
From my reading the girl was new to the school. Notice that she is sitting off to one side, no one within a desk of her. No one really knew her to feel comfortable to say anything. Other students have come out and said that they were extremely afraid of what was going on.
“I am just as alarmed by the non reaction of the other students in the class.”
Apparently one other girl tried to stand up for her. She got arrested too.
I don’t agree with the exemptions on income or property taxes. The list in NYS seems ever-growing, too, of groups entitled to extra discounts. Furthermore, the exemptions seem especially aimed at school taxes, not just across the board.
That was my comment above, btw. I forgot the “in NYS” before posting.
brad,
The non reactive students were either in a class with good classroom management and high expectations or so inured to that type of thing through”reality TV” or some other daily exposure to violence real or simulated. Sadly this too is becoming the norm.
Like most of Tim’s claims, his current one that in the not-too-distant future teachers in NY will be earning six-figure pensions is straight-out false, and is presumably made to buttress the charter shilling and trolling which appear to be his sole reason for commenting here.
The top salary for teachers in NYC is a little over $100,000 (achieved after twenty-two years of service, meaning that only a tiny percentage of any teaching cohort will ever reach it). The pension formula as it currently stands would provide a teacher with thirty years experience with a pension of roughly sixty thousand dollars a year. Generous (but keep in mind that pensions are deferred compensation, a form of back-loaded pay intended to make up for the lower salaries, relative to people with similar education in the private sector, that teachers accept during their working years), but far from six figures.
The above figures are for teachers who are in pension Tiers III and IV, who also happen to be those veteran teachers most targeted by so-called reform. Those who started later (we’re now up to at least Tier VI, I believe, thanks to Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew’s pitiful negotiating) will take longer to vest, and will have to work longer in order to earn a full pension. It also ignores the political pressures so-called reformers have brought, and will continue to bring, to eliminate defined-benefit pensions for teachers entirely, replacing them with the 401K plans that Tim’s precious charter schools prefer.
But then, Tim is not here to inform, but to deflect and misdirect.
Michael, you either misread or misunderstood a critical piece of information from my original post—I said New York STATE, not New York City. The median salary in a nontrivial number of NYS districts is $125-135K+, and in 10-20 years it will cross the point where six-digit pensions are routine.
Whether an individual teacher’s pension is $20,000, $40,000, $80,000, or higher, it is completely exempt from New York State and local (NYC, Yonkers) income taxes. This could be justified, perhaps, if New York teachers didn’t receive Social Security benefits, but they do. They also have access to a supplemental 403b-style matched defined-contribution fund for which the taxpayers of New York guarantee them an annual minimum return of 7.5%. Boy, my family really could have used something like that at several points during the last 15 years!
Sharon let us know where she stands. If you feel the same way as she does, it wouldn’t mean that you’re right when you complain about schools being starved of resources (at $26,151 per student in NYC!) and “class warfare,” but it would mean that you are at least intellectually consistent.
Oh, look, while we were talking another source of good paying private-sector jobs moved to a state with a vastly lower tax burden– http://blog.timesunion.com/business/ges-fort-edward-factory-to-move-to-florida-by-end-of-january/70012/. Something to think about before you write a response claiming that we should all have tax-free pensions and guaranteed floors for our investments.
Tim, maybe we should turn all schools into charters where the CEO makes half a million a year and teachers don’t stay long enough to ever see a pension.
Primary residents of Hilton Head are exempt from any property taxes used to fund schools.
I to am a Northerner retired here in 2003.Seems like this good ole boy mind set hasn’t changed. The powers that be do not take well to us usurpers clamoring for change. Sad really No funds for education or roads. Why are these folks reelected.? Consider this One Trey Gowdy hails from S.C.Over 23 communities on the coast have voted No to drilling, yet their wishes are ignored.SMH
I took a special education teaching job in Beaufort, SC in 1973. What an eyeopener this was. I met Pat Conroy who had written a book ‘The Water is Wide’, which was made into the movie ‘Conrack’ – describing the seperate and unequal education system of Beaufort County Schools, which included out-islands and Hilton Head. Not much has changed since the for blacks. White children attended, what I called segregation academies, and black children were educated in some of the worst public schools. Some white children attended public schools, but did not stay long – military bases.
My conversations with Pat Conroy about his struggles to get support and resources from the BoE were almost identical to mine. My elem. students were housed an an old dilapidated one bedroom house, no heat, no materials, splinters everywhere, peeling paint (lead) and no running water. We had to take a long hike to enter a larger stone building, in the same bad condition, to use the restroom and pick up the donuts, and bad lunches.
I decided to attend every BoE mtg and expose our situation. My fate was similar to Pat Conroy’s – harrassed, physically pushed down the stairs by the superintendent, numerous visits by administrators and threats of being fired. I lasted two years, bought my own AC for our classroom, and was threatened repeatedly…but, still they installed a giant buzzing gas heater in our classroom.
To make matters worse, my assistant was a sculptor who created a bust of Robert Small, a black politician, after the Civil War, who lived in a beautiful house downtown Beaufort. My assistant was harrassed, run off countryoads, run out of town, and her politically well-connected husband divorced her, and she lost custody of her two children. They hounded her for being a ‘n-lover’. She escaped to Soho, NYC. National news organizations came to the unvailing of her sculpture. It is still there today.
Our experience was only a small window to this area – not much has changed. Poverty is high, and ‘everybody knows their place’.
Bet, Arne & Obama would still blame their teachers for low test scores.
BTW, Pat Conroy’s movie, Conrack, was never shown in this county. Verboten!
The super & BoE reigned for years to come.
LOVED THE CHILDREN and their parents.
The more things change, the more they remai the same.
I am not familiar with Penn. attitudes, but growing up in schizophrenic Indiana (large clan in ’20’s and Underground Railroad) followed by a year in the South, there was a real difference. However, some Blacks I knew said they preferred the South as they at least knew who their enemies were. Let’s drop the S/N and deal with the real. Correcting racism anywhere is not about state of origin.
Meant for Ogden
West Coast Teacher, That’s exactly my point concerning dropping the S/N discussion. A quick internet search can show you that there is a great wealth of information concerning the racial disparity of funding in Pennsylvania right now, as well as rural versus urban funding issues.
The authors of the original post left a state that has historically near identical conditions and yet somehow decide to publish a piece that point blank says that they are convinced that Southern Charm is code for racism based off of those same conditions also being present in the South.
I too believe that correcting racism isn’t about the state of origin, I wish that the author of the original blog post felt that way as well. They clearly think it’s a uniquely Southern problem.
Brett Gadsden of Emory has written an excellent book “Between North and South: Delaware, Desegregation and the Myth of American Sectionalism” and touches on the creation, perpetuation and even the contesting of the idea of “southern exceptionalism and northern innocence” in the arena of racism in the public schools.
In publishing this piece any hope the author might have had for working as advocates in their new home is diminished. They became the other side of the trope that they seem to wish to perpetuate…the Hypocrite Yankee come to show us the error of our ways and they did so with the same tact as a right wing jerk asking where all the father’s are.
From the Education Trust: http://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGaps2015_TheEducationTrust1.pdf
Based off of data, as opposed to confirmation bias, it is far more likely that educational advocates who leave South Carolina to retire in Pennsylvania would be the ones to find “unsettling first impressions.”
We as a nation all have work to do on this issue. Perpetuating ugly regionalism is not going to accomplish that.
H A Hurley,
Yours was an extremely tragic story and while I have seen similar teaching conditions in Mississippi in the early 60’s myself a student then,1973 was over 40 years ago, a different era. That sort of thing occured where there was great disparity in wealth. In many coastal towns along the east coast the “locals” simply can’t afford the housing because of high property values and taxes. They have to commute from other areas to provide workers for local businesses or they rent substandard housing – no taxes. Either way poverty sucks.
I don’t doubt that the Hillman’s encountered racial discrimination in the South Carolina public schools upon moving there. Given that they are credited with having worked for 35 years as advocates for rural school children in their home state of Pennsylvania they should be very familiar with and able to identify systemic racism, given how pervasive and entrenched it is in their native state’s public school systems. I wish them luck in their educational advocacy in their new home but would caution them to not further press the link between Southern Hospitality and racism because many of their new neighbors are used to Northern transplants playing the role of the pot that calls the kettle black.
The description of SC described by the Hillmans is not surprising. Last I knew, the city of Charleston still holds a Secession Ball on April 12, remembering the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861.
I ask the fangirls and fanboys of corporate education reform to show a little “grit” and “rigor” whilst I point out the obvious:
The heavyweights and shot callers in the self-styled “education reform” movement treat the vast majority of us as if we are being “uppity.”
It’s not just that they think they are right and that their should-be-praised noblesse oblige runs up against our (apparently inherent) ungrateful propensity for resisting the guidance and wisdom of our natural and/or appointed superiors.
What is wrong with us is that we, as lesser beings in need of monitoring and guiding, are stubbornly disobedient and vengeful—their aspirational goals and cage busting achievement gap crushing policies would work if only we would get off our lazy duffs and implement/follow them properly.
Instead, as with so many before us—from uppity workers to uppity Jews to uppity women to uppity you-name-it—the current occupiers of the rheephorm VIP seats are aghast that we think we know as well, or better, than they do!
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Hence, that long line of rheephormsters, from Arne Duncan to John King to Cami Anderson et alii, quite sincerely cannot fathom why people raise their voices in “shrill” and ”strident” tones against the bitter medicines that they are (from their POV, in a quite loving and paternal/maternal way) doling out.
But, some of the “forward thinking” rheephormistas will say, we’re listening, we’re changing, we want to engage in “civil dialogue.” Since we already know from news reports detailing the latest rebranding of rheephorm that the administration was well aware during the last several years that the fuel of bludgeons against public school staffs and students and parents and their associated communities—high-stakes standardized testing—was running into bigger and bigger problems, we can only conclude that they are incapable of self-correction because when they knew enough to change course on their own, they didn’t, and have only begun to pretend of change course because they had no other choice.
They knew they were screwing up—but like the NJ Comm. of Ed. they just doubled down on whatevers.
I call it part of “contempt culture.”
I think I speak for many that comment here when I say that I don’t respond well to the weapon of choice in the rheephorm arsenal: the sneer, the jeer, the smear.
A genuine American hero put it this way:
“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”
And, contrary to the bewildered reactions of edubullies everywhere, their contempt only builds resistance to their toxic plans and policies:
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Frederick Douglass. Right then. Right now.
Start putting the limits on: OPT OUT!
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Some special educators are trained to handle highly aggressive students and authorized to do so. Security and police should be so trained as well. In a middle school, the students are often small enough to manage with minimum restrain. In high school, the story is very different. This law enforcement person needs training. Curbing one’s temper with harrassing students can be very trying and requires people with strong self-control to handle them.
If a teacher did anything anywhere near what the SRO did they would be immediately suspended pending investigation in which they would be given the opportunity to resign in disgrace or face assault and battery charges.
Hopefully the SRO will get his education in the courtroom soon.
And, again I look to the administration and find much fault before and during this situation.
Yes. We were trained in holds and take downs as teachers and were expected to respond. We were also trained in verbal de-escalation, but it rarely worked. One that switch is flipped in the student, the situation becomes violent and dangerous. I vividly remember a teacher responding to an incident and taking off her hoop earrings as second nature. Students were injured, teachers sent to ERs, police called and used tasers. High school students took 3 or more teachers to take down and restrain a student before the student could hurt themselves or others. Curbing response is very challenging in a confrontation.
The public is shocked, but only because this was recorded. In a few days, out of sight, out of mind and just let schools deal with it.
I began my teaching career in middle school, and breaking up fights was part of the job description, back in the day when class size was 45 kids. Based only on the video, no “switch was flipped” in this student. She had not participated in the class, had been using her phone, was told to leave the classroom and refused to do so. When approached, she was sitting in her chair with her head down. She didn’t appear to be shouting, screaming or being disruptive apart from not getting up to leave. She certainly was not violent, nor exhorting others to be.
Yes, it’s frustrating to deal with a defiant child. But the adult is supposed to defuse the situation, not escalate it. From the bit caught on video, it seems they could have waited her out. They perhaps could have found an adult who she had confidence in to coax her out of class to talk. It seems she was not well known to the other kids. Who knows what prompted her to refuse – did anyone try to find out?
I wonder, too, how experienced the teacher was? Is he under the gun to spend “time on task”, paced to match the script? Is this a “no excuses” regime? The teacher called an administrator because she wouldn’t take part in class. The administrator called the officer because she wouldn’t leave. The officer made her leave by throwing her out of the chair and across the room.
Now she knows who’s boss. Lesson taught.
“…she has embarked on a journey that has **improved the district as a whole,** but has angered those who enjoyed the fruits of a dilapidated system.” **emphasis mine
The implications of the authors quoted statement (above) cannot be underestimated. Who benefits from the “fruits of a dilapidated system?” Who needs Black families, students, and the community that depends on them to fail? Or rather, who believes they need Black failure? And why? One can reason and logically conclude there is a *false* dichotomy between European success and Black success. However, given the longevity and rigor of this circumstance, one has to wonder if (accept that?) there is indeed a dichotomy between “white” success and Black success. Which begs the definitive identity questions…
Ever been to St. James North Carolina? Same scenario – the white middle class wealthy people live on ‘the plantaiton’ – that’s what they call it – and the poor live in the rural community – St. James is a corporation and the people there have no desire to subsidize the public schools or the communities that surround them.
Enjoy your new life life on the plantation and all the fun activities – wouldn’t live in one of those place for all the money in the world
Perhaps the state should impose a state school tax to level the playing field for schools in disadvantaged areas – yeah, like that’s going to happen.
As a west coaster who has lived most of my adult life in the northeast, my family and I spent 4 years living in rural, central Georgia. My kids were elementary school and middle school aged. Although we lived in the most affluent public school zone in the area and paid the highest taxes to do so, most of our neighbor’s kids still went to private schools…mostly “Christian” schools, almost all white, and all having their 50th anniversaries at the same time (all schools started at about 1965, the time of school desegregation). The city was 68% black, our public school was 58% black, but the private schools were all 0-3% black. You cannot tell me that this was all coincidence. This was 2010. A 10 minute drive out into the real “country” and you would swear you were back in the 1950’s….big, beautiful “estates” surrounded by many, many small, very simple houses with dirt roads and few amenities. We were greeted with lots of “southern charm”…”yes ma’am”….”no sir”….”bless their heart” (said after saying something quite mean about someone else)… It was certainly an eye-opening experience. My fairly vocal observations as an outsider were not always welcomed…
While South Carolina has a special place in the history of slavery, its abolition and resistance to civil rights (something we saw continue to play out horribly in the Charleston church massacre), I’m uncomfortable with people pointing the finger at Southerners or the South as being particularly racist, and thinking they are somehow absolved from responsibility. This is especially so as I see the wholesale displacement of Black people in NYC from their proud, historic neighborhoods such as Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, which are both being overrun by gentrification and the aggressive, racially-motivated policing that accompanies it.
Please keep in mind that NYC, as the financial capital of the USA, fattened off the slave trade, that many Tammany politicians were openly critical of President Lincoln and the Union cause, and that insurance companies (some of which still exist) in Connecticut enriched themselves insuring the “property” that slaves constituted. One hundred years later, Martin Luther King was more demoralized by the White resistance and violence he encountered in Chicago, than that which he encountered in the South.
There’s plenty of responsibility to go around for slavery and it’s (continuing) racist aftermath; a sense of superiority and ahistoricism among people living in the North does nothing to remedy that Original Sin, and probably retards it.
Mr. Fiorillo, Your response is well stated. I have often thought how sad it is that humans are often (perhaps by nature) protective, aggressive, intolerant, and just plain hostile toward those they perceive as different. Some of the most un-Christian behavior is perpetrated by people who profess to be Christian. While not a scholar of history, I seem to remember some deplorable behavior during the Crusades.
Sadly, our world continues to be fraught with hate mogering and violence. It will go away when humans finally all kill each other or our planet. Then peace may finally have a chance.
Not to burst your bubbles, but New York is one of the most educationally segregated states in the country. There is no doubt in my mind that most Northern states are on their way to becoming just like NY.
I’m a NYer and I still live and teach in NY, however every year of my life I’ve visited the South, as my parents are from, and retired to Georgia. And yes, there is de facto segregation, but it isn’t just limited to the South.
Why do you think the villages are called ‘plantations?’ Found the same issues when we moved to Wilmington, NC from NJ. Racism runs deep; so do the phony affections of the white Sunday Christians who turn a blind eye to poverty, unfair laws targeting minorities, right to work (really means fire at will), yet revel in their antebellum costumes befitting the lily white azalea princesses and garden parties in the Garden of Good and Evil. My days are limited here!