Nancy Flanagan writes here about why she is sticking with Facebook, despite it multiple flaws.
I was on Facebook for a brief time, then quit. Then resumed, then quit again. What I discovered was that when I quit Facebook, my identity remained there, waiting for me to return. I was reminded of King George III in “Hamilton” singing “You’ll Be Back.”
No, I won’t. It’s addictive, true. But anyone who wants to reach me knows how to get in touch. I don’t need another way to waste time. I have too many already. And I don’t want to direct a penny towards Mark Zuckerberg.
What do you think?
Will you stick with Facebook or did you quit? Or did you never sign up?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dear Diane,
I created a dozen and joined another score of community pages devoted to mostly academic and philosophical subjects where I repost a lot of my blog and discussion group posts and where a respectable following participate in mostly respectful discussions. So I’m sticking with that for the time being, despite all the havoc going around elsewhere.
Regards,
Jon
One sees all the time in popular media stories about online horrors–about the neo-Nazi sites, for example, but one rarely sees stories about the literally millions of online communities there are–of breast cancer survivors, of Shelley scholars and readers, of fans of Greek cooking, orchid growers, macrame enthusiasts, of freaking dirigible drivers. My brother, who battles invasive plants in Indiana, is on a site where locals, there, share photos and insights and science about backyard biology and zoology and ecology. Such sites are truly marvelous. Facebook has many flaws. Lord knows, Putin was able to hijack it to get the Idiot elected. But it has also allowed me to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances and colleagues scattered to the winds and to reconnect with people long lost to me. The world would be lessened without your posts about and building upon the legacy of C. S. Pierce, Jon, even if they are often accessible only by specialists.
I once came across, in the Indiana University library, a great, multi-volume collection of monographs on sand fleas, the work of some fellow’s lifetime. I think it altogether crazy and beautiful that someone spent his life doing that.
Since the Ptolemies, people have dreamed of a universal encyclopedia, a compendium of what is known and thought. Well, the internet is that. It’s not all Lolcats and Trump ads. And Facebook, for good and ill, is part of that.
cx: Peirce
On a personal level, I’ll have nothing to do with Facebook. I also deleted Twitter account because it was just annoying. But on a professional level, as much as I hate to admit it, Facebook has proven to be positive in spreading the word and interest in the patient education programs I do. It is valuable in reaching people with rare diseases. As much as I hate to admit it.
Can we say that blimp pilots are freaking by definition?
Yes indeed! They are a rarefied breed.
Bob, don’t know if you like opera, it’s been one of the things I’ve worked on teaching myself during the quarantine. I fell in love with Handel’s Agrippina on many levels, one was that it reminded me of today. The Met’s free feed is showing it tonight–literally a production that was recorded a little more than a week before quarantine began–and although it’s about Nero’s mother and her machinations to make him emperor, this is so much about the Idiot. Give it a shot if you have 3+ hours to kill in the next 20 hours, it’s exceptional: https://www.metopera.org/season/on-demand/opera/?upc=810004200951
Thanks, Greg!!!
I do enjoy opera but no nothing on Handel’s operas. Listening to this now. The music is glorious and the performers outstanding!
cx: know nothing
Yikes. I just committed a Trumpism
Diane I think Trump has forced us into looking for correctives anywhere we can find them. When else did we ever have to wonder how a president’s access to the bully pulpit is liable to sink democracy as we know it?
Whatever else Zuckerberg is, I’m glad that at this moment in time, he has answered the call to do good for the democracy he lives in . . . to use his power to contain the pandemic of lies coming from the President who wants to be ALL POWERFUL. Zuck actually has the power to pass judgment on, and so to contain, the lies the President is telling everyone.
What an egregious abuse of power the President is involved in. He’ll do ANYTHING to get re-elected. Nixon was just a run-up. Remember when Nixon promised that he was already involved in “secret talks” to get us out of the Vietnam war. He was “Trumpish” before Trump became a national disgrace. CBK
I just use it for close family members to exchange pictures and thoughts, in addition to Instagram. There’s always e-mail and snail mail, telephone and actual face to face in real life, real time 3-d interactions. From what I gather, Facebook is passe (accent mark on the e) for the young kids and teenagers, Facebook is more for the older crowd.
Same for me. I use it to keep in touch with family and friends across the country. I ignore negative content and stay away from data collection games. If an article appeals to me, I read it. I read NPE and Opt Out Florida’s posts. I tend to ignore most of the political posts and do not engage with the senders.
I quit FB in spring of 2010—one of the best moves of my lifetime. I have yet to regret it!
I quit FB twice. Periodically I get notices and discover that they are waiting for my return.
I read your profile, khomfeld, because I clicked it mistakenly. Congratulations on your decision to retire! &, at leadt one good thing happened in MO–Cori Bush was elected.
So, “hope springs eternal.”
Enjoy your retirement, despite the quarantine, any which way you can.
Yes she did! After 50 years of one family (father and son) who represented well, time for a representative who is eager and on a mission. Bush says she wants to support education and teachers – but I can’t find her stance on charters. Hmm – maybe it’s on her facebook page.
I have an account so that I could join a few private sewing groups and for my children’s athletic groups that post updates to FB. I don’t have any “friends” and I don’t accept “friend” invitations not even from my family. My account is a complete blank….no pictures of me or my family and no posts. I keep the settings closed. I got deleted a few years ago when FB decided to “crackdown” on “fake” accounts because I didn’t have “friends”….then I had to request to rejoin my few groups. It doesn’t suck much of my time and I’ve actually found it helpful on occasion.
I think even directing one cent to Mark Zuckerberg is a penny too much!
I’ve been and gone four times. I left in late 2016 when the platform’s role in subverting democracy became apparent; The New York Review of Books started running stories on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica not long after the election. The popular press caught up about a year later, I guess.
With chagrin, I confess that I opened an account in late May. The isolation of this pandemic had become a bit too much, even for a seasoned bachelor like myself.
As for the poll question in the title of this post, I vote for the Essence of Stupid.
Maybe the debate about what constitutes wisdom, or the essence stupid,
could be settled, if and when the results, define wisdom or stupid.
If the result, of the conventional “know-that” WAS “know-how”, would a
“flock”, in need of a custoidial “whistle” exist?
Never signed up. Seems to me it’s harmless enough when used moderately but quickly devolves into a right-wing conspiracy theory echo chamber. There are studies that have looked at algorithms that slowly lead you down the right-wing rabbit hole. So you watch a YouTube video with an elderly woman knitting and 10 minutes later it’s taken you to the “white power” octogenarian Trump dude in the golf cart. With no way to affirm identity it has become a hotbed of disinformation dissemination by fascist dictatorship troll farms and other such unsavory actors. We’re in a brave new world.
I have never joined Facebook. I do not Tweet. Both of these social media remind me of 7th and 8th grade “slam books” from another era.
I have friends who rely on Facebook for sharing family photos or setting up so-called “private groups” to rant about education. I think policy-announcements and political shaming by Tweet, Trump’s favorite means of communication, are seriously damaging civil discourse about vitally important issues.
These “social media” are also dangerous to our national security and especially the integrity of our voting system. Bots are plentiful. Russia, in particular is known to make use of these to mislead us, plant fake news, and more recently to create false images of real people saying things they did not. Diane’s “waiting for you to return” is a reminder that these media are non-stop trackers of data, whether you are present or not.
Trump and his social media expert, Dan Scavino ,Jr. are trying to determine permissible content on Twitter. Dan Scavino, Jr. is also the writer for many of Trump’s tweets and trusted informant on how “popular” and “liked” Trump is, in addition to his policies. Scavino met Trump as a 16-year-old golf caddie and travels with him.
https://www.businessinsider.com/dan-scavino-says-twitter-is-full-of-shit-company-flags-trumps-tweet-2020-5 See also this expose of Trump’s dependence on Scavino for flattery. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/16/trump-scavino-1327921
I do wish you’d reconsider using Twitter, Laura!
I commented below.
You could post these links above with the same comments and many more people would see them, to say nothing of the wonderful research you do.
I have never put my face in Mark Zuckerberg’s big book. I wouldn’t know what it’s like. I have never purchased anything from Jeff Bezos’ monopoly; I even stopped shopping at Whole Foods when Amazon consumed it. For years, I resisted getting an iThing. This summer, after spending a couple months teaching online with a school iThing, I tried to ditch the personal iThing and go back to a phone with a cord, but the wires in my neighborhood were all cut and chewed. I am stuck with the iThing. I at least have never downloaded a single app from the App Store. I was livid when my employer made a Google account in my name with my personal information without my permission. Alphabet is a monster. I have never Netflixed. I read online blogs and newspapers, and I post comments online at dianeravitch.net. That’s it. That’s all.
All this sounds extreme, I’m sure. People ask me all the time, “But don’t you miss out” on this or that? To those who participate in and use the FAANG monopolies’ products, I have to ask you, don’t you miss out? Don’t you miss your life before you got hooked? Remember talking to the faces in your neighborhood instead of the faces in Zuck’s book? Remember when friends were people you could count on in times of need, and liking someone meant something more than clicking the button? Remember when there were bookstores in your neighborhood? And other kinds of stores too. If you didn’t feel like talking, you could let the phone ring because no one could assume you carried it wherever you went. Art will come back strong after the pandemic, and it won’t be on Netflix.
Remember enjoying life without enriching tech billionaires? Remember when businesses were regulated so that the products you bought didn’t pay for armies of lobbyists trying to destroy democratically run public schools? I’m still relatively young, but I remember.
I quit FB several years ago and never regretted it except for one incident: I purchased a convertible sofa-bed that was awful. When I called the manufacturer to complain I was dismissed with some technical jargon why I was wrong even though everyone who sat in it had to change seats within a few minutes. So after 3 years of misery I posted my complaint on FB and got a message from the company that they will buy back the couch at half price! Not bad after 3 years of use. I accepted and replaced it with a new and much better one of a different brand. Still the idea of further contributing to the execrable Zuckerberg’s wealth is revolting so I have not returned to FB.
FB Pros:
Instantly connect to people who you have things in common with (whatever those things are). Feel the solidarity. Its cathartic and can be therapeutic, even empowering.
Find people from your past.
Build a movement; move the energy around when you and others have a common cause and need to communicate it out (Go Fund Me, political causes, etc.).
Connect with relatives and loved ones in a private closed circuit to share past and current events and memories.
Read other people’s posts and share out best practices, best critical thinking, etc.
Safe way to communicate during a pandemic.
7 Wonderful ways to see a “How to” video and try it out yourself. Fix your own dishwasher; make that Coq au Vin you’ve been reading about but were too afraid to try.
FB Cons:
Finding out about people from your past can come with a price. There are many things I wish I would not have known about and in a way, should not have been any of my business. TMI in an epoch of IT where we are flooded with more information we can take in, process, digest, and do anything meaningful with. Let’s admit it.
Building momentum and movements is great on FB as a communication tool, but it is by no means a substitute for attending town halls, writing letters to elected officials, running for office yourself, and organizing and mobilizing in real life (although we are not doing that right now because of the pandemic . . . we are doing it adaptively).
Posting something does not mean that EVERYONE is reading what you post. Don’t fancy yourself as a columnist from the NY Times or a journalist on Fox News or The Guardian. You’re not. You’re not a talking head or a pundit. You’re not a celebrity or a necessarily an expert on the subject you write about just because you’re able to write about it and instantly “publish” it. You’re “you” posting, and there will be a lot of variability as to who will read and react to your post and who will not.
4, FB shows preferences with its “like” menu, but don’t think for one minute that liking or loving or being sad or angry through a cute little illustrated face has any real depth when you don’t bother talking face to face with the person you are commenting to. These indications are brief soundbites and don’t render everything about the commentator or say everything about the post. And while every one is loving and liking each other to death, what are their real connections to each other?
People using FB have have to be careful to not fall for the superficiality of the the way they feel and communicate towards each other. Before I put out a heart icon to someone, I have ask myself, “What does it really mean to say ‘I love you’ or ‘Sending love to you’ to another person?”
FB has become the government’s implied privatized way to spy on citizens, plain and simple. There is NOTHING private on FB, even when you limit your audience, when you post something “privately ” or when you take down your FB. Don’t kid yourself; your data is being collected and looked at. By who and why is still an unfolding story, but if you want privacy, invite someone – post pandemic- to your house and make them a cup of coffee (or a glass of kombucha?) to have a meaningful conversation.
FB renders its posters use as people who have a fairytale life. “My Uncle Ramon bought a BMW . . . My niece graduated from Yale . . . . Aunt Matilda got married”. . . And in those posts, everyone is happy, bubbly, and comments are always one-sided:
“Gorgeous couple” . . . “Looking good” . . . . “SO talented, let’s hook up. Miss you so much!” . . . “Perfect dress, you look like a model” . . . “You graduated HS. I know you are bound to be successful in every single thing you do in life no matter what because you’re so this and that . . ” FB portraits of people are not quite close to who they really are and what the gambit of emotions and experiences are that they are having. Humans are obviously more complex than that. People cannot be distilled into a few glib smiley face icons or thumbs-up stencils. Therefore, don’t be fooled by the feel-good rhetoric from FB users. Recognize people for their complexities, and don’t just dwell upon their dysfunctions or just their triumphs. We are not caricatures, Barbies and Kens, or Stepford people . . .
That said, I think I’ll post this rant on my FB page in the next few minutes . . .
For some reason, my numbering the paragraphs does not translate into this blog. So frustrating. Diane or Anthony Cody, any chances of fixing this? I think it is a particularly important post and topic. .
But I’d like to add to this missive this:
FB CEO Mark Zuckerberg pays little to no federal taxes, therefore not paying his fair share. He is dangerous because of the unfettered freedom given to him by the federal government, both in the ability to buy Congress and Senators and to influence policy . . . . Add that to the Cons . . .
I never signed up. A handful of my friends did not either. Some caved in when kids activities required them to follow FB pages. Others, like me, just stayed away (mostly). I do go on some public FB pages for information. And when something crazy is happening on the town “community page” (ie: stir the pot page)…. friends share. It’s hard not to get caught up in the drama. I understand why people stay on.
After the first year or two of FB, an article appeared claiming some employers were less likely to hire someone who did not have a FB page (or some such thing). This “study” seemed contrived in order to get more people to join. Just knowing that the company would use such manipulative tactics was a turnoff even back then.
Looking at the larger picture of how Zuckerberg profits from the spread of hate, misinformation and propaganda – it’s is almost unbelievable. Like Bezos and Trump… it’s hard for me to listen to him or look at him. Congress needs to step up and do something about all three.
I am an old guy–83–who still has things (I’ve been told this–not just my opinion) to say. I’ve taught, led a teachers’ union, write poetry & newspaper columns. FB is another place i can be heard. I can remind young folks of other times. I can communicate with relatives in other countries. I can reconnect with HS friends and almost lost acquaintances. All in a matter of minutes. I’m left wing, not right. I read what I want, skimming stuff I don’t want to get involved in, then don’t answer if I don’t want to. It’s not a perfect medium, but what’s perfect in this life? Peace my friends. I’ll see some of you on FB.
Wonderful, Jack!
I doubt I’ll make it another 24 years to catch up to you, but your post added a little time to my life. Thanks, best thing I read today.
I long thought that FB was probably created or at least partially funded by the U.S. intelligence services in order to create a mechanism for doing data mining on the U.S. population. It certainly provides that. But FB is not unique, there.
If that is so
I like the story, Bob. It would work well with a class.
Yeah, FB.
If I could mothball all my computers, well, maybe I would, at least for a while to see what life would be like…again.
But that’s not an option now. And, every day it seems to be even less and less of an option.
Plus, how would I be ‘talking’ to you, ha, ha?.
Nancy Flanagan does a nice job of sketching some of the pros and cons of FB.
The morning we bugged out of school, Friday, March 13, I went in real early and created a FB page to help keep connected to my students. I wouldn’t usually interact that much on social media with my seniors until they graduated -for a lot of reasons. But these are certainly not usual times.
It did help and the kids were really good about it, too. They’re great.
Also, my wife works the night shift and sends me stuff all the time….like at 2 a.m. That’s nice. I wake up and immediately check what she’s been doing and thinking. She really likes that internet cat, Smudge.
Where all this technology goes, who knows….
I still don’t have a “smart phone”….I don’t know how long I can keep doing that?
Someone I know was criticizing FB and wondering how on earth I can be on there. Then I pointed out that she is being tracked all the time with her smart phone.
I go way out in the woods without any wallet, or ID or phone. That’s freedom. I suppose I could fall into a deep ravine and wish I had some way to signal for help. The hemlock streams here are deep and dark as they plummet towards the river. Trees are caved in from past floods. Imagine pick up sticks but on a huge scale.
A few years ago I started taking my old man flip phone with me, “just in case”. But carrying the phone sort of ruined my hikes. I rarely use the thing.
I’m re-reading Joseph Weizenbaum’s “Computer Power and Human Reason” (1976) as an antidote of sorts to the overdose of computing I did as part of “distance learning.”
“Unlearning” first as you might put it since my own past is now somewhat unfamiliar to even…me.
I met Professor Weizenbaum twice back in the 1980s, one time over dinner. He lived quite a life.
Fascinating, John, and beautifully written. I do love a ramble in the woods!
And thank you, John, for taking the time to read the story. I love that social media make possible these microcommunities of people with enthusiasms.
Have a great rest of the weekend!
You too, John!
I never signed up and won’t. I don’t believe in joining any social media. There is too much that goes wrong.
I saw The Social Network. Mark Zuckerberg=awful person. Never signed up for FB, & never will.
& that goes for Twitter, as well.
Only sign up was to announce snow days – no other school news, just snow days. I always got some choice comments back when suggesting “it’s a snow day – read a book”
Personally – Never signed up.
It was good that our college age kids knew we weren’t on.
Seemed like it would consume hours of mindless nostalgic time.
Better being off the proverbial grid.
Haven’t missed it ever.
I joined Facebook back when they let you use anonymous names, but after they changed that policy, I quit. A couple years later, some people at work convinced me I should join them on Facebook, so I caved and signed up with my real name. It was ok to me, primarily because we work remotely and live in different parts of the world, so FB made it was easier to connect with them socially.
Then suddenly, I started hearing from people on FB from my childhood, as well as old flames, several of whom I wasn’t interested in reconnecting with, so I ignored a lot. Sometimes I could not remember them. Then I made the mistake of rejecting someone I couldn’t recall. Eventually, I thought I did finally remember that person and I felt really awful about rejecting them, but I couldn’t figure out how to reverse it, so I quit FB.
This year was supposed to be my 50 year high school reunion and I’m sure it was cancelled due to the quarantine, but I was not planning to go anyways. I spent a lot of years in therapy and I moved on decades ago. I’m not interested in revisiting the past anymore. I’m glad I left FB and I’ve never missed it. It just wasn’t really my thing.
At some point in the past, Facebook demanded that users furnish their dates of birth. Red flag. Blackstone’s large purchase of Ancestry. com stock should alarm more people.
!!!!!!
Date of Death
Date of birth
Is date of death
While Zuckerberg
Is taking breath
Make that
“is date with death”
A journalist-coined term- “civil death”- it describes people forcibly disenfranchised, not permitted to exercise their political rights.
I have read more than once from investigative reporters that worked for reliable media that once we join Facebook, even if we quit, everything Facebook has about us stays there available to the entire world.
Facebook and any sites that operate like it are terminal cancers on civilization.
Fakebook always struck me as a rehash of the worst aspects of high school where people try to impress everyone and convince them they are something they are not.
It plays on the most petty in all of us in order to reap a profit.
Its not an accident that it was developed at Harvard where people are particularly concerned with putting on airs.
It’s also no accident that it grew out of stolen property.
Exactly, SDP.
Fakebook
Fake achievements
Pseudo friends
Fake bereavements
Means to ends
For all these reasons, I got off FB for several years. However, there were many real friends and acquaintances from far-flung places whom it was most convenient to speak with there, so I returned. I’m glad I did. I’m resigned to the fact that every electronic communication in the United States is stored permanently on massive government servers in collocation centers. It was Obama who asked for and got from Attorney General Holder a finding that the government could collect and store private communications of citizens permanently without its being illegal surveillance, as long as no one looked at them. Whether “no one looking at them” includes having AI bots scour them to do data mining, I cannot say. Welcome to the Panopticon.
An oldie but a goodie:
https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff-nsadatacenter/
If s tree falls in Obama’s head and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Legislation proposed by U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley would make it all but impossible for businesses to harvest biometric data. The compliance requirements alone would seem to be beyond all but the biggest biometrics players.
The National Biometric Information Privacy Act would require prior written consent of people before businesses could use any of their immutable characteristics captured by facial recognition or any other biometric systems. See https://www.biometricupdate.com/202008/broad-biometric-protections-in-senate-bill-with-slim-prospects
There are alternatives, several based in Europe, where, unlike the US, there are privacy restrictions on data usage and organized crime does not run social media.
Ms. Flanagan writes of those who go onto Facebook and make ad hominem attacks, referring to the Orange Cheeto and Cruella DeVos. I freely admit to being one of those people who indulges in ad hominem attacks on both these characters, on Facebook and elsewhere, though usually, I refer to the Don, Cheeto “Little Fingers” Trumpbalone and Ditzy DeVoid, aka Clueless DeVos, the younger sister of Cruella. I have, however, an excuse for my reprehensible behavior. In general, one avoids making ad homiem attacks by critiquing, instead, an opponent’s arguments. But in the cases of Donald and Betsy, they never advance anything rational enough to be called an argument, and so one is forced to respond to their depredations–throwing children in cages, protecting predatory lenders and rapists on campus–by other means. As Abraham Lincoln said of the blatherings of his opponent, Stephen Douglas, in the Lincoln/Douglas debates, “I have no way of working an argument up into the consistency of a corn-cob and sopping his mouth with it at all.”
cx: stopping, though sopping works too, come to think of it
“Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem. A new theory parses fair from unfair uses of personal criticism in rhetoric”
“Although ad hominem arguments have long been considered errors in reasoning, a recent analysis suggests that this is not always the case. In his new book, Media Argumentation: Dialectic, Persuasion, and Rhetoric, University of Winnipeg philosopher Douglas Walton proposes that fallacies such as the ad hominem are better understood as perversions or corruptions of perfectly good arguments. Regarding the ad hominem, Walton contends that although such attacks are usually fallacious, they can be legitimate when a character critique is directly or indirectly related to the point being articulated.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/character-attack/
Thanks, Lloyd. I would contend that the ad hominem is not, in fact, a FALLACY when what one is attacking is intended, for good reason, to be an opponent’s character. Donald Trump’s character should preclude him from being President of the United States. A vile, predatory, racist, sexist criminals doesn’t belong behind the Resolute Desk.
The only place Trump should spend the rest of his putrid life is in a cell in one of the five most terrifying prisons on the planet.
Emphatically agreed, Lloyd! He and Propaganda Minister Miller as well.
Lloyd, I have a question for you because you have taught in a really tough high school with lots of gang-related activity. How do you feel about having resource officers in schools? I used to travel to talk to teachers in my work as a textbook writer and author. I’ve been in quite a few schools where the administration insisted on having a resource officer accompany me if I went to the bathroom for fear that I would be mugged. If you oppose having police present, what alternatives do you suggest to prevent common in-school violence?
My answer is going to upset some people that want “police” out of our public schools.
The Southern California high school where I worked/taught for sixteen of the thirty years I was a public school teacher had about a half-dozen campus, police officers assigned there. We called them CPOs. They did not have firearms because the School Board would not let them carry. Most of them were quite popular and friendly with many of the students, even the ones they busted. Maybe they were sent to workshops to learn how to behave like that. I don’t know.
These half dozen CPOs were linked together with walkie talkies and patrolled the campus on peddle bikes when classes were in session so when trouble popped up, one or more of them was always close and fast to respond.
Whenever I NEEDED to send a student to the office to remove them so I could teach, I called the CPO’s and they arrived within seconds or a few minutes to escort the student to the office to see their grade level counselor or a VP. Teachers did not need to call a CPO for every student, just the ones that could not be trusted not to climb the fence and cut the rest of the school day or go hang out in a bathroom where they might start a fire or buy or sell drugs, et al. It is amazing the trouble a gangbanger can cause.
Student bathrooms were a hot spot for destruction and many of them were often closed for repairs. One year, the district paid tens of thousands of dollars in an experiment to renovate one student bathroom to make it destruction proof. It took a few disruptive kids a week to destroy that indestructible classroom so it was locked up again.
One time, a special ed student asked his special ed teacher if he could go to the bathroom. She said yes. He returned sooner than expected and the look on his face told the teacher something was wrong. It turns out that when the special ed kid got to the boys’ restroom it was already in use by a boy and girl having sex. The girl was bent over a toilet holding on to the rim of the stainless steel flusher while the boy (a known gangbanger that had been suspended many times) was busying having sex with her doggy style. The special ed teacher called the CPOs and when two of them arrived, the gangbanger refused to stop and they had to call more CPOs to pull the copulators apart.
Then there was the pipe bomb in an empty locker that blew off a kid’s fingers when he said, “What’s this?” and picked it up. Boom!
One day at lunch, one of the CPOs saw a gangbanger, a real troublemaker, who was up for expulsion waiting for his court date to be removed from the school. He wasn’t supposed to be there. The boy was a known felon and drug dealer. The kid saw the CPO eyeing him and he ran. The CPO, calling for backup through his walkie talkie, gave chase. Once the boy was out the gate and off-campus, he pulled out a firearm and aimed it at the unarmed CPO chasing him. The CPO, wanting to live another day, threw up his arms and turned back to campus letting the guy go.
The local police were probably called and arrested him if they found him.
These are only a few of the real-life stories I could share about teaching in a school surrounded by neighborhoods that had been dominated by violent street gangs for generations. Those streets outside our fence were so dangerous we were warned to never take a walk on them. We also heard that the local police would not patrol them at night.
Lloyd: sounds like the West Coast version of what I saw in the inner city of Brooklyn. We were denied guards and metal detectors at first, but then things started getting really bad. I can’t tell you how happy we were to see the security guards arrive. And yes: except for one (who ended up being fired), they were all liked and respected.
I have relevant personal experience of this. I started school early and was transferred from fifth grade into seventh, so I was quite a bit smaller than many of my peers. As a result, I was frequently subject to bullying in middle school and in the first couple years of high school and sometimes beaten by bullies quite severely. It wasn’t until I formed a rock n roll band and became one of the cool kids and went through an adolescent growth spurt that this stopped. There were many, many days when I feared greatly going to school, being on the bus or at the bus stop, etc.
I understand. When I was young, I was a sickly kid, almost died a couple of times before I was seven. But my family was poor, my older brother belonged to a biker gang, and by the time I started kindergarten he had already been in and out of prison. By the time he died, he had spent 15 years behind bars but not all at once.
My parents were both high school dropouts and my dad was a tough kid when he was young. Even went 50 rounds once in a Golden Gloves bare-handed boxing match. That one experience got rid of his dreams to make a living as a boxer. He decided being a gambler was better and stuck to that for the rest of his life. He was also an alcoholic. I still remember the family attending Alcoholics Anonymous family picnics. His last twenty years of life up to 79 were booze-free.
Even as thin and weak as I had to look back then when I was a kid, the first time a bully tried to push me around, I closed me eyes and ended up knocking him down. My brother and dad taught me that you never let anyhone knock you down because then it was over. You did whatever it took to stay on your feet. When I graduated from high school, I was still sickly looking and thin and stood 6′ 4″ and weighed 125 pounds. Marine Corps Bootcamp added 30 pounds to my skinny body the first summer out of high school.
After that one bully in grade school, I ended up making friends with some of the tougher kids at school that were not bullies – just poor and tough like my family. That might have also been a factor explaining why I never had trouble with bullies again. A couple of my friends were very tough kids and we got along. Messing with one of their friends was not a good idea.
No way could I be called a bright kid back then. I had severe dyslexia like my brother who never learned to read and died at 64 illiterate leaving behind 7 kids with five or six of them also illiterate. When I was seven, my mother was told I’d never learn to read or write. She asked my 1st-grade teacher for advice and followed that advice but added corporal punishment with a coat hanger as a motivator to get me to sit still and do as I was told when sounding out words.
Aie yie yie! Yet here you are, a strapping adult and accomplished novelist! Quite the story of overcoming childhood adversity to make something of one’s self!
Have I never mentioned what my high-school GPA was when I [barely] graduated?
I wasn’t much of a learner, but after my mother literally walloped reading into me with her wire coat hanger, I became an avid reader and by high school, I was polishing off one or two books (checked out of the local town or school library) a day. That did not leave much time for homework or even classwork as I sat at the back of the classrooms and was reading from one of my [hidden below the edge of the desk while it appeared that my head was bent over my textbook] checked out library books and not the textbooks.
Sometimes people who haven’t been in schools in a long time sentimentalize high-school kids. I love them. They’re awesome. Generally. There are many, many of them who are generous and woke and smart. But. . . . (warning, the following video is quite graphic and not everyone’s cup of tea, but it illustrates the possibilities): https://www.sun-sentinel.com/774ae2ab-5420-4f0a-81df-65b70369473f-132.html
Fights like that could break out between classes and at lunch at the high school where I taught at any time. When Is tarted teaching at the high school in 1989, there were a little over 3,000 students and more than one street gang that were rivals. I broke up a couple of fights that took place near my room during passing periods between classes. One time, I sensed a fight that was out of sight between two portable classrooms across from my room. It was a hunch, but I locked my door, told my arriving students to line up, and went to investigate. Stopped that fight between two rival gang members. One of them tried to intimidate me but the other didn’t and he walked away. The one that walked away was in one of my classes and knew a little bit about my history growing up and the Marines. Once that guy was gone, the fight went out of # two, and he left with a scowl on his face as if he had been cheated.
One squad car from the local city police with two officers and a shotgun clipped to the dash showed up every day shortly before lunch and drove inside the campus to park in the grass near the HS library that overlooked the open-air lunch area where thousands of students ate every day.
Every administrator was also on duty in the lunch area at lunch.
Teachers were not required to serve that duty. I never saw one of the riots started between rival gangs that happened occasionally during lunch out there. It didn’t happen often but it did happen.
There was a reason why I was never in that area because my classroom was open to the chess club or the environmental club or the journalism club and I ate in my room with the student members of those clubs often playing chess with members of the chess club.
Surprisingly, even some gang members showed up to play chess or joined the environmental club (usually a guy with a crush on a girl that belonged to one of the clubs – it is amazing the power a girl can have over a guy when she is aware of it).
My first year of teaching was in a factory town in Indiana, blue collar, lots of latch key kids. As the new guy, I got all the remedial preps–five of them. I had a student pick up a desk and hurl it across the room at another student. I had one 9th-grade student who got pregnant. She was only 13!!!! Another (also a 9th grader) stole his father’s car and was stopped and arrested with his girlfriend several states away. One of my students, a girl, was arrested for beating up another girl and kicking her repeatedly in the head, giving her a concussion. Another slashed the tires of several teachers in the parking lot. Another had a gun taken away from him when he had another kid up against some lockers saying, “I’m going to blow your f-ing brains out.” Lots of fights.
:o)
I have an arsenal of classroom and school stories similar to yours. Wherever there is poverty and working-class people living just above poverty, the odds are we will find schools with tough kids like the ones you described.
Lloyd ” . . they can be legitimate when a character critique is directly or indirectly related to the point being articulated.”
Also, in the law, there is use of precedent. In the case of character critique, or even of good argument, what we know from past discoveries can import greatly on both situations where we need to trust a person’s given facts AND their motivations. Fool me once, on you; fool me twice, on me. CBK
What a successful society and culture capitalist America has generated and maintained to produce such youth who are so angry, lack self esteem, are unloved, and violent. Now that’s a success story for the U.N.! Yes, we are exceptional.
The only thing expectational here are Bob and Lloyd for remaining on as teachers, to their credit.
Robert Rendo, Educator; The only thing expectational here are Bob and Lloyd for remaining on as teachers, to their credit.
I agree with you totally on that comment. Three cheers for being exceptional people.
Thank you, but Bob and I are not alone. Millions of teachers stay year-after-year (I know one who started teaching in 1989, and he is still on the job) until they retire after 20 years, or 30 or even 44 years. I knew one teacher who taught into his 70s for 44 years before he retired. The way CALstirs computes retirement earings, he retired and got a hefty raise because according to that formula, he worked longer than it takes to match your salary when you retire. I retired at 60 after teaching for thirty years and took a 40% pay cut with no medical.
I asked him once if he would ever retire. He replied, “When it isn’t fun anymore.” He taught English and Drama and retired at about the same time I did 15 years ago. He died last month and was about 90 give or take a year.
NINETY, not 9. My eyes deceived me. They saw me type 90 but the auto spell check changed it to 9. Maybe I hit the O instead of the 0 since they are so close together, and I always type way too fast. There is no way I can slow down because then my fingers would forget what key is what letter or number. I have a strange memory for stuff like that. My fingers know where to go when they are moving fast and forget when they slow down.
Bob,
I imagine you are probably in good company.
I bet AC/DCs Angus Young who is only 5’2″ was also bullied as a school boy, which may be why he wore the outfit in his concerts — as a fist in the face of all the bullies.
Trump dreams of a stadium that size filled with his fascist fans screaming his name while they give him back his “finger-thumb” salute.
I’m talking about the first photo in this GQ piece. I have seen that finger thumb gesture too many times to count.
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/donald-trump-hand-gestures-politics
Trump has no idea that he is really demonstrating the size of his brain and exaggerating at that.
Lloyd,
That finger-thumb gesture is a white supremacy message.
Thank you. I did not know that. Shocking! Why isn’t the media reporting little facts like this?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2018/09/20/that-hand-symbol-you-seeing-everywhere-not/6NXpp9PHsEKiunjypIFjDJ/story.html
Finger-thumb circle is a white supremacy signal
Thanks for sharing. At last one media source pointed out Trump’s racist hang gestures. Street gangs do that too, have hand signs they use to identify the gang they belong to. I clicked the link but the piece must be behind a paywall. Could reach it.
This article appeared in NY Times:
When the O.K. Sign Is No Longer O.K.
Here is how a hand gesture long seen as innocuous was appropriated to signify “white power.”
Image
As the ESPN broadcaster Rece Davis, in civilian clothes, spoke on the air during pregame activities at the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia on Saturday, some cadets and midshipmen behind him made a gesture that has come to be linked to white supremacist views.
As the ESPN broadcaster Rece Davis, in civilian clothes, spoke on the air during pregame activities at the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia on Saturday, some cadets and midshipmen behind him made a gesture that has come to be linked to white supremacist views.Credit…ESPN
By Vanessa Swales
Dec. 15, 2019
Touching the thumb and index finger to make a circle, with the remaining three fingers held outstretched, is a gesture that people around the world have made for centuries, mostly in positive contexts.
It is used for several purposes in sign languages, and in yoga as a symbol to demonstrate inner perfection. It figures in an innocuous made-you-look game. Most of all, it has been commonly used for generations to signal “O.K.,” or all is well.
But in recent years, it has also been appropriated for a more malign purpose — to signify “white power.” The gesture has become an extremist meme, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
I use ad hominem attacks myself, occasionally. We all do. We don’t want these names in our mouths.
What I meant was the sharing of a legitimate piece–say, Ed Yong’s latest on how the pandemic has revealed what a trainwreck this country is–followed not by discussion of the article and its salient points, but just one-sentence name-calling.
I think the trick in building useful discourse on FB is limiting your friends to people you actually know, present tense, and want to talk to. Treating FB like your living room.
I know that I love your posts generally, Nancy, and look forward to them!
I hesitate to contradict anything that Nancy Flanagan has to say. She’s smart and experienced!
“In general, one avoids making ad homiem attacks by critiquing, instead, an opponent’s arguments”
Ad hominem: s/he’s an idiot and arguments are therefore stupid (no evidence given)
Not ad hominem: her/his arguments are dumb because X, Y and Z, and incidentally, one has to be an idiot to make such stupid arguments.
But one can’t say that there exists an x and x is an argument and x is the type of argument that is dumb (for reasons X, Y, and Z) if x is NOT an argument but a mere assertion. That’s the point of Lincoln’s comment about Douglas’s modus operandi. One can say that this is a person who makes assertions, not arguments, which is an attack on the person’s character, ad hominem, certainly, but justifiably so. That’s the point of the reference to Lincoln’s point about Douglas, which is akin to the statement commonly attributed to Wolfgang Pauli that some young physicist’s paper was “not even wrong.”
Bob, I am using the common definition of an argument
And i disagree somewhat. Pointing out that someone is dumb because they have made claims that conflict with obvious facts x, y and z is not ad hominem but merely highlighting a further fact
Some people are just dumb. No getting around it.
Stupid is as stupid does — or in this case says.
SomeDAM and Bob I have also made the naive mistake of thinking someone is just dumb (so to speak) when actually they are coming from different political foundations and so are complicit in wanting a different aka wrong outcome.
A case in point: When the tea party threatened to shut down the government, everyone screamed, including the press, about all of the problems that would ensue. HOWEVER, the more they screamed that the bureaucracy wouldn’t be able to function, the happier those in the tea party became.
Argument 1: with democratic political presuppositions that it’s stupid because the outcome will be that we’ll lose bureaucratic functions and we all want those to continue, of course.
Argument 2: with presuppositions that are non-democratic and so that it’s BEST to lose bureaucratic functions–precisely because they serve everyone and, BTW, they keep order in a very large culture.
It may not be stupid . . . rather, it’s that one’s foundations and goals differ. This may or may not have to do with all sorts of logical fallacies. However, these days, it’s naive to think everyone is coming from an embrace of democracy (small d) as a political foundation and so with it’s concrete outcomes . . . at the background of all argument.
It IS personal in the sense that it’s about understanding another’s political foundations; it’s NOT personal in the sense that it’s about understanding the fuller meanings that inform any argumentation that we want to take on its merits.
On the other hand, if you don’t want to write an essay about it, “Dumb” works for me, especially in the sense that Trump is arbitrariness personified . . . an intellectual celibate if I ever saw one. CBK
Though I do not mean to start an argument
“It’s addictive, true. But anyone who wants to reach me knows how to get in touch.”
I have never been on facebook, although I have recently considered it now that I have one of those fancy phones. As an outsider listening to the rest of my generation and to the teenage purveyors of everything from Instagram to Tik Tok, I think I can see why these sites are so powerful.
My guess is that the experience on social platforms arouse in us a sort of chemical response to social behavior that was the biological glue for society in ancient man. Hence its addiction. I have never read of such a thing, but I suspect that people interested in this sort of thing have studied it. Things like this are somewhat dangerous. Alcohol leads to addiction as does opium, and people tending to the addictive personality would do well to avoid things that play into their own addiction assiduously.
I suggest, therefore, that we forbid people from being on facebook until noon sunday. I would prefer that we ban it altogether. After all, dangerous things should be banned. Still, I am willing in my theocracy to allow the great unwashed to have its way if it pacifies them somewhat. Of course there is the danger of underground use of facebook. Still, facebook blue laws are definitely in order.
By the way, this site is addictive. Good concerned people in conversation. What is not to like.
I’ve never seen FB as a place to boycott as a political stand. It’s just another product, easy to use minimally as desired. I have maybe a 30 relatives & friends who like to post pictures and thoughts there regularly, & it’s a way to say hi to them, & occasionally contribute something. That’s a pretty huge plus, especially on the family side. The clan was close growing up due to decades of annual reunion vacation in New England, but became too far-flung (CA, UK & France) to keep it going.
And I haven’t experienced any cons. You don’t even have to “unfriend” people who are no longer part of your life, or whose posts are shallow/ irritating etc– just fix it so you no longer see their posts in your feed, & go to their page when you wish. Ignore ads just as you do in any media. I wouldn’t even know how to find the nefarious groups & skewed newsfeeds one reads plague FB.
I got a “Face” because a group of graduating seniors I was especially close to implored me to do so in order to stay in touch. As they got older, many moved to LinkedIn. Then the news of Facebook manipulating feeds in the experiment to see if folks engaged more with the site depending on positive or negative news became public. (Negative information compelled more use of the site.)
I closed my account and never looked back. Closing your account isn’t simple as I discovered when I read up on the process; you can make it inactive, but it doesn’t go away for something on the order of 10 years (that sweet, sweet data). I have a large extended family and I do miss some announcements, though someone usually remembers “Christine’s not on Facebook”and will call me if it’s urgent. My kids use it for work and they monitor and advise me if someone spouts egregious nonsense. Once, one of them texted me: “Oh, no! They got Auntie!” meaning that one of my sisters was repeating Trumpian folderol.
However, I have become a prolific Twitter user. In our 2016 fight to defeat the Waltons, I discovered a community of parents, educators and community activists using the platform to organize and share information. We won! As we continue to fight against privatization, that same group has remained engaged.
On Wednesday, there was a 5 hour long virtual school committee meeting and that unelected group shut off the chat feature. There were 96 speakers signed up for public comment, as they were voting on a proposal to give away a school’s green space and discussing their preposterous plans for re-opening our schools. Using the hashtag #BPSchat, we were able to document in real time testimony from the public and absurd or dismissive comments from the school committee. It’s an uphill battle, but it’s not hard to energize the troops. Our younger elected officials are themselves on Twitter (or their staff are) so what we have to say doesn’t fall on deaf ears. We’re able to get in good and necessary trouble. The paper of record, The Boston Globe has turned over its education coverage to the Barr Foundation,which is dedicated to privatization. (The Globe‘s owner, John Henry, also owns the Red Sox and his business partner in that area is Seth Klarman, who holds $96 million of Puerto Rico’s debt. The Boston Newspaper Guild is currently fighting for their jobs and union protections.)
On Twitter, you can choose who to follow and although there are promoted or suggested follows, they aren’t loaded into your feed. A discerning reader, like those on this blog, can source an array of differing perspectives as well as finding like-minded individuals. I do so wish Laura Chapman would get a Twitter account and provide links to all the excellent research she does. Her work deserves a much wider dissemination. We convinced Mercedes Schneider to do so a few years ago, and it’s been terrific.
Christine–As a person who follows everything you say on Twitter (smiling)–I find Twitter even more of a crapshoot than Facebook. There’s brilliant content there, true, but people you don’t know can find you and smash you to smithereens, in front of their thousands of followers. It happened to me about five years ago, and I took a year-long break from Twitter, seeing it as the proverbial dumpster fire. A cesspool of lousy education thinking and celebrity posters, who were mostly people good at sound bites, rather than truth. I went back cautiously.
I use Facebook for all kinds of purposes–both family/friends and professional uses. Shared FB posts are how I publicize my blog (which otherwise would be limited to subscribers). And there are lots of teachers blogging now whose excellent work I’d never know about if it weren’t for FB.
I admit it’s deeply flawed. But–since I’m not seeing people face to face, I’m not ready to give it up.
Thank you, Nancy! I’ll take care to repost to Twitter from your blog if you’re wary.
I know when I’m likely to draw fire and when it happens, I use my favorite tool – the mute button. It leaves adversaries shouting into the void while I remain oblivious. Of course, it’s often instructive to see who responds to which provocations.
I was going to quit and said so on a post there, asking my friends to contact me via email or phone, once the deed was done.
Three of my friends contacted me; asking me to reconsider. They all said the same thing: they would have no idea of the state of things in the world of public education (and some other areas), but for my posts. And they pass that information on to their friends, etc.
I’m with you as far as not wanting to feed the dragon, but there’s merit to sticking it out. I stay out of the hammering discussions (they can get very very ugly), choosing instead to post pix and say hi to friends I don’t see or hear from, normally. And, when something in my field of expertise, is of note: it’s posted immediately. Often from your blog, Diane.
I’m semi-retired and still work, while my retired roommate doesn’t have a job and spends a HUGE amount of time on FB sometimes connecting with family and friends but mostly arguing with Trumpees about how awful Trump is and the errors of their ways. Since many Trumpsters are die-hard supporters and often have some screws loose themselves, that’s rather frustrating for my roommate, so I was hearing about it ALL the time.
I prefer Twitter and for the sake of my mental health, I had to put my foot down about so much negative stuff and redirect our efforts to focusing on the good. That has been a challenge in these times, but now both of us are hunting for the good news on a daily basis, which has tempered matters, so that squatter Trump and his base of crazies on FB and elsewhere get a lot less real estate in our brains now…
I agree with you. It’s easier said than done though.
Trumpsters are die-hard supporters and often have some screws loose”
The ones I know are more like a box of loose screws.
Just like the cheap screws that come with a product like window shades and before you can screw the brackets that hold the shade to the wall above the window, the cheap screws strip out and/or break off. Then you struggle to get them out and they resist every effort to be replaced with a better-quality screw that will not break or strip out.
One of my favorite cartoons has a woman standing in a doorway and a man at a computer.
WOMAN: When are you coming to bed?
MAN: In a minute. There’s somebody who’s wrong on the Internet.
I labeled it Farcebook many years ago as it never failed to disappoint me with all its ‘bells and whistles’ b.s. I sign-in once a year to see what kind of crap I might have been tagged with. I agree with your no penny into Zhmuck’s coffers.
People might think they have to just take the bullet (eg, to stay in touch with friends and familiy) but there are alternatives to Fakebook that are not criminal operations.
https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/online-marketing/social-media/the-best-facebook-alternatives/
I just read that the big tech companies are infiltrating the Biden campaign and transition staff. Thought Race to the Top was the NCLB on steroids? Get ready for Race to the Top on steroids. We get Betsy DeVos or we get Bill Gates. Period. That fact right there, the fact that big tech companies run the country, just that fact all alone is why using any tech for anything less than necessary is the essence, the very essence of stupid. The essence of the essence of stupid. If you took the essence of stupid and put it in a vacuum, sucked out all the air so that only essence of stupid molecules remained, and then modified the structure of the isolated stupid molecules to include part of the molecular structure of a braying ass, that’s how stupid tech is.
LeftCoast If I had to choose between Betsy and Bill, I’d choose Bill.
First, I’d want to say: On second thought, never mind. We’re done.
But I think it’s a matter of the possibility, but not the guarantee, of some circumstance, or person (like Diane), or argument actually breaking through the ideology that controls (1) Betsy or (2) Bill.
On those grounds, and considering that arbitrariness is not a reasonable third choice, Bill actually has SOME professional educators around him in his organization, as does Zuckerberg.
I don’t think it’s naive to consider that somebody in that camp could come up with some good insights. Remember that Our Leader Diane underwent a massive change in her viewpoint so it can happen. Whereas, put that up against a religious ideology like the one that Devos and others have allowed to take over their souls, turning them into pod-people . . . change is still possible, but much more remote.
FWIW, CBK
I think Hedge Funds rule the East Coast and Tech companies rule the West Coast.
The Middle, well, Fundamentalist Evangelical White Supremacist Faux Christians that misinterpret the Bible at every opportunity to justify their biases and hate are battling over the middle of the country from Montana to Florida in a wide L shape with real Christians (like Pastors for Texas Children [this organization of real Christians is spreading to other states and the name of the state changes with each chapter]) that actually study and debate what the Bible means.
Facebook is horrible, and my understanding is that it skews much older than other social media and is thus at risk of obsolescence, which will be a good thing when it happens.
FLERP, ever so succinct!