Letter from a Father
Colin,
We moved to a large southern city three years ago and it’s so different than where we came from.
We have large family of school age children and they are in private school because the public schools are a nightmare.
My wife actually taught kindergarten at a local public school and is not going back after the summer which is unbelievable for her.
She’s always loved teaching but nursing seems less threatening now. Her kids at school are almost all from black families and they were typically out of control which she was prepared for.
Several of them are also abused by their parents/siblings/live in boyfriend/girlfriends regularly. The process for reporting abuse is ineffective at best.
DHS often shows up several days after the report is filed and the bruises have faded. They don’t allow pictures to be admitted for some reason so the cycle continues. Sometimes her parents just keep the kids out of school until the bruises fade but their siblings tell the teachers.
She was sort of ready for that too.
What she wasn’t ready for, and what shocked her was how inept the administrators are at dealing with these kids. No suspensions, no expulsions, no real discipline of any kind.
It seems like they (the admins) have almost no interest in the children learning reading, writing, and math. They (the admin. team) focus on “narrative” or “diversity” while the kids can’t read.
They have to spend one hour a day teaching this to the kids. All the teachers had to read and discuss a book called “Undocumented” and, as a group, talk about white privilege and how to prepare their kids for encountering it.
They do this at a meeting once a month.
Most of the teachers and all of the administrators are openly hostile to anything Christian, white, or republican. The president is derided and mocked in their staff meetings openly.
What’s amazing is the teachers also complain that their kids don’t respect authority and seem to miss the connection between their own behavior towards authority and that of their children.
Sorry for the rant but my wife feels like she has to keep her head down and her mouth shut. It’s damn frustrating. Neither of us realized how leftwing the educations system is here from the top down.
My question actually has to do with the “mean black kids” my daughters are encountering at their school. Their school offers almost 100% scholarships to families in its neighborhood who can’t afford to send their kids to a private school. Great intentions!
All are black and many are super aggressive, especially towards the white kids (it seems). I’m worried a.) about my children’s safety and b). about their increasingly negative perception of black people. Our oldest is in 8th grade (14 years old) and our youngest is in Kindergarten.
Sidenote: I went to live with my dad when I was younger and attended a rough city school. I knew nothing of racial tension and had never experienced it in the small town I had grown up in. About a year into my time with dad I was assaulted by a black gang at school in 7th grade and was beat pretty severely. I say “gang” but it actually was a fight between one black and me that turned into a group beatdown.
I transferred back to my small country school the next year- I had never experienced that kind of racism. They kept laughing about beating the white *ss.
While I try to work through some of the issues that incident stored up in me I don’t have much patience for my children being targeted.
Does any of that make sense? Is there a solution besides just avoiding black people? Many of them seem angry and aggressive here.
Thanks for your time and allowing me to reach out.
