Poor white boys flounder under 'feminised' teaching

["jack tobin" <jacktobin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"feminized teaching" is not a new concept in the world of education.
Everyone in the field knows, and has known forever, that schools are
structured for the social roles that girls have traditionally been assigned
in our society and that boys survive only by adopting behaviors which are in
conflict with those society expects from them outside of school.  those of
us who survived, even excelled, in school did so by bifurcating ourselves.
"poor white boys" are both unwilling and unable to so adapt themselves.
school is a hostile environment for them, so how are they to survive?

but that just begins to touch on the myriad problems of our schools, and
it's not just about poor white boys.  let's start with the fact that there
are many people who believe our schools are failing when, in actuality, they
are doing a pretty damn good job of achieving their purposes.  one has first
to understand that schools were not established to help children;  they were
established to train the populace for the roles that capitalist sociey had
determined for them.  that's the way universal education began in Prussia,
and that's the way it was transported to this country.  what happens is that
those of us who care about our kids waste our time spinning our wheels about
reforming an institution which is not reformable, while the powers that be
happily go on their way, ignoring us in the process.  since i have neither
the time nor the energy to present the history of compulsory education here
(and you have neither the time nor the energy to read it), let me just point
you to a web site which I highly recommend:
 http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Gatto.html

Schools are prisons, staffed by jailers and a warden.  Our kids are the
prisoners.

Jack Tobin, Ed.D.



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In the battle of Good and Evil
it's always the people who get killed

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