Why is everybody so intent on making excuses for this behavior? Yfantis says he "earned" a beatdown. Odub says it's about the violence that permeates our society. Socioprof gives us psychobabble about gender noncomformity. Mr. Coates acts as if the violence in the "hood" is something that just happens, like the weather.
Somebody might just want to point out that Larry, the actual perpetrator of this crime, is a moral agent with the ability to make choices. He chose to commit this savage attack, and I for one am sickened by the propensity to make excuses for this sort of behavior. Conroy suffered a permanent knee injury which will be with him forever. He could have died.
Everybody is missing one rather glaring point: Larry suffered no serious consequences from his behavior. He's being told that this sort of behavior is basically OK. His family certainly seems to think so, and the criminal justice system apparently agrees. So he gets away with it -- and his friends, relatives and neighbors see him get away with it, which of course encourages others to follow in his footsteps.
Until, that is, he goes too far, somebody dies, and he ends up in prison for life. Or maybe he gets killed in another act of senseless violence. Who knows what will happen to Larry.
But let me suggest that the concepts of "punishment" and "deterrence" ought to have some role in this discussion.
It's always telling when you see someone disagreeing with paraphrase or demeanor, instead of disagreeing with a fully formed quote. You guys can check out the thread and weigh for yourself the accuracy of the charge.
That said, I do tend to write like everyone who's reading this blog, has been reading it since its inception. So, if you generally hold stereotypes about liberals, I guess you could fairly assume that I was interested in "making excuses" for thuggery. Of course, my feelings about violent crime are on the record. It is always tricky to say what one would do, were they in someone else's shoes, but I think if I'm walking down Lennox and some kid knocks me out cold, I will understand that he was just testing his limits. I will understand that kids like to explore their boundaries. I will know that young men aren't always great about regulating their aggressive impulses. I will also do anything, within reason and ethics, I can to aid the justice system in prosecuting said young man.
Understanding why people do dumb shit, isn't the same as thinking they have the right to do dumb shit. I say this as someone whose been on both ends of assault and battery. I say this as someone whose spouse was mugged on her way home, a few years back, and a dude whose lived in neighborhoods with a relatively high rate of violent crime, all his life.
Here is the thing--while a disproportionate number of black boys may be standing out on the street cold-cocking dudes, a larger disproportionate number of black boys are living in fear of getting cold-cocked, and reacting accordingly. The worst part of going to an inner-city school, for me, wasn't the teachers, or the schools themselves, but the way violence hung in the air, and made people crazy. The atmosphere of violence, the sense that it can always happen, that there are no safe places, even in school, alters everything. It changes how you walk home, who you hang out with, how you dress, where you sit at lunch, to, ultimately, how focused you are on your studies.
I could be wrong, but my sense from reading Conroy's story, and the lack of responsibility shown by the kid's family, is that the kid will likely be in court again. And for all the talk about race and hate-crime, the next time out, there won't be any debate about a hate-crime, because the victim will likely look like the perp. Contrary to popular belief, in the black community, in general, there isn't much sympathy for people who decide to batter other people for kicks.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Understanding why people do dumb shit, isn't the same as thinking they have the right to do dumb shit.
This. All the talk about moral agency is great-- except that it doesn't account for the fact that crime rates rise and fall, that some communities are safer to live in than others, and that poverty, crime and young males at loose ends all seem to be connected. If you have any interest in making things better, you have to look at more than just 'hey, Larry was a thug.' (Though in Conroy's case, it may be the best answer he's going to get.)
Agreed, that quote is heart of it point right there. And I'd add that you can't expect to have a lot of success in inducing people to not do dumb shit unless you understand why they are doing it to start off with. Which I now see is just what Persia was saying.
It's hard to know how much any of the well informed parcing of why people do violent things really gets to any truth. A perpetrator could be justified to their mind, impulsive, intentionally hateful or just a knucklehead shaped by their environment. No one really knows but being a thoughtful person means asking questions and looking for answers, a daunting prospect I would imagine if you are a victim. My fear is that the answer is and always will be pretty basic, but then again, none of us can every really know.
First, I don't think you were excusing the behavior at all, and I think the criticism is out of line. In fact, I think the criticism itself is nearly self-defeating, because it just felt very distant, like the author had no idea this stuff happens regularly.
However this line:
Now, I've been searching through the archives this morning looking for the right quote and post, and unfortunately work is calling, so I gotta make this quick*. I think this is overly defensive considering some of the opinions you've expressed on the police recently. It just seems to me that the police would almost have to be called (by you) for a prosecution to happen, which I know you've said you're hesitant about. So I'm kinda curious about the inclusion of that line.
*I know that you refuted paraphrasing before, so I have one strike against me already here. I will definitely dig up a quote if I have time.
this was the post I was referring to:
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/so_exactly_when_would_you_call_the_cops.php#comments
Now that being said, I think I came down harsh, but this is the exact paragraph that gave me doubt:
So, I do apologize there, as I'd probably put beatdown in the same category of mugging.
Well, I don't know that I've yet articulated a coherent statement on how I feel about the cops. So part of its on me. In that post, I was talking the suspicion that something was happening, versus knowing that something happened.
Heh. My immediate response was, command-c, sign in to comments, prepare to write in all caps "STOP SNITCHING"! Craft witty follow-up.
Anyways you know this is off topic a bit but to me it's a serious issue. I've been accosted in my neighborhood and decided the best option was to give up $5 while telling a bystander "don't call the cops". There's currently two vacants across the street - one that kids deal on from time to time, the other fiends crawl into and use as a shooting gallery. These were both, at one point, condo developments with big price tags... that's another gripe for another thread. But it's delicate - I know some of the kids selling out there are from the block, even from my building. And honestly, I don't even really care about the dealing. I care a lot more about the shooting gallery. I don't want dope fiends laying up anywhere near me, my wife, my car, or my apartment.
Yet I'm dead scared to call the police. I was shook to even go in and get a police report for a traffic accident in my local precinct. I'm more scared of being thought to be a snitch, or a narc, than I am of just simply being a white man walking through the projects. So that quote really stood out to me as an "ORLY?" moment. I don't know if I would have the same reaction to getting cold cocked on Lennox. Just saying.
Ergh...I am mildly embarrassed that I have to do this, but since my choice of phrase was apparently inspiration for Cheerful Iconoclast's comment, and since that comment then became inspiration for a new TNC blog post, I feel compelled to explain myself for the record.
So for posterity: when I said, "the fact that the goofy dude biking through the hood was white most certainly increased the probability that he earned himself a beat-down," I was just using "earned a beat-down" as a totally tongue-in-cheek, obviously jokey, inappropriately cutesy way of saying "got beat up." I do not think John Conroy earned this in any way.
Similarly, I have a lot of respect for John Conroy's journalism, and I do not think he is "goofy." I was just playing off of a quote from Conroy's article:
And in case any residents of the West Side are offended, I meant "the hood" as a respectful term of endearment.
Now I realize this comment is turning too tongue-in-cheek! Sorry. Ok, totally seriously now: I think Cheerful Iconoclast's instinct was a healthy one, which is that we should not let the perpetrators of senseless violence off the hook, and also we as a society should do what we can to deter more of the same. But to use my phrasing of "earning a beat-down" as one of your data points would just be taking my slang way too seriously.
Deeper thought: as a white man conscious that I was writing for a mixed-race audience, was I trying too hard with my choice of slang to sound "street"? That is, would I have jokingly said "earn a beat-down" if I were just talking to my white friends? Feel free to use in your masters thesis on race and language.
Ok, now I am being too jokey again. Sorry!
FWIW, I didn't take your expression of "earned himself a beat-down" as meaning anything but 'got beat up'. I certainly didn't take it to mean he earned it in any meaningful sense (as in, the beating was a worthy moral consequence of something Conroy had done). I almost think that a reader had to be interpreting you uncharitably to take such a position seriously (I come from the tradition of academic philosophy, where one of the first rules of argument is 'always interpret the other person charitably'. We all say stupid things, and we all phrase things badly even in stating otherwise-compelling points).
Now, how your choice of phrase reflects on you as a white man consciously writing for a mixed-race argument, I don't have any answers (white nerdy woman writing here, if the credentials matter); but I suspect this may be the most intriguing question anyone poses on this thread.
Signature lines with everyone's bona fides. That would be hilarious.
I love the idea, except for the part where it squelches the reason I frequent this blog.
I know, I know, es bromo...but it shines some light on, Why are we here having this conversation? Speaking for myself: I get a lot of benefit out of reading some theory. You know, people's ideas of what race in America is and does.
As a white person who has lived in majority-minority neighborhoods most of my life, and who is raising a child of color, I have plenty of experience doing constructive confrontation with the mind-set you're joking about here I've found that, from the Black Studies classroom to the corner in East Oakland, my ability to listen in on or contribute to reality-based and anti-racist theorizing is limited by my skin.
Hence the power of the innertubes, where a comment I make can be just my thought, not the sum of my experience and privilege. At the same time, I get a kick out of how frequently folks ascribe a race, gender or class background to me based on my thoughts alone and are so, so wrong.
Back on topic: Calling the cops to get accountability for random violence, or targeted thuggery, is everyone's job as a member of the community. Calling the cops on dealing, that's another issue. Keep it calm and quiet, don't retail on my front step or my kid's playground, and I feel no call to participate in the failed war on some [brown] people who do some kinds of drugs. But that's me.
MWF3kds
Alternately, we could put the basics in shorthand before we talk.
About twice a month, I find that stuff is relevant. Usually, I write my thoughts first, then see a way they could be read differently if I had a different background.
And it certainly would be hilarious.
Yfantis, I take you at your word, and in truth I probably knew at the time that you didn't think that Conroy deserved the beating. But rhetorically it was just too good a turn of phrase to pass up.
I also apologize for not responding in general earlier -- life intervened, and I probably would have posted a more elaborate defense of my honor had I seen Mr. Coates' comment earlier.
Let me back up a second, since I was the one whose comment Mr. Coates found objectionable. In reading the thread It did seem to me that nobody else was bothered by the fact that "Larry" suffered almost no consequences for his actions, and that this sends a message to both Larry and the members of his social circle that this sort of behavior is OK. Until the next cyclist hits his head just the right way and "Larry" or the next "Larry" gets sent up for a long, long time.
I'm all for a serious inquiry into the reasons for high rates of criminality within certain segments of the American populace. And I agree with Mr. Coates that indeed Larry's next victim may well be black too. Likewise, I'm sure that going to be public school where there is an omnipresent threat of violence makes such school a worse learning environment.
But I still think that the concepts of "punishment" and "deterrence" were sadly lacking from the prior discussion, and that this lack made it a bit namby-pamby.
So fine, talk about why Larry did what he did. If you can find some nifty way to prevent future Larrys from doing what he did, great. Until then, well, let's think about some more serious consequences for assaults of this nature.
Ta-Nehisi,
One question I have, reading all this, and especially your description of your experience in school: Why do we tolerate this? I mean, it's not like it's some kind of impossible-to-achieve utopian vision to have schools where the kids aren't always scared of impending violence, or to have neighborhoods like that.
My guess is that a lot of the reason we tolerate it is because nobody who matters (aka nobody with any power) faces most of the cost of this. Poor people mostly don't vote, don't have much money, don't have much voice. Not like this is hurting real people or anything.
A second reason is because of the excuses of poverty and race. Some fraction of the country is okay just assuming that, well, you know, safe streets and schools are possible for whites, but not for blacks. That group overlaps with the group that doesn't really care all that much what happens to black kids anyway. Another big group makes the same argument, substituting poor for black, on mostly the same logic.
Terrible how those poor kids keep getting shot on their way to school in Liberia. Or was it Anacostia? Somewhere far away with strange people nothing like me, anyway. Wonder what's on TV tonight.
I think one of the problems in curbing violence in schools is that we have taken away the power of teachers to effectively discipline their students. Detention, suspension or even expulsion are not effective tools to discipline disruptive students. The most disruptive students end up monopolizing classroom time in attempts to control their behavior. This not only harms the students who want to learn, but contributes to the overall atmosphere of violence by teaching them that the consequences for disruption are minimal, and adults are not to be respected.
So what is proper discipline then? Honest question
I would say permanent expulsions for the most disruptive students, separate classrooms to deal with emotionally disturbed students or criminals, and the return of corporal punishment, as a start.
You can pretty much leave corporal punishment off the table for legal (if not moral) reasons. The rest costs a lot of money and require a lot of staff that isn't there for the time being. I'm all for putting the money in, especially if means more and smaller classrooms, but it would mean a dramatic increase in spending
"Understanding why people do dumb shit, isn't the same as thinking they have the right to do dumb shit."
I agree with this, and I think understanding why is important. I, for one, thought Conroy's exercise in trying to understand was interesting and worthwhile.
Now, call me naive, but I'm thinking we have to understand more about the causes of kids taking part in violent acts so that we can figure out how to address the problem. I mean, this was "just" a man getting beat up on his bike, but it doesn't seem that many steps from this to the next kid who gets shot, which seems to happen in my metropolitan area on a nearly daily basis.
Unless we think we already have the answers. Or unless we think that's just life and there is no answer.
The idea that "the concepts of 'punishment' and 'deterrence' ought to have some role in this discussion" fascinates me. Per both Conroy and Larry, the attack was probably not deeply premeditated. The clearest description of motivation that anyone gives is this (from Larry):
Punishment I understand, but deterrence? How does one deter this sort of act? I submit that the moral calculus involved here wasn't deep enough for the usual notions of deterrence to work. Typically, when we think of deterrence, we think of criminals weighing the act of violence against the possible punishment; in theory, if the punishment is undesirable enough, it will deter the potential criminal from committing the crime which could result in the punishment. This is the logic of disproportionately high sentences for drug offenders -- that if we make the punishment vile enough, perhaps we'll deter people from committing the crime.
But Larry and his friends, by both his own account and the studies that Conroy was later able to dig up on hate crimes, would not have been affected by this moral conundrum. The moral calculus of weighing deed against punishment and finding the former worth the risk of the latter doesn't seem to have entered their minds. How then should deterrence enter the conversation? I ask this as an honest question, because much of our criminal justice system is predicated on a deterrent effect, but here the idea seems like an afterthought, a nonentity in the crucial instant when a group of teenagers decided to commit a beating that harmed Conroy for the rest of his life. If boys like this are not considering the deterrent consequences of the justice system, what does this say about how we as a society should address these crimes to begin with? How does one prevent, on a justice-system level, the sort of spontaneous crime that defies the existence of any train of considerations leading up to the violence? If we predicate our social institutions on a weighing of options, how do we effectively address the sort of seemingly spontaneous violence that harmed Conroy? The challenge here is not only that deterrence is ineffective, but that the nature of the crime suggests punishment will be to some degree ineffective as well. If the purpose of punishment is to create in the punished individual an aversion to experiencing the punishment again, how does that address the sort of crime that seems not to take any accounting of aversion and consequences before it is committed?
I don't think that's accurate.
Assume that the first guy they came upon was a member of a prominent gang. Could they take him? Yes. Would there be consequences for it later? Yes. Would they be thus deterred? Probably.
I would guess the reason this doesn't work from a criminal justice standpoint is that while the consequences may be pretty severe for assault, the efficacy of enforcement is pretty low.
The funny thing is, from Conroy's article (and of course we're reading this through his own lens and prejudices, but I give him credit for being upfront about that), I'm not sure that the gang member wouldn't have gotten beaten up too.
"We were playing basketball. We got off the train. Thirty seconds later, you came riding by on your bike." The chilling part of that and other quotes in the article is how little forethought there seems to be in them. If Conroy had been wearing the right color bandanna for a prominent gang, would that have saved him? I didn't get that sense. Would they have regretted the later consequences if he were a gang lord? Probably. But would it have stopped them in that moment? I'm not so sure. (Which is why this is such an interesting question; I think there's certainly room for argument either way.)
I claim no knowledge at all here, but it sure seems like the consequences for jumping the gang lord might stick in the minds of the *next* bunch of kids looking to jump someone.
Well, my problem with all this is that you're assuming the kid has the self-awareness and expressive abilities to accurately describe exactly what was going on. He may not understand why he did what he did, but that doesn't mean it's not understandable, and not subject to influence.
Additionally, I think there's a pretty classic bully dynamic at work here, where even if the perpetrator can't accurately and honestly explain why he's targeted someone for harassment, it's obviously because he knows he's stronger than that person.
"We were playing basketball. We got off the train. Thirty seconds later, you came riding by on your bike."
What goes unsaid is "and you looked like an easy mark."
Now I will defintiely have to read this article. I grew up down the street from the Lake Street el stop at Cicero and haven't been back in a minute. Though I have to say, I'm honestly not surprised at what happened to this guy...
How does this fit into this discussion of perplexing behavior: a minister is shot in the back in church not by a black kid, a fire chief is shot in court by white police for contesting a traffic ticket ...
So, a kid hitting someone is not quite as perplexing ...
Does TNC go into more detail about his experience with the other end in his book? I mean, aside from WoW.
I'm late to this game, but still feel compelled to comment on a couple points. First, I, too, have been confronted by a group of kids in Chicago, but luckily it stopped short of violence. In my case, turf definitely had something to do with it. I walked onto an El car and through a group of four kids, one of whom then confronted me for getting on "his" train. When I discussed the incident with my co-workers, all of whom were black, the next day, they thought that I was spared violence because I am white. Assuming that the matter could have gotten really serious, even though I saw no sign of guns, they said, "They knew they'd get the death penalty if they shot you. If they shot one of us, they'd be out in three weeks."
Second, to amichel's point about the reintroduction of corporal punishment being part of the solution to the problem of violence in school, I don't think that's right at all. My impression from working with kids in a very rough South Side elementary school was that spankings or worse occured regularly at home. Of all the tough things I saw at that school, I was most disturbed by how quickly older siblings turned to hitting their younger siblings when they got in trouble. That really seemed to add to the constant feeling of impending violence that TNC spoke of and certainly didn't stop kids from acting out.
Spankings from parents and beat downs from older siblings used to be enough deterrent for the avearge kid in 70s Detroit.
I'm going to attract some ire here but; Here's a kid who lives with the tension and awarenesss of the possibility of daily beat downs at school. How can anyone expect stern words, detention or "time out" to be anything but laughable?
I hear you and I wish I knew the answer. I'm just going on the experience of watching the kids I worked with. When they got in trouble, they would sort of shut down, even when people threatened violence. It just seemed to me that they were thinking, "I've survived beatings before. I can take what's coming."
Maybe I'm wrong, but it just didn't seem like a deterrent. I certainly can't claim to be an expert--I didn't work down there (Englewood) all that long and have never lived in anything approaching a rough neighborhood. However, it did clearly seem to teach those kids to resort to hitting as a punishment. It just seemed to add to the overall tension.
Im not worried about the average kid today. It's the small percentage of morally bankrupt children, raised by morally bankrupt - if at all present - parents that do this type of thing. Same as it was in 70s Detroit and everywhere else for that matter.
If it were as simple as allowing corporal punishment back in schools, it would be done. Unfortunately, I have no doubt in my mind that such punishments would have no significant impact on the type of kids we are talking about. This problem is far deeper.
This is the same kind of argument many conservatives make when someone attempts to explain the motivations behind terroist acts. Utter disgust and condemnation is the ONLY acceptable response, and any attempt at explanation (aside from "they hate us because we're free.") is interpreted as a tacit defense of the deplorable acts. I cannot stand this uncritical mindset.
Having said that, I believe that people who brutalize other human beings are savages who deserve little of our sympathy and understanding.
I can see why someone might be frustrated by calls to understand violent criminals. It often seems as though these calls are motivated not out of concern for the criminal, but out of fear that condeming the criminals would reinforce the belifs and policy proposals of ideological adversaries.
"Contrary to popular belief, in the black community, in general, there isn't much sympathy for people who decide to batter other people for kicks."
One example of this, that I noticed recently: there was an NYT article about four young black men who attempted to hold up an electronics store in Harlem, while brandishing a weapon and pistol whipping one of the store workers. The store owner, a white guy, pulled out a shotgun and fired there shots, killing two of the perps and wounding the other two. The man-on-the-street interviews conducted by the Times in the neighborhood pretty much all condemned the perps and expressed support for the store owner.
Additional anecdotal evidence:
My husband works as a prosecutor in a largish city. He has been repeatedly advised by the older hands on staff that people living in tougher or more violent neighborhoods generally make better jurors - in the sense of more prosecution friendly. The thinking is that people with more personal experience with violent crime, or living in violent areas are more willing to accept that someone might just attack another person, or might just be a little crazy, because they know a guy like that, and frankly, they would like to see him off the streets too.
The shorthand on those liberals from the safe neighborhoods - they think too much, and get too confused to convict.
One of the reasons I loved your book Ta-Nehisi is the way you so accurately captured an inner-city school's seemingly perpetual looming threat of violence. Specifically not just as it might be perpetrated against oneself but that you might have to be the one doling out a beatdown over some dumb shit because if you didnt dudes would be coming out of the woodwork to test you.
"One of the reasons I loved your book Ta-Nehisi is the way you so accurately captured an inner-city school's seemingly perpetual looming threat of violence."
Perhaps this would be a worthy topic for a future post, but how did "inner-city" get enshrined as an adjective? Matt Yglesias went to an "inner-city" school in a literal sense -- it was in New York City, not in the suburbs somewhere. But no one has Dalton in mind when they say "inner-city".
yeah that's always been a pet-peeve.
A few points:
Deterrence modifies behavior before the fact, punishment after the fact. Larry & Co are in fact deterred when, by their own assessment, someone "looks like trouble". That assessment is instinctive and made on an instantaneous basis. It is only tangentially related to whether someone is possibly "in a gang". They, and others far more sinister in their intentions, see people all of the time in situations exactly like Conroy's, and "self deter". They absolutely do NOT attack people who seem to pose potential threats, or who might carry additional penalties for having been attacked. The consequences of being mistaken tends to push the decision to the side of caution. They do this out of self preservation, just like a pride of lions will select a zebra in preference to a Cape Buffalo.
As I write this I am looking down on the Lake St el, a dozen blocks from where this took place. I have never been attacked, or even threatened. I have been told by people like Larry, once they got to know me, that, I "look like trouble" (6'2" a fit 220, bald, bearded & Black) or "you have that TAC unit look". Larry & Co would almost universally see me, and decide nothing at all (although I DO NOT rely on this). Like so many others, Larry is not a part of society as a member. He forages UPON society, and uses it byproducts to live, but has no connection to it as we might understand. I guarantee that Larry can't read (only 20% of Chicago public school students read at grade level). I guarantee that he, his friends, his family, are disconnected from that societal engagement that prevents these kinds of action from being even something that you might contemplate (show of hands... when was the last time you considered punching a random stranger in the face?). Larry and a million others exist as some sort of transitional societal form between pure tribal and the world of posters on blogs.
That he escaped punishment (completely escaped by his own light, I would guess) is simply another step on the random walk to prison and/or an unfortunate death. Some kind of punishment would have at least weighed in on the side of "stuff you don't want to do" , as opposed to stuff that you CAN do". Sadly enough, an early encounter with the judicial system, is likely to be his only hope.
If you hadn't self-identified as black in this comment, I wonder if you would have gotten heat for it by the readership here on racial grounds.
Dave,
I like your presence here, but please don't make comments like this. It really is just concern-trolling.
Ta-Nehisi,
I'll abide by your request, and refrain from pointing this sort of thing out in the future, but I think there is a legitimate question here, about the bounds of discourse and what latitude should be given to a speaker based on his own backgroud. Perhaps you'll address it in general terms in a blog post at some point.
No one can guarantee that larry does not read and you guarantee that larry can't read. When anyone says that 20% of this city or that city can't read at grade level, it is not the same as saying that they cannot read. The statistics typically divides each grade into quartiles. The quartile you are talking about -at or above grade level- may be as low as 20% in some American cities. But the quartile right below there are kids who can read just below grade level. That is not to say they cannot read, it only says they are a year or so below grade level. this group of kids might be another 20% or it might be 40 %. It depends on the city. Being a year or two behind in your reading in 10th, 11th or 12th grade means you can read and understand everything in the NYTimes. Being a year or two behind in 7th, 8th, 9th grades means you can easily digest any other paper in America. being a year or two behind grade level in 5th or 6th grade means you can easily read USA today or any gannett newspaper.
It's fun to try and win an argument and say only 20% of a city's public school system can't read but it is very very far from the truth.
Most adults don't read. Most adults don't read anything that is close to 12th grade reading level in any given year. Most fiction sold in this country (is it even 20% of americans who buy or read books as adults?) is written way below the 10th grade reading level. it becomes only a polite lie to say most Americans read.
There is also the phenomena that some of the wildest kids in a class can read, are smart, and are bored, restless and resentful just like you and me.
"It's fun to try and win an argument and say only 20% of a city's public school system can't read but it is very very far from the truth." ... Uhh, no it isn't. It's NOT far from the truth, and its 20% who CAN read.
Having recently sheparded my sister in law's child (now 19) through the Chicago Public School system, I am intimately familiar with the conditions in the schools and typical achievement of the students. When achievement is stated as "20% are reading at grade level" it is done so in an attempt to conceal the fact that a MUCH larger percentage are reading SIGNIFICANTLY below grade level. The more illustrative statistics would be "percentage below grade level in each grade, and HOW MUCH below grade level", two metrics I suspect we will never see.
You are correct when you state that it is a "polite fiction" that most American can read (how else to explain the birthers, the truthers, Rush, Glen or the persistence of Republican Party). As a hiring manager for IBM and AT&T I have seen first hand the lack of what should be minimal literacy in most college graduates. However, the educational disparity ("good schools" vs CPS) is so profound that when I make a sweeping generalization like "Larry can't read", it is because I know and speak to half a dozen Larry's every day, and none of them can read at a level that would remotely approach nominal, reading a newspaper, literacy.
The difficulty in teaching anyone to read is that little of the actual reading can take place with the teacher in a classroom with 15 or 30 classmates during the school day. Being a real reader almost always requires an almost infinite amount of reading outside the classroom. Classrooms and teachers and reading groups practice what individuals then either do or do not do outside the classroom.
What I often see in my teaching is kids who have acquired the skills and strategies to read, kids who are very bright and articulate, and yet do have a practiced fluency that most often only comes from plowing through books, magazines, newspapers and print generally.
to you and me these non-reading readers can look like real non-readers but we are not always right in calling them that. Many young readers are very shaky still,
The limits of what can really happen inside a 8 hour school day are most keenly seen in reading. if the noise and clutter and structure and layers of social interactions and opportunities inherent to a school setting are matched by noisy or busy homes that make reading taxing or almost impossible for some students then the reading ability looks even shakier.
that said, saying that breaking down scores into other quartiles- looking at kids who are substantially deficient- isn't done is not accurate. those numbers exist in every school, town, district, and state. Teachers work with those stats endlessly. They are published and available. You say the stats never tell how far below grade level groups of kids in a system are but that is exactly what the quartiles do tell you.
Ulysses, that is the kind of hard-headed comment I find quite appealing -- you said what I originally wanted to say, but better. So thanks for that. As I recall, the original article said that Larry had actually flunked nearly every class in high school, which rather strongly supports your supposition that he is illiterate, or every close to it.
If somebody comes up with a good way of engaging Larry and other similarly situated in the larger society, I'd be all for it. I'd rather have Larry being socially productive than sitting in a jail cell.
But until that happens, things like punishment ought to be on the table.
Ulysses, that is the kind of hard-headed comment I find quite appealing -- you said what I originally wanted to say, but better. So thanks for that. As I recall, the original article said that Larry had actually flunked nearly every class in high school, which rather strongly supports your supposition that he is illiterate, or every close to it.
If somebody comes up with a good way of engaging Larry and other similarly situated in the larger society, I'd be all for it. I'd rather have Larry being socially productive than sitting in a jail cell.
But until that happens, things like punishment ought to be on the table.
I teach in Hartford and two responses to these open threads.
1. the suggestion that teachers need more recourse to discipline kids does not ring true to me. Looking at my experiences and 12 years of interactions with colleagues I do not have faith that teachers can always measure their responses to students. Some teachers are very suited to the work they do and some teachers do not seem suited to its various pressures and intricacies at all. Building and district Administrators and the law are the proper place to start discipline.
Expulsions are not a terrific cure-all for most of what ails the public schools. You want kids in school. You want youth to get an education. The law promises the least restrictive setting and that is also a moral standard we should pay close attention to.
2. Many of the kids I have taught in Dorchester section in Boston and the various neighborhoods of Hartford have violence in their lives. Some get hit constantly by siblings and family members. Many of their parents believe in hitting. Other kids are only children and have never been punched and have never wrestled. Many of the students I've had over the years believe they will spank and hit when they have kids because it demonstrates how much a parent cares. While many of the students I work with never go out after school or on weekends or during summer and aren't allowed to go to the boys and girls clubs or community centers, other kids participate regularly in beat down tag or even just burn ball. Take a poll in my classes and many kids will tell you year-in and year-out that they like to fight.
All this said, school is the more predictable place for some kids. It took me a long time to figure that out. I grew up thinking school was a place to be done with, go home from, that it was like hamlet's denmark a prison and rotten. Slowly I have learned over many years it is not always that.
I used to be a teacher, and I'm awfully tired of the whole "there's no discipline in schools these days" thing. I mean, yeah, there's no discipline in schools these days. But corporal punishment would just make things a lot more violent (aside from being illegal), and I think michael c. is totally right on that teachers aren't good at judging how to impose discipline in high stress situations.
There was a thread somewhere - maybe on Crooked Timber? - about the whole situation with Henry Louis Gates: both he and the cop got stuck in this pissing match in which they were trying to demonstrate their own dominance. I've seen the same thing happen at school more times than I can count. I've been involved in more than one stupid pissing match of my own. It's really, really hard to keep your head out of it when that's the atmosphere of the school. So teachers, like students, are in this place where violence hangs in the air, and it really makes it so both just react defensively far too often.
Having taught in a comprehensive neighborhood public high school, I also really question the idea of expelling "the most disruptive kids." Charter schools, even if they're not academically selective, can kick kids out for fighting - which they did, right back to my classroom. Those "most disruptive kids" vary tremendously: some of them desperately need mental health treatment, some are bored as hell, some are traumatized, some have minimal control over themselves, some are in survival situations at home and care way more about that than about school. Regardless, when you kick a kid out, that kid *goes somewhere*. He or she doesn't just disappear. And unless you're suggesting some totally novel, far better-funded system for them to go to, kicking a lot more kids out isn't doing them or the rest of us a favor.
Though it's a real bind because if you can't kick kids out, you lose a lot of your incentive for compliance.
(To the side of the main conversation: I love how you put this, TNC.
The worst part of going to an inner-city school, for me, wasn't the teachers, or the schools themselves, but the way violence hung in the air, and made people crazy. The atmosphere of violence, the sense that it can always happen, that there are no safe places, even in school, alters everything.
Probably the best description of why being a teacher in an inner-city school was so intense. Doesn't matter how your own classroom is - all that stuff is still around.)
My "violence history" is as follows: gun pulled on me in robbery [by a black man]; shot at [apparently by black neighbors ("the junkies next door") angry at my roommate for calling police to referee a dispute]; knife pulled on me by potential gay rapist [group, mostly black]; robbed with gun jammed into my temple [two white men]. My niece was stalked then kidnapped and choked [by a white man imprisoned for doing about the same thing 30 years before]. I really don't think race and violence are deeply related in any causation sense.