Bloomberg hits the jackpot: NYC students can’t read, write, or do arithmetic
by Jon Rappoport
March 12, 2013
Is this a ploy to supply more workers for McDonald’s?
Mayor Bloomberg, so focused on the social engineering of New York City, seems to have added a forceful item to his list:
a staggering 80% of high school grads entering the City’s community college system can’t perform well enough to take college courses.
The failure applies across the board: reading, writing, and math.
Bloomberg isn’t even announcing an investigation into this horrendous situation. Nor is there any word of teacher or principal firings.
Why not? Because the outcome of a probe would reflect disastrously on the school system and the Mayor. Students are being promoted from grade to grade without learning what they’re supposed to learn. Students are fraudulently “earning” high school diplomas.
A detailed examination of how this fake education operates could turn up all sorts of nasty facts. Are many teachers changing students’ test scores to make them look better? Are teachers grading on such a ridiculous curve that failure equals success? Are principals pretending they don’t know what’s going on? Are they actively aiding teachers in the massive fraud?
If the truth were known, government funding of the City’s public school system could be cut. The feds might even come to town to find out how deep the lying and cheating goes. And once investigators sit down with teachers and ask them serious questions, the lid on the scandal would surely come off, and the explosion would be heard far and wide.
None of this begins to register how students feel, as they move from grade to grade in elementary school and high school, and don’t know what they’re doing in the classroom. It’s a Twilight Zone of pretense from A to Z.
Forget the absurd “self-esteem” argument. Pushing students ahead in school when they don’t deserve it is a ruse the kids understand. They know their “achievements” are built on a foundation of sand. They know it’s all about gaming the system.
“Sure, I feel a lot better about myself, because my teachers cheated and gave me grades I didn’t really make.”
For several years, I worked as a tutor at Santa Monica College, and I saw students wandering into my area because their lower-level education had failed. It was a mess.
At that point, the faking was over. I had students who could barely read at a sixth-grade level. What’s the answer? Give a kid six years of reading work in a month? Are you kidding? And if you think that’s bad, try moving a student’s writing level up the same distance just as quickly. You’d be better off pushing a big truck from sea level to the top of a mountain with your bare hands.
Spokespeople for the NYC community colleges make it sound as if they’re handling the remedial training of these failed students with aplomb. I can tell you it’s a tremendous strain, and in many cases it doesn’t work at all.
You aren’t merely reminding students of what they once learned but then forgot. You’re supplying them with what was never imparted. You’re also trying to break through powerful resistance, because the kids don’t want to admit how little they know. They sense how deep and wide the abyss is. Understandably, they want to stay on firm ground. But there is no firm ground.
They never learned how to read, write, and do math well. It never happened. Try saying, “Well, kid, you have to go back to sixth-grade-level stuff.” Right away, at the age of 18, they picture themselves at little desks with children who are 11 and 12.
Bureaucrats, of course, solve these problems by throwing more money at them. Billions and billions of dollars. And they cook up fancy names for new programs. No child left behind. Equal opportunity. They pretend to discover mechanical fixes.
“Oh, you see, the real reason the kids are having trouble is they don’t have computers. So we’ll pay for computers.” That’s on the order of a doctor telling a patient, “Your arm isn’t working right, so I’m going to give you a pair of glasses. Finally, you be able to see what’s on television.”
One of the two bonuses in THE MATRIX REVEALED is my complete 18-lesson course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, which includes the teacher’s manual and a CD to guide you. I was previously selling the course for $375. This is a new way to teach logic, the subject that has been missing from schools for decades. For more information on how increasing your command of Logic can help you navigate your convictions more clearly, see the FREE article I wrote entitled “Matrix programming 101: destroy logic”.
After the damage is done, and you have huge numbers of kids who graduate from high school and can barely read, setting up a remedial program that will really work is quite a challenge. You need lots of staff, and your people have to be good. They have to know what they’re doing. You have to get back to basics. No fancy aids and machines. This is intense one-on-one tutoring. You’re in it for the long haul. In the failed schools, the teachers were inattentive at best, and at worst they were cheaters. You can’t go that way again. You can’t skip the hard parts just to make yourself look good. You can’t screw the kids over again.
But you can’t assume the kids were never complicit in their own downfall. They were. They were there. They played their part in the con. That has to be overcome, because many kids will try to skate, glide, and slide through their second-time-around education.
They’ll hope against hope they can wangle their way through by faking it. It’s what they know how to do best.
Bloomberg can deal, from his high balcony, with sodas and sugar and coffee and guns by making proclamations. But when it comes to education, he’s taking on (ignoring) a real tiger.
It’s likely he’ll cheat just as teachers and principals and students have been cheating. He’ll skate, too. When his term as mayor is done, he’ll walk into the sunset, after issuing a parting statement loaded with salesman’s bluff. But the cage will open and the tiger will come out.
Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
[…] Bloomberg Jackpot – NYC Students Can’t Read, Write, Or Do Math […]
Great article Jon. I attempted, again, to share it to FB and got the ridiculous note about it being “spammy”. I told them they had an agenda and they should just stop it. I doubt they will. So, I presume that because you allow sharing by link to FB that you would also allow me to share the whole column by cut and paste. It is a valuable read.
Keep up the good work. If you do not want me to do this, please contact and I will take the post down.
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That’s fine. Thanks! Please link back to the original article.
Jon, I agree with everything you have said, but I have one question. What about the parents? Surely they must realise that their child is sub standard – why do THEY do nothing about it???
“A twilight zone of pretense from A to Z.” I like that.
Santa Monica college….I used to work on that campus at the radio station (the one where students don’t get to do anything). Maybe I saw you walking around at some point. It was a long time ago now.
It has always been up to the parents to monitor what their children are doing, be it school, sports, after school classes like French classes, karate, dance etc.! It is up to the parents to make sure the children can read, write and do math etc. Children success depends on the parents making sure that their children are doing well, the parents set the standards and then make sure there children follow them. What is being taught by the schools, it’s up to the parents to find out. JON I love your articles! But after reading everything under the sun, I have come to the conclusion that we need to all ever parent and every American alive need to take responsibility for our children, schools, churches, cities, government, all of it. WE THE PEOPLE have fallen down on the job of maintaining and running our homes, children, families, cities, businesses, churches and governments at all levels. EVERYONE has been chasing leisure and bling everyone, some more than others, nonetheless we are all responsible for the condition of our lives, families children, Our Country! It is up to US to make sure things ARE CORRECTLY BEING HANDLED everyday in everyday. The mess we see today is the fault of every American alive today. It is our responsibility to fix the mess, we allowed it to happen in the first place, cause we all stopped paying attention. We allowed our schools to be corrupted, our politicians to act in a way that is not in our best interests etc. Everyone ran after money as if it were the the do all end all Bloomberg and the rest of the “people in charge” are doing what we are allowing them to do. IT’S HIGH TIME WE ALL GOT INVOLVED and TOOK RESPONSIBILITY for the mess we are in. Please Jon get everyone motivated or our republic is dead and our way of life destroyed by LACK OF RESPONSIBILITY!!
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Speaking to an attorney friend the other day, she mentioned that she had just been in a meeting with a recently graduated young lawyer who was specializing in environmental law ( from Univ. of Penn ). Said young lawyer had NO idea about the quintessential, pivotal environmental class action lawsuit known globally as Love Canal.
We are doomed.
Spot on article, Jon. Interesting that you used to be tutor.
My two favorite lines from that NYC article you cite:
“NYC Department of Education said it has raised high school graduation rates by 40 percent over the last seven years.” and,
“…the number of students needing remedial courses to do college work has declined slightly — by half a percentage point overall.”
The first quote tells me nothing except they’ve obviously been lowering standards; the second just leaves me wondering why they thought it was at all worth mentioning. A whole HALF a percentage point? Boy is that statistically significant.
Makes me glad I was home schooled…
[…] nomorefakenews.com March 12, 2013 […]
Does anyone doubt that this is purposeful and extends far beyond the realms of just New York City? Colleges across the country accept these uneducated graduates and indoctrinate them into a system of binge drinking and free sex that would make mommy and daddy’s jaws have to be picked up from the floor if they knew what Jimmy and Suzie Q America were up to behind those campus walls. These are the foot-soldiers of the New America, and you will find not a critical thought or a question among the bunch.
Great article! I posted the entire article on FB It was the only way I could get in posted. I did include the link. If this is unacceptable please let me know and I will delete it.
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Like!
I retired from teaching high school ten years ago. I got out just in time. I liked teaching English and special ed., but the interference from bureaucrats and administrators at all levels up to the federal was becoming overbearing. Teaching to “standards”, which mandate every fact taught, robs the teachers of flexibility and creativity. Of course, students must be taught basic skills but they must also be taught how to think. Many of you are right regarding parents. If they aren’t involved or aren’t there, discipline and self-respect are often missing. Social engineering and teaching to tests won’t educate our youth.
Saw your blog today about FB. Jon when I copied and pasted the blog, the nomorefakenews hyper link was allowed. although in the past I have tried to just link it on its own and not as part of your blog and it wouldn’t. As a matter of fact I tried both methods, nomorefakenews and your blog and neither worked. I wrote a complaint to FB. Although I hate using this word “whatever” – it’s appropriate because pasting your column was a workaround. I see someone else here did the same thing.
These same uneducated students will soon be encouraged to become “registered” voters in the “United States” and petite jury trial members in Federal “District” courts. Do you think they will be able to meet the qualifications specified below?
http://www.edrivera.com/?p=1193
If a prospective federal juror is unable to read and understand this sentence: “Sections 81 – 131 of this chapter show the territorial composition of districts and divisions by counties as of January 1, 1945,” then that juror “is unable to read, write, and understand the English language with a degree of proficiency sufficient to fill out satisfactorily the juror qualification form,” and is disqualified.
Every person involved in any matter involving federal grand and petit jurors must at a minimum be able to read and understand this sentence: “Sections 81 – 131 of this chapter show the territorial composition of districts and divisions by counties as of January 1, 1945.”
If 80% of the students are not properly prepared for a life career, then how do the taxpayers sue those responsible? How do the students sue those responsible?
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check out how many teachers are on fcebook all day and you’ll understand why the kids arent learning anything
Every thing is by design in America.
As a home school mom I can say that part of the problem with public school is that the kids are bored. Bored because they can not use what they learn. Writing papers for nothing but a grade is not inspiring -reading books they have no interest in is dull, learning math they can only apply in theroy is pointless.
There is nothing in the school system that can provide a hands on approach to learning or respond to a kid as an individual so why the surprise when the kids and schools fail?
Don’t be surprised when a lot of kids get out of school and educate themselves though. Just because the schools failed, doesn’t mean the kids won’t teach themselves at the first opprotunity they can get. I did.
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