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Topic: It’s not getting worse, it’s getting filmed..... Post ReplyPost New Topic
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James Johnson
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Posted: 30 March 2021 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

California teacher goes on a racist Zoom rant ......


It's people like this that we are entrusting our kids education & safety?


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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 31 March 2021 at 4:55am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

What's most appalling is that it's possible for people like that to become K-12 teachers in the first place. There needs to be some way to "weed them out" in the first place. 
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Tim Cousar
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Posted: 31 March 2021 at 6:52am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

We might have to pay them better in order to have the wherewithal to weed them out.
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Michael Roberts
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Posted: 31 March 2021 at 7:17am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Especially for STEM classes, there are a lot of teachers not qualified to teach the subject they are teaching.

I remember taking Calculus through my university's extension program so I could take it in the evening, and my class was full of teachers who were taking Calculus so that they could get the certification to teach it the following semester. (And they were only getting Cs in the class.)

A lot of school districts aren't in a position to weed out their racists, unless they get caught doing something racist, sadly.


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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 31 March 2021 at 11:44am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Freedom of speech? Isn't that what usually gets trotted out. Even a teacher in front of impressionable inexperienced students has the right to express themselves? I think the real answer is the U.S. needs better hate speech laws, it seems to me 'justice' in these matters is mostly left to social media and people hounding/cancelling someone out, not a great basis for anything. Okay, so maybe you can't publish a cartoon of some religion's founder, that's a bad thing? I am not and never was Charlie Hebdo, and don't like how things get taken to extremes of with or against. I'm even less with beheaders but that doesn't make me one who wants to be deliberately offensive and say it's my right to that.

Things appear a long long way from getting to shared principles and standards in the U.S. Instead of empowering mobs and more people yelling on media infotainment, real law and order is based on shared fundamentals of justice taken out of emotionally reactive hands.
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Matt Reed
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Posted: 02 April 2021 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Rebecca, I'm curious if you've thought about framing some of your condemnation of the US legal system and systemic racism in terms of your experience in Canada.  A number of years ago, I decided to take a deep dive into race relations in Canada.  Despite the fact that I grew up as a literal neighbor (Minnesota), I did not understand the extent to which Canada faces many of the same issues as the US: the same abusive legal framework, the same indifference to the plight of the marginalized and the casual way in which those marginalized are subjected to systemic racism.

The 2016 podcast series from CBC "Who Killed Alberta Williams?" and its followup in 2018 "Finding Cleo" (do a title search as they're still available across all platforms) did an excellent job of highlighting the experiences of Canada's Indigenous people filtered through the lens of an Indigenous journalist reporting on the missing persons cases of two Indigenous girls. What appears at first glance to be just another true crime podcast is, instead, a deep dive into the way Indigenous people in Canada have been treated for well over 150 years and how that systemic racism is handled (or mishandled as the case may be) by law enforcement, the legal system, the Canadian government and your version of Child Welfare as well as how their plight is often treated with indifference by many in the general population.  Simply put?  Sadly, no different than in the US.  

I guess what I'm getting at is that although I share many of the same frustrations and concerns as you with regard to what has been happening in the US for generations, I feel like you're coming at it from a place "on high" as if the country of your birth has it all figured out and your neighbor to the South is just a backwater country filled with lofty notions laid down by the Constitution but doesn't even try to live up to them.  This is far from me being jingoistic (if you know anything about me, I'm far from that), but needing context instead of diatribes across two threads about how fucked up we are.  


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Matt Reed
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Posted: 02 April 2021 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

I don't want to ignore or deflect from James' original post.  When I read about this in the LA Times earlier this week, my jaw dropped.  It's not just a minute or two.  It's not five or ten minutes.  It's literally a 30 minute rant by this former teacher.  

Sadly, it's not all that unbelievable.  As James notes in his subject line, it's just that she was recorded.  Thank dog.  Imagine a school setting in which this "educator" was "skilled" enough to hit the "end" button on her Zoom session?  She'd still be teaching kids today.  

Is it any wonder that people of all stripes and backgrounds take out their phones and hit record when facing situations that just a decade ago wouldn't have been possible?  Where it would have been a "she said/she said" kind of situation in which this teacher more than likely would have prevailed?  Technology, in the right hands, can be a wonderful thing.
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Michael Roberts
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Posted: 02 April 2021 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

I guess what I'm getting at is that although I share many of the same frustrations and concerns as you with regard to what has been happening in the US for generations, I feel like you're coming at it from a place "on high" as if the county of your birth has it all figured out and your neighbor to the South is just a backwater country filled with lofty notions laid down by the Constitution but doesn't even try to live up to them.  This is far from me being jingoistic (if you know anything about me, I'm far from that), but needing context instead diatribes across two threads about how fucked up we are.  

-----

Anecdotally, the one time my parents ever cautioned me about the risk of being discriminated against was when we were on a road trip through Canada. Apparently they had heard from friends and relatives who lived there.

Also, here in the US, we're currently blaming Trump for the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. What is Canada's excuse?



 QUOTE:
According to Project 1907, Canada has a higher number of reported anti-Asian hate crime incidents per Asian capita compared to the U.S
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Joe Zhang
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Posted: 03 April 2021 at 7:34am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

That kind of experience can ruin a child's relationship with education forever. Horrible. 

BUT

Social media technology has inadvertently turned American society Communist. Instead of a network of informers reporting the smallest transgressions to a merciless commissar, we are recording and uploading people and letting Twitter mobs deal out punishment. 

Racism is cancer. But social media as a cure might just kill America anyways. 


Edited by Joe Zhang on 03 April 2021 at 7:35am
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Marc Baptiste
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Posted: 03 April 2021 at 8:24am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Joe,

Perhaps you would prefer state control of social media companies (i.e. communism)?  Remember, the constitution only guarantees you freedom of speech, it never promised you a rose garden afterwards.

Marc
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Michael Roberts
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Posted: 03 April 2021 at 8:30am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Stop taking the bait, guys. He's not here for discussion. He just lobs a grenade and waits for a reaction.
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Marc Baptiste
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Posted: 03 April 2021 at 9:05am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Michael,

I know, I know!

Marc
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