So says Ben Chavis, principal of an Oakland charter school that's one of the only educational institutions in that sad, benighted city to show itself capable of some actual educating. Apparently, however, this has been accomplished with little regard for prevailing educational theories and liberal niceties.
Naturally, there's agitation to get rid of him, led by a delegation of what at first glance appear to be dingbats from the ivory tower up the road, the expensive private Mills College, where a professor is up in arms because her delicate charges weren't treated with sufficient sensitivity. Chavis sneers that the letters of complaint he received didn't even contain correct grammar, and I'd be inclined to back him up on that one: I frequently encounter grad students, even Ph.D. candidates, who can't write or spell at what I would consider high school level.
The crux of the complaint is that Chavis uses crude and racially insensitive language in dealing with his students. We're talking of course about students in an educational system that has for decades been producing little more than prison fodder, and who are growing up in a town where violent crime is so common as to barely merit a notice in the local paper unless multiple corpses are involved. I'm inclined to think that if Chavis' methods are working as well as they appear to be, Oakland needs to look into hiring a few drill sergeants to make sure all the kids in the Oakland School District get their fair share of being sworn at.
Naturally, there's agitation to get rid of him, led by a delegation of what at first glance appear to be dingbats from the ivory tower up the road, the expensive private Mills College, where a professor is up in arms because her delicate charges weren't treated with sufficient sensitivity. Chavis sneers that the letters of complaint he received didn't even contain correct grammar, and I'd be inclined to back him up on that one: I frequently encounter grad students, even Ph.D. candidates, who can't write or spell at what I would consider high school level.
The crux of the complaint is that Chavis uses crude and racially insensitive language in dealing with his students. We're talking of course about students in an educational system that has for decades been producing little more than prison fodder, and who are growing up in a town where violent crime is so common as to barely merit a notice in the local paper unless multiple corpses are involved. I'm inclined to think that if Chavis' methods are working as well as they appear to be, Oakland needs to look into hiring a few drill sergeants to make sure all the kids in the Oakland School District get their fair share of being sworn at.
