Rabbi Nachum Shifren
We are living in an upside down world. Nothing proves this point more than the inside of an inner-city classroom today in America.
As a teacher, I am entrusted with the order and managment of a classroom of anywhere from 30-40 students. Each of them has their own issues of disappointments and alienation from our culture, and the teachers in particular. For many, we are "the man", the authority figure that they have learned to hate. For today, in American classrooms, the concept of "learning for the sake of leaning" has been driven from the curriculum. We have become, tragically, unionized babysitters, sitting on a caulron of frustrated, desperate students finding a way to life skills and tools for survival, without the means to achieve them.
My classroom rules are simple: let not your actions or words be a stumbling block for others that desire to learn and achieve. Let not your attitude,whatever that may be, impact others negatively, robbing them of their precious opportunity to open their eyes to a world of learning and growth. That's it.
The other day, an ugly event occured that exposed for all, the profound morass in which we as teachers and parents find ourselves: I asked a student to move his seat due to disruptions and annoying behavior, making it difficult for others around him to focus on the lesson. He refused to move his seat. Plain and simple, defying me and making a spectacle which only subsided when I asked my colleague in the next class to help me in prevailing upon him to follow instructions and cease defiance.
Now I've been told that I sent him out because he was "black." That's it. No mention of behavior, no mention of the fact that I needed to move his seat several times during the last few days. What's interesting is that the day before, when a student used the "F" word to me, coupled with a few anti-Semitic epithets, the "cultural sensitivity" card was not played, with the student back in class the next day.
This selective application of "multiculturalism" will bring this country down. There's no responsibility for actions, no consequences for the most obvious cases of insubordination, defiance, or threats toward teachers and staff of our schools. Everyone is a victim. A few days ago, this nation witnessed this on a dramatic scale at one of our military bases. Only here, it wasn't a question of an unruly student being removed from class, WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THE TOTAL BREAKDOWN OF OUR SOCIETY DUE TO POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.
My friend Ted Hayes has it right: "One of the spin-offs from the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. to repair slave and racist-induced damages done to American Blacks was politically correct speech. When I and other Black students were integrated into White high schools, teachers found it very difficult to manage their classrooms as a result of being afraid to chastise us. When they attempted to do so, Black students would respond with accusations of racism with remarks like, 'You're picking on me because I'm Black!'"
This applies to anyone that uses excuses to cover for lack of achievement or an inability to accept resonsibility. And the attitude described here is eating away at our society. Straight out of Marx 101, the way to destroy a country is to have races and ethnicities pitted against each other, creating a maze of social tension and resentment. No need to attack them with weapons, they will destroy themselves from within. Either this message is read loud and clear in our schools, or we will lose the last hope for a way of life of freedom and individual liberty, so bravely fought for all these years.
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Rabbi Nachum Shifren
Your Educational Candidate
Lecturer and Author, Candidate for California State Senate, District #26
www.RabbiForSenate.com
"If we had 10 more teachers like Rabbi Shifren, we could turn around America tomorrow."....Rev Jesse Lee Petersen
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