Scouting Doesn't Have A Chance In The New World Order

[walk in the woods]

I thought New World Order was a Masonic conspiracy enshrined on the back of the great seal of the United States .

[Scouter99]

I'm in the schools in the middle-middle to upper-middle class suburbs of a mostly conservative state that is moving towards a swing state.  This kind of idiocy is here.  We were all recently given a speech by the administration who told us to start considering that the disciplinary problems we had with many students were not really disciplinary problems, they were cultural problems. 

 

Sure, if your opinion is that the ability to refrain from throwing objects around a classroom, refrain from profanity in a classroom, refrain from fighting in school is simply not endemic to certain "cultures" (the liberal soft word for "races"), then, yeah, I can see how you would conclude that minority students don't have disciplinary problems, rather they're the victims of white racism, which expects them to act white (well-behaved) or be punished.

 

I find that racist and patronizing. 

It is the assertion that minorities are unable to control themselves the way white people can, so we should condescend to their cultural (racial) inferiorities and expect them to be violent and profane.

 

 

What these actually are are poverty problems (and you could call different income strata different culturally).  And, yes, minority students even in my relatively-affluent district are disproportionately poor.  The poor white kids where I used to work had many of these same problems, and the teachers wrote far too many office referrals for my taste.  Those po' whites weren't victims of elitist oppression, they were at school and expected to act like it, and when they didn't they were disciplined.  The poor minorities in my mostly white school aren't victims of white privilege or racism, they're being held to the same standard that the white kids, rich and poor, are held to, and when they fail to live up to them they are disciplined.  Ignoring their disciplinary problems to satisfy PC hoo-ha doesn't help them learn and it doesn't help them be employable in the real world.

Edited June 19, 2015 by Scouter99

[Gone]

I'm moving to England or elsewhere in Europe. At least they embrace being socialists rather than pretending to be something they're not.

[NJCubScouter]

I'm moving to England or elsewhere in Europe. At least they embrace being socialists rather than pretending to be something they're not.

Be sure to write.

[CalicoPenn]

First, as Cambridge said, the EAG is not a non-partisan group - they are very partisan and I would even call them right wing.  Look at their list of links and they all link to neocon or right wing organizations.  That, to me, is a signal to read the one-sided reporting on it with a hefty dose of skepticism (just as you should read one-sided reporting on "liberal" blogs and organizations with a hefty dose of skepticism).

 

I looked at those documents on "white culture" and no where can I find something that says white culture is inherently bad.  What I do see is a perspective that our educational system is rooted in white culture ideas.  The suggestion being made is that teaching using just a white culture centric model is failing minority students who come from different cultural styles.  I make note that the article never shared any of the information on other cultural models.  Remember the flak that Hillary Clinton got in the 90's about "It Takes a Village"?  That flak came from white people, who, as the white cultural model suggests, are rooted in rugged individualism, competition and questioning of authority (including the authority of family and elders).  The flak didn't come from minorities where the culture is geared more towards cooperation, family support, and community reliance.

 

The suggestion seems to be that educators need to adapt their educational methods to both cultural styles - white students are very much more likely to succeed while black and hispanic students are more likely to fail if the only cultural model is white culture - but that can be changed so that all groups can succeed if both white and minority cultural models are attended to. 

[Gone]

Someone please define "white culture".

[CalicoPenn]

White Culture as defined by the program materials reviewed in the National Review article:

 

Promoting independence, self expression, personal choise, individual thinking and achievement (vs. adherence to norms, respect for authority/elders, interdependence, and group consensus and success).

 

Egalitarian relationships, flexible roles and upward mobility (vs stable, hierarchical roles - dependent on gender, background, age).

 

Understanding the physical world apart from its meaning for human life (vs. in relation to human life) (Think of the way Aboriginal Australians map their physical world in relations to their lives versus the way we map the world).

 

Private property and individual ownership (vs. shared)

 

I think I would take it a little father and say those cultural norms not in parenthesis are not universally White Culture but are White American (including Canada), Scandinavian, English, French and German culture.  The parenthitical cultural norms certainly better fit African, Asian and Hispanic and Latin cultures but also better fit some white cultures, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia.

[Gone]

White Culture as defined by the program materials reviewed in the National Review article:

 

Promoting independence, self expression, personal choise, individual thinking and achievement (vs. adherence to norms, respect for authority/elders, interdependence, and group consensus and success).

 

Egalitarian relationships, flexible roles and upward mobility (vs stable, hierarchical roles - dependent on gender, background, age).

 

Understanding the physical world apart from its meaning for human life (vs. in relation to human life) (Think of the way Aboriginal Australians map their physical world in relations to their lives versus the way we map the world).

 

Private property and individual ownership (vs. shared)

 

I think I would take it a little father and say those cultural norms not in parenthesis are not universally White Culture but are White American (including Canada), Scandinavian, English, French and German culture.  The parenthitical cultural norms certainly better fit African, Asian and Hispanic and Latin cultures but also better fit some white cultures, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia.

 

So non-white people don't want any of those things? One visit to China for anyone who had been there pre-1999 would wipe that thought right out.

 

One would thing most people would want those things, apart from small pockets of people (e.g. the Aboriginal people) that don't want to own BMWs and live in LA. Though I suspect if they ever drove the 850i they'd change their mind in a heartbeat.

Edited June 25, 2015 by Bad Wolf

[NJCubScouter]

Calico, thanks, that puts it all in a little more context than the original selective quotations in the National Review. But I do think these lists of characteristics are vastly oversimplified and stereotyped. For example, I think most people, regardless of race or ethnicity, recognize that there needs to be a balance between "independence" and "interdependence." And I don't see "egalitarianism" as being limited to "white" culture.

 

If someone wants to give a course in which these ideas are taught, and someone wants to pay for it and attend, that's fine. People pay to "learn" all kinds of things that other people may disagree with. But if a government agency is financing this and/or requiring public employees to attend, then I do have an issue with it - while at the same time, I don't buy into the hyperbolic rhetoric of the National Review, nor in the heading of this thread.

[packsaddle]

Speaking of the Chinese, I'm thinking about the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics where they were rolling out a flat panel screen the size of a stadium and providing the world with a display of talent and technology that is unlikely ever to be topped in my lifetime..compared to the grotesque spectacle that was unfolding here as my fellow countrymen were prostrating themselves to people who were demanding a 'long form birth certificate', predicting "jack-booted thugs" would be invading the country, and think the world is less than 10K years old. Square THAT with those so-called cultural characteristics.

Edited June 26, 2015 by packsaddle

[NJCubScouter]

Not only that, Packsaddle, one of the "birthers" is now running for President, and apparently doing pretty well in some of the polls. (Although he never actually said anything about the issue until 2011, the LAST time he was considering running for President.)